#SoWizards

Ken Budd writes for an array of outlets, including Washington Post Magazine and The Atlantic. Writing for The Atlantic, Budd delved into why such thing as Wizards fans exist — complete with interviews of psychologists explaining why otherwise intelligent, accomplished people can't stop rooting for perennial losers. We took some trips to fond memories of the past and pondered whether we're all just...

With guest basketball expert Mark Schindler joining the discussion, we went deep on the Washington Wizards and their prospects for the 2022-23 season. We touched on key questions like: What's the state of the roster and the franchise? Who will be the team's most impactful player? Which of the youngsters has the best chance of making The Leap? Where do the Wizards rank in the Eastern Conference? We...

In this episode we analyze the Washington Wizards preseason games against the Golden State Warriors and discuss some of the key questions and position battles for the Wizards, including: Who starts at guard with Bradley Beal? Who starts at forward with Kyle Kuzma? Who wins the role of backing up Beal? How much (if anything) will Monte Morris and Will Barton lose because they won't be playing with...

In this episode, Ron and Kevin talk about the Sarver Report , what to call the Wizards' current "Big Three" (hint: the Wizards don't have a Big Three), and then go into a hypothetical of how good the Wizards might be if they could acquire Michael Porter Jr. from the Denver Nuggets and Jonathan Isaac from the Orlando Magic. For those who don't keep up with such things, both Porter and Isaac are kno...

Sometimes during a long offseason, you need to throw off the shackles of trivia, nonsense and offseason pickup videos in which *no really* he's *really-really-really* in the best shape of his life and talk about the important things like whether bald players are better, and who are the best bald Wizards/Bullets in franchise history. Support the podcast by checking out Athletic Greens , a lifestyle...

The Wizards emerged from the 2022 NBA summer league with a 3-2 record, a positive scoring differential, and one of Las Vegas’s three most productive players, and the whole thing was still disappointing. In this episode, Kevin is joined by Matt Modderno, host of the Bleav in Wizards podcast, for an analysis of the summer league experience. We get into positives and negatives, and examine everything...

In this kinda-sorta mailbag episode, Kevin and Ron answer basketball-related questions and end up covering a wide range of topics. The questions: From ESPN's Bobby Marks: Can a team build around a player like Bradley Beal and Damian Lillard at $50+ million per year without a clear number two in place? From The Aether: Who would you rather have over the next five years, Lu Dort at $87.5 million or...

This episode might have had a different flavor, at least at the start, if we'd known all of the preposterous details of the "let's just give him everything we possibly" can contract the Washington Wizards awarded Bradley Beal. In this episode, Kevin and Ron discuss the Beal contract, and the team's other roster moves so far this offseason. We also delved into the iffy strategy of not taking a swin...

Somehow, we coordinated schedules among five grown men and conducted a LIVE mock draft covering all 58 picks. Joining Kevin were Ron Oakes-Cunningham, John Heiser, Marcus Atkinson and Nathan Froe. The ground rules: one minute running clock per pick. While trades were permitted, we didn’t actually make any. Each of us handled pre-assigned teams. Apologies in advance for some sound quality issues —...

Matt Modderno teamed up with Kevin for a two-part crossover deep-dive into the 2022 NBA Draft. Part One — covering guards and forwards is Matt's Bleav in Wizards podcast. In Part Two, Kevin and Matt break down wings and centers that have a realistic shot to hear their name called on draft night and the range most reasonable for them to be selected. The two episodes cover more than 70 players...for...

With the NBA Draft looming on the calendar, and the Washington Wizards committed to maximum salary players Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis, the team will need to rely on the cheap labor of young players on rookie contracts. The burning question facing the franchise is one they've answered poorly for the past few decades: Can the team develop its young players into major contributors? For the W...

Recorded shortly after the NBA's annual Draft Lottery, which left the Wizards with the 10th pick (the most likely outcome based on their record this season), Osman Baig from Bullets Forever and Matt Modderno, host of the Bleav in Wizards podcast , joined Kevin to talk about what the Wizards can and should do this offseason. The trio dissected an array of options, including trading up for a potenti...

In this episode, co-hosts Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham were joined by Wizards writer and youth basketball coach Marcus Atkinson. They discussed Ron's theory that fans need time off once their favorite gets eliminated to recalibrate their basketball eye and reset expectations. They also got into a conversation about effective team building, with a focus on the Memphis success assembling a d...

With the Washington Wizards not making the playoffs, Kevin and Ron took some time to reflect on weighty #SoWizards topics like whether Bradley Beal should take less than the maximum salary, which of the Wizards' players seem like they could compete effectively at playoffs intensity, and the relative goodness of Desmond Bane.  They touched on Beal's now-four-season-long drop in three-point sho...

Osman Baig (@OBtoojiveforyou) and Matt Modderno (@MattModderno) are back for another Bullets Forever 3Pt Play! We all know the expression that hindsight is 20-20 so we thought it would be fun to fire up the time machine and rehash each of the Wizards' drafts over the last decade. We discuss what they got right, where they missed, and the flaws in their logic along the way. We identify who would ha...

Kevin Broom and Ben Becker have been having Wizards season post-mortem calls annually for nearly 20 years now. They've even recorded some of them and turned them into podcasts. That's what this is: two long-time friends who know basketball, know the Wizards and know the NBA dissecting Washington's season, and the team's penchant for bad strategic thinking. There was no outline or framework for the...

Here's the thing that makes a 96-minute podcast episode even crazier: it started with one of us saying he might need to keep his comments tight because he unexpectedly had to be somewhere. Instead of leaving early, the conversation went nearly two hours, and we overcome technical difficulties to record roughly 95 minutes. Armon Lee, New York Knicks fan and creator of the excellent Quarter-Lee Repo...

In this episode, Domo from the terrific podcast Wizards of Gallery Place joined Kevin and Ron to help Ron kickstart the #FreeRui propaganda campaign. Ron and Domo make a compelling case, but can they persuade Kevin to give up his Hachimura "hate?" Also in this episode, the guys talked about Kyle Kuzma's relative value, what they want to see and expect to see over the team's last 12 games, whether...

#SoWizards hosts Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham have been nibbling at the edges of whether Wes Unseld Jr. is doing a good job as Wizards head coach, and in this episode they were joined by the great Troy Haliburton to take a big ol' bite of the question. The conversation was an unflinching diagnosis of how Unseld's leadership is coming up short, how he compares to his predecessors and compet...

Is it bad form to say your own podcast has a great episode? If so, I'm the Jamaal Wilkes of podcasting. Here's a YouTube link to his shot (and some other "bad form" shooters) for the youngs in the audience. In this episode, Mark Schindler, a contributor at Basketball News, joined Ron and Kevin to discuss a whole heap of basketball topics. Mark is an excellent basketball writers and a must read for...

With no one from the franchise participating in an official capacity, All-Star weekend was quiet for the Washington Wizards. Kevin and Ron took the time to take stock of the team and what they hope and expect to see from the Wizards over the final 24 games of the season. This episode includes a discussion of All-Star Saturday Night events, which evolved into a conversation about the league could d...

In the latest installment of the BulletsForever 3PT Play, Matt Modderno and Osman Baig joined Kevin to talk about tanking -- whether the Wizards should do it, and how to do it right if they do. We also discussed the team's trade deadline moves and what they could mean for the Wizards over the next few seasons.

In this episode, Osman Baig joined Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham to talk over the most important figure in the Washington Wizards organization: Bradley Beal. We discussed how the team's handling of Beal is symptomatic of the front office's long-running dysfunction. We assess where Beal truly stands in the league and the challenges of trying to build around a player at his level. We got pres...

Recorded before the debaculous 29-point loss to Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics, Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham batted around the issue of whether Wes Unseld Jr. and his staff are doing a good job. It’s been taken as a given by many Wizards fans and analysts that Unseld is good and a significant upgrade from Scott Brooks. But what if he’s not? What if the team isn’t being well coached? H...

The plan for this episode was straightforward: Ron and Kevin would spend a few minutes discussing the recent performance of the Washington Wizards and then move into picking All-Star rosters. What happened: the conversation evolved into a dissection of whether Bradley Beal will stay, when (and if) he'll ask for a trade, and what might motivate him to stay or go. They also delved into the value of...