Is Brian Keefe Building the Wizards’ Future or Just Passing Time?
We're back to only five questions. This is number four. Don't get excited about number five.
This is a part of a five-piece series of five questions surrounding the Washington Wizards entering the 2025-26 season.
Question #1 - Is Bub Carrington a Point Guard, or Just a Guard Who Brings the Ball Up?
Question #2 - Should We Be Talking More About Bilal Coulibaly Being Thrown in a Trade Package?
Question #3 - Why Can't Washington Figure Out Alex Sarr?
Question #4 - Is Brian Keefe Building the Wizards’ Future or Just Passing Time?
Question #5 - What If Tre Johnson Is Better Than Advertised?
The moment Michael Winger was hired in May 2023, the countdown began. Wes Unseld Jr. could feel it in the hallways, in the meetings — his grip on the Wizards’ head coaching job was already loosening. The son of a Washington legend, he was the last standing member of an era defined more by hope than results, a bridge between the franchise’s past and whatever future the new front office was envisioning. Each loss chipped away at the goodwill he’d earned, and each roster move made it clearer: sentiment would no longer outweigh performance.
But, to his credit, the performance wasn’t always that bad. A 70-94 record was not a remarkable feat in his first two seasons yet it was his ability to really unlock his forwards that inspired hope — specifically his recognition of what it took to be a respectable wing in the league. He was the forward whisperer for a reason and he would arguably help Rui Hachimura, Deni Avdija and the soon-to-join Bilal Coulibaly stabilize their foundations. He would be critical in getting the Daniel Gafford and Kristaps Porzinigis line-up to work, really turning Daniel Gafford into this stand-out center despite his overall limited game.
With that being said, Wes Unseld Jr was ultimately a coach caught between timelines — brought in to nurture a team that was never fully committed to winning, and then asked to survive a pivot toward a long-term rebuild. His strengths as a developmental coach became clearer as the roster skewed younger, but by then, the organizational patience had run out. He was steady, professional, and deeply respected in the locker room, yet the results — the tangible, scoreboard ones — never matched the quiet progress he helped foster behind the scenes.
In many ways, his tenure will be remembered not for its highs or lows, but for the ambiguity of it all: a coach who might have succeeded under different circumstances, in a different phase of the franchise’s arc. When the end came, it wasn’t surprising.
The newly implemented front office would introduce their two potential suitors — both highly regarded assistant coaches who were on the shortlist of many NBA teams at the time: Brian Keefe and David Vanterpool.
Brian Keefe was the development guru, widely credited for the growth of some of the best names in the NBA — including the newly minted MVP and NBA champion Shai Gilgeous-Alexander while also having a long-standing relationship with Winger and Will Dawkins. Meanwhile David Vanterpool was best known for his work in developing the backcourt of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum — a quietly forgotten reunion that will be taking place this season.
When Keefe would be tapped for the interim position, it felt like an effortless decision. He was already embedded within the system, knew the players, and more importantly, had the trust of the front office. His voice had weight in the locker room, even before he stepped into the interim head coaching role. There was no dramatic pivot, no jarring change in philosophy — just a subtle shift in tone. Keefe brought a clarity of purpose that matched the new vision: player development as the cornerstone, not a side effect.
But it also felt pre-determined, the pick Winger and Dawkins both expected to make from the start. He was the person with a previous relationship with the two. And in that way, Keefe’s appointment was less about auditioning for the role and more about starting the clock on the next era. The rest of the season became an extended evaluation — not just of him, but of how this front office wanted its culture to look in practice. Practices got sharper. Film sessions ran a touch longer. The messaging, both internally and externally, grew more disciplined. The Wizards weren’t suddenly winning at a high clip, but you could sense the alignment.
The danger in this kind of midseason handoff, of course, is that everyone knows what’s really happening. Keefe wasn’t simply “holding the seat warm” for the next guy. He was the next guy, barring some catastrophic misstep. That knowledge can be liberating — you coach with the confidence of someone building for the long haul — but it can also strip away the urgency. In Washington’s case, the urgency wasn’t about wins; it was about proving that the developmental engine could actually run when given the keys.
Which brings us here: Year 2.5of Brian Keefe, no clearer on whether his contract is a bridge deal or the foundation for something lasting. The front office has staked its vision — and maybe its credibility — on his ability to turn raw promise into real results. And it brings forward a really important question: Are we sure Brian Keefe is the man for the job?
If we drawback to Year 0.5, a lot of the job was him learning the ropes. Specifically, it was the line-up management that felt like the biggest thorn in his side.
It was something not always easy to see in the stats sheets but noticeable enough on the floor. One of the most glaring examples would be Deni Avdija’s career-night against the New Orleans Pelicans, where he would noticeably burn out towards the end of the game as Washington attempted to climb back. Avdija being forced onto the Zion Williamson match-up. As the game began to wind down, the calls for Williamson isolations would increase and so would the Pelicans’ point totals. Without the proper rest, he was done for.
Was this an opportunity just to provide a clip of Avdija getting smoked? You decide.
Or there would be the noticeable half-time interviews with a player greatly out of breathe. Kuzma, as a good example, would huff and puff, attempting to answer the simple questions thrown in his direction.
It’s these micro-decisions — the kind that never make the headline recap but absolutely shape games — that are at the heart of the Keefe question. You could argue he was simply testing his players, seeing how far Avdija’s defensive growth could stretch against one of the league’s most bruising mismatches. You could also argue it was a stubborn adherence to a rotation plan that ignored the rhythm of the game in front of him. The truth, like most things in Keefe’s short tenure, probably lives somewhere in the gray.
Last season would be the first real entrance of Keefe as a true basketball mind, where his offense felt free-flowing and structureless and the defense felt incredibly reliant on the individual talent underneath rather than a cohesive, systemic scheme. At times, it looked like a blank canvas — which can be a gift for skilled creators but a trap for rosters without a clear alpha. The Wizards leaned heavily on the flashes of Jordan Poole’s self-creation, the sporadic brilliance of Kyle Kuzma, and the promise of Bilal Coulibaly’s defensive anticipation. But there was rarely a sense that the system was creating those moments; rather, the talent was simply surviving within it.
Defensively, Keefe’s principles seemed sound in theory — emphasize ball pressure, closeouts with discipline, and force teams into mid-range pull-ups. In practice, it often looked like a patchwork effort. When the rotations clicked, Washington could string together stops and get out in transition, where their young legs thrived. When they didn’t, the breakdowns were glaring, often hinging on one missed read or a late help that snowballed into an open three. They weren’t getting teams to settle for mid-range pull-ups. Teams recorded the eighth-most three point field goal attempts in the NBA with teams shooting 36.4% from deep — eleventh highest in the NBA. Maybe more concerning was Washington also giving up the most offensive rebounds per game in the NBA — 12.9.
Those two numbers — the barrage of open threes and the constant surrender of second chances — cut to the heart of Washington’s defensive fragility. You can survive one of those flaws in today’s NBA; it’s almost impossible to survive both. Giving up clean looks from deep is bad enough, but compounding it by allowing extra possessions meant the Wizards were often defending for 20, 25, sometimes 30 seconds at a time.
That’s a recipe for mental fatigue, and it showed. Even in games where the initial defensive effort was strong, the repeated resets wore players down. Closeouts got slower. Rotations grew half a beat late. By the fourth quarter, the legs were gone, and opponents knew it. Rebounding, at its core, is about discipline and positioning as much as it is about height and athleticism — and while Washington had some athletes, they rarely had the collective discipline to finish possessions.
This is where the Keefe evaluation becomes complicated. On one hand, he inherited a roster that wasn’t built to dominate the glass — undersized lineups, wings who preferred to leak out in transition, and bigs who were more vertical spacers than horizontal clearers. On the other hand, part of a coach’s job is to scheme around those limitations, and Keefe’s Wizards rarely did. Too often, it felt like the game plan assumed defensive possessions would end after the first shot, rather than building in layers to secure the ball.
The result was a defense that could look competitive for stretches but never truly threatening. And in a rebuild, that matters — because while wins may be scarce, the front office needs to see sustainable habits forming. Giving up open threes and offensive rebounds at historic rates is not a habit you want to incubate in a young core.
Keefe’s tenure so far isn’t just defined by the numbers on the stat sheet or the structural gaps on film — it’s defined by the question of trajectory. Is this group getting better, or simply surviving? In a rebuild, the scoreboard can lie, but the tape doesn’t. The best rebuilding teams — think early Thunder, pre-breakout Cavs — looked sharper month by month, even before the wins arrived. Washington, in Keefe’s first full year, felt more like a team in a holding pattern.
There were moments, of course. A stretch in January where the ball zipped around with purpose, Poole and Tyus Jones both looking comfortable in dual-initiator sets. A couple of weeks where Avdija played like the two-way forward they’ve been selling to the fan base since 2020. Even an early-season burst from Coulibaly, whose weakside rotations hinted at real defensive star equity complimented with offensive creation. But those moments never strung together into something you could point to and say: that’s the blueprint.
Part of that falls on the roster churn. Keefe was, in many ways, coaching on shifting sand — different starting lineups, different developmental priorities, different injury absences every few weeks. That instability would tax any coach, let alone one still establishing his voice. But part of it is philosophical, too. Keefe’s system — or, more accurately, his tendencies — still feels like it’s reacting to what’s in front of him rather than dictating terms. The best developmental coaches build an identity early, even if the talent isn’t ready to execute it perfectly.
However, we cannot fully push the blame off of Keefe. The hallmark of a developmental coach isn’t just patience — it’s intentionality. Every possession, every substitution, every rotation tweak is an opportunity to reinforce the habits you want to see three years down the road. Too often, Washington drifted. The offense would bog down into isolations without a clear counter. Defensive coverages would look improvised, not drilled. End-of-quarter possessions — those subtle moments where good teams squeeze out an extra bucket or deny one — frequently felt wasted.
This is where Keefe’s Year 1.5 matters in hindsight. The stretch could have been his laboratory — a chance to imprint a style and culture that would carry over once the roster stabilized. Instead, it was hard to tell whether there was a style beyond “let’s see what happens.” Yes, the roster limitations were glaring. Yes, the front office was clearly thinking in multi-year timelines. But identity is not a luxury in a rebuild; it’s the thing you have to start building before the talent arrives.
That’s why this upcoming season feels like the verdict year. With another summer of input on personnel, with his voice fully established in camp, and with a roster skewing even younger, there will be fewer excuses. The rebounding numbers can’t stay in the basement. The three-point defense can’t be a weekly coin flip. And offensively, the “free-flowing” philosophy has to be underpinned by structure — a framework that lifts the floor for role players and doesn’t force the offense to live or die on whether Poole or Kuzma are hot (now onto Tre Johnson’s shoulders).
Because if those same cracks from Year 1.5 reappear, it won’t just be about the Wizards losing games. It will be about losing confidence. That the people steering this developmental ship don’t know the route. And in a rebuild, once that confidence starts to slip, the countdown clock starts all over again.
The irony is that Brian Keefe was hired because of his steadiness — his reputation for building players brick by brick, day by day. That’s exactly what the Wizards need right now. But steadiness without direction is just drift. And if this season becomes another exercise in wandering, the questions about Keefe won’t just be about whether he can develop players; they’ll be about whether he can lead a franchise through the messy middle of a rebuild into something resembling contention.
The front office has staked part of its credibility on Keefe. They’ve given him the young core, the long runway, and a mandate built more on process than results. Now the process has to be visible: Coulibaly sharpening his handle into two-way impact, Avdija locking into a defined role, Tre Johnson getting developmental reps that actually lead somewhere. The defense has to be more than a prayer after the first shot.
Keefe isn’t just proving he can develop players — he’s proving this rebuild has a compass. If the Wizards still look like they’re wandering by spring, Winger and Dawkins won’t hesitate to find someone else to steer it. The countdown has already started once before. Keefe’s job is to make sure it never starts again.