Wizards fans confident in FO, lean toward Budenholzer as next coach

Fans also gave the Daniel Gafford trade a median grade of B.

Thanks for responding to our latest SB Nation Reacts survey, Washington Wizards fans. Here are the results!

Wizards fans give the Daniel Gafford trade a grade of B

Over 300 people responded to the survey. In this question, we asked what grade you would give the Daniel Gafford for Richaun Holmes and draft compensation trade. Results skewed positively, with 39 percent giving a grade of B and 19 percent giving a grade of A.

Adding Holmes in exchange of Gafford isn’t addition by subtraction, considering that Gaff kept things respectable in the low post. But the Wizards have somehow played competitive basketball for the most part since the trade deadline.

Wizards fans continue to give their confidence in the Will Dawkins and Michael Winger regime

Sixty-seven percent, or about two-thirds of our respondents, say they are confident in how General Manager Will Dawkins and Monumental Basketball President Michael Winger are running the Wizards.

The overall win-loss record isn’t good, which all of us expected. But fans are encouraged by the attempt to add more draft picks (which the Gafford trade does) as well as the Deni Avdija contract extension, which is a team-friendly deal considering Deni’s improvement so far this season.

Mike Budenholzer leads a wish list that Wizards fans want as their head coach

Out of a list of many candidates, former Milwaukee Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer won the most votes out of which person Wizards fans want as their coach.

Budenholzer was the Atlanta Hawks’ head coach which included a 2015 run to the Eastern Conference Finals with a starting five without a superstar. He was then the Milwaukee Bucks’ head coach from 2018-23 where he led the Bucks to an NBA championship in the 2020-21 season. Before being a head coach, he spent 17 years on the San Antonio Spurs’ coaching staff where he was part of four NBA championship teams. He is the most established NBA head coach on this list, period. It would be nice to see the Wizards hire him.

Current interim head coach Brian Keefe was second place with 17 percent of the vote. The Wizards have played competitive basketball since he replaced Wes Unseld, Jr., so he may very well be the head coach when all is said and done.

Boston Celtics assistant coach Sam Cassell was in third place with 15 percent of the vote. He was one of the Wizards’ assistant coaches from 2009-14 and has been a dream candidate for the job ever since he left Washington for the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014. But Cassell has never been a head coach at the professional level, though this may be a good spot for him to grow with the team like Brett Brown was for the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2010s during “The Process.”

Michigan Wolverines men’s basketball head coach Juwan Howard is tied for fourth place with Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon. Both have been long-time NBA assistant coaches with some of the league’s best teams (Miami Heat for Howard, Spurs for Hammon) after strong playing careers in the NBA and WNBA, respectively.

But their head coaching jobs put them in different leagues.

In Howard’s case, he is in his fifth year coaching the Wolverines since 2019. Though he led Michigan to the 2020-21 team to the Elite Eight, the team has performed progressively worse since then. This season, Michigan is 8-17, 3-11 in the Big Ten. He’s getting on the hot seat and may be fired. So I’m not sure if that’s what the Wizards want since college coaching is about constantly building a team on a year-to-year basis, more so than the NBA.

In Hammon’s case, she took her talents to the Las Vegas Aces in 2022, the team she spent most of her playing career with when they were the San Antonio Stars. In two seasons, the Aces have won two consecutive WNBA championships and are in prime position to win a third. Before going to Vegas, Hammon was the lead assistant for the Spurs, so she may still want to be an NBA head coach. But I’m not sure if she’d want to leave a winning WNBA team to go to an NBA team that has a long rebuild ahead.

Mark Jackson, who is currently an ESPN NBA analyst, was in sixth place with 7 percent of the vote. He was the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, leading them to two playoff berths as they were starting to get into contention. But he had a reputation for being hard to work with in the Warriors’ organization and has never been an NBA coach since.

Here are the other coaches that were options on the survey. Two of them (Lawson, Lee) are from the D.C. area, and Stackhouse played two seasons for the Wizards from 2002-04.

• Kara Lawson, Duke women’s basketball head coach
• Terry Stotts, Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach (former Portland Trail Blazers HC)
• Charles Lee, Boston Celtics assistant coach
• Jerry Stackhouse, Vanderbilt men’s basketball head coach

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We will have more surveys, hopefully, next week!

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