Why the New-Look Washington Wizards Could Be an NBA Playoff Team Next Season

On April 13, 2011, the Washington Wizards' regular season ended with a loss to what had become professional basketball's punch line, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Wizards looked like a team that was filled with young and talented players who were playing more like corpses: the team refused to share the ball effectively and every player seemed to be more concerned with their individual stats than the team's total wins.

The coaches seemed unable to call any plays besides isolation, and the losses seemed to just keep adding up while the fans seemed to lose faith that the organization would ever be on track to make the playoffs again.

All of this negative momentum culminated on April 13, when a Wizards playoff season seemed about as likely as a balanced national budget by the politicians and advisers in the same city.

On this day, we wondered, was all of the hope we had for the Wizards after they were able to draft John Wall just simply false hope? Would the Wizards ever be winners again?

Well just two months and 14 days later, it looks like the Wizards could be a playoff team next season.

The Wizards organization has completely remade itself from a perennial doormat into a potential winner in the past two months, and it all started with burying any evidence of their wretched basketball past.

This is why the Wizards may have had one of the more important jersey changes in recent history. It gave the fans the message that this was not the same team that seemed to give up once the calendar hit December last season.

It gave the players the message that this was going to be the year that they turned into a team, and not just a selfish collection of fifteen individuals trying to get paid.

The colors reminded fans of the Washington Bullets, and at the speed of the fastest bullet, the Wizards all of a sudden matter in the national landscape again. This is the same team that would have given anything to matter on the local level just two months and fourteen days ago.

The Wizards also continued their dramatic transformation by having the best draft of any NBA team Thursday night. They not only got the best value for all of their picks, they were a team that single-handedly forged an identity as a poor man's version of Steve Nash's '05-'09 Phoenix Suns.

The speed of John Wall will allow him to run just about every possession, and with the selection of Jan Vesely, he will finally have someone on his own team that can run with him.

The Wizards lacked a defensive presence last season, and now they have the best defensive presence and shot blocker in college basketball last season in Chris Singleton.

Singleton will allow Wall and Vesely to get on fast breaks even quicker, and will even allow Washington three-point shooters to spot up on the fast break.  You can expect Washington to be one of the most exciting teams on a national level next season, when last season they could not even attract attention from the locals in our nations capital.

The Wizards have completely remade their franchise in the past two months and fourteen days by forging a new identity and direction for their franchise. The new Wizards will run and work together on fast breaks, when before they were content with being selfish and getting around twenty wins a year.

This team will be more like the '05-'09 Suns than the wretched Wizards teams of the past. The new Wizards will have an aggressive management that encourages team chemistry, when before the management did not really care if their players brought guns into the locker room.

The Wizards have changed dramatically in the past two months and fourteen days by drastically changing their style and forming a clear identity.