Inside The Wizards

Wizards Coach Voted as the League's Worst

The Athletic revealed the answers to questions pitched to anonymous players across the league, who picked the Washington Wizards' Brian Keefe as the worst coach in the NBA.
Henry Brown|
Jan 19, 2025; Sacramento, California, USA; Washington Wizards head coach Brian Keefe looks on during the third quarter of the game against the Sacramento Kings at Golden 1 Center. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images
Jan 19, 2025; Sacramento, California, USA; Washington Wizards head coach Brian Keefe looks on during the third quarter of the game against the Sacramento Kings at Golden 1 Center. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images | Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images

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NBA players across the league continued their annual Wizards drubbing, voting Washington coach Brian Keefe as the worst in the league through the annual anonymous player poll conducted by The Athletic.

Unlike the question asking players to pick the worst organization, one that the Charlotte Hornets ran away with while Washington collected about half of their votes in second place, Keefe took home honors for worst coach with considerably better competition.

The first-time lead coach led the pack with 24.7% of the vote, nearly good enough for a quarter of the 73 votes cast. Former Phoenix Suns coach Mike Budenholzer wasn't far behind with 17.8% while Milwaukee's Doc Rivers showed in third at 12.3%, with four other coaches earning at least 5% of the total vote share farther down the ballot.

It's an unfortunate sign of the reputation Keefe holds in the league, heavily lining up with The Athletic's question as to the worst NBA franchise, where Washington took a similar beating.

Keefe, for his part, wasn't exactly dealt the most convenient hand. He was brought in as the interim head coach last season after Wes Unseld Jr. got the axe on Jan. 25, 2024, and has led the Wizards to a 26-95 record amidst a front office-mandated tank job.

He's gotten the young pieces and veterans to work hard in tandem, winning 20% of the games he led last season while Unseld did it just under 16% of the time in his final 44 games at tghe helm, and won two more games (17) in 2024-25 while providing more leeway to the youth than we saw in the season prior.

Washington executives likely aren't feverishly checking what players think via The Athletic when determining their coach of the future, though, and are likely to let Keefe keep riding out the rebuild. He's a good for for this iteration of the team, whether that's a popular choice around the association or not.

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Henry Brown
HENRY BROWN

Henry covers the Washington Wizards and Baltimore Ravens with prior experience as a sports reporter with The Baltimore Sun, the Capital Gazette and The Lead. A Bowie, MD native, he earned his Journalism degree at the University of Maryland.

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