According to Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN, the Washington Wizards have named Wes Unseld Jr. of Catonsville, Maryland as their new head coach. Unseld Jr. has a history of being an assistant coach in the National Basketball Association, but this will be the first time in his career he will be a head coach.
Unseld Jr. was in fact the Wizards assistant coach from 2005 to 2011, and then as an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors from 2011 to 2012, the Orlando Magic from 2012 to 2015, and then the Denver Nuggets from 2015 to 2021. Prior to being the Wizards’s assistant coach, he was their personnel scout for eight seasons.
As the Wizards head coach, Unseld Jr. is taking over from Scott Brooks of French Camp, California. Brooks had been the head coach for Washington since 2016, and posted a record of 183 wins and 207 losses before parting ways on June 16, 2021. Brooks has now accepted a job as the new assistant coach with the Portland Trail Blazers.
As a player, Unseld Jr. played with Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland for high school, and then Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1994 to 1997. He never played professional basketball. However, Wes Unseld (the father of Wes Unseld Jr.) was one of the very best Baltimore/Washington Bullets players of all-time. The 1969 NBA Most Valuable Player with the Baltimore Bullets, Unseld of Louisville, Kentucky won the NBA Finals with the Washington Bullets in 1978, where he was the NBA Finals MVP. He would later be inducted into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame in 1988. A year ago, Unseld died at the age of 74 of pneumonia.
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