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Welcome to the Ringer NBA Show, and today we're going to talk to Katie Baker from the Ringer.

There she put up an article a few days ago, The Wizard of Washington.

After years of disappointment in DC, John Wall Bradley Bear and a cast of clicking role players

have the wizards on track to contend for a conference title.

But the real magician is the new coach who's proof capable of enchanting game plans and personalities alike.

And that of course is Scott Brooks and Katie Baker joins us now. Hey Katie.

Hi, how are you? Thanks for coming on.

Okay, so first things, The Wizard are obviously one of the great stories in the NBA this year.

But you know, you write a lot of feature stuff and you're going to really dig into whatever story you're going to write.

Why The Wizard? Why did you want to write about them?

Well, going into preseason, I was just kind of intrigued as to what it was going to be like for Scott Brooks.

You know, I think just most broadly, I used to cover hockey a lot.

And so the Washington capitals are a team that kind of are always do well in the regular season and then just can't get past the second round of the playoffs.

And The Wizard didn't necessarily have the first part under control, but they they had the second.

They just kind of had never gotten over the hump. Washington fans just seem constantly depressed.

So you know, to go into that environment, I was interested with Brooks.

And then obviously when all the, you know, comments came out this summer with John Law and Bradley Beale, where Wall said that, you know, they have a tendency to just like each other on the court.

I think is what he said. And it got blown into a huge extravaganza and harken back to Brooks's situation in Oklahoma.

So those were interesting to me. And then that kind of got put aside for a little bit. And then when the Wizard had their resurgence after a two and eight start, we just thought maybe it would be a good time to revisit that.

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