The Washington Wizards had a successful season last year. They made their second consecutive appearance in the Eastern Conference Semifinals and were a John Wall injury away from making it to the Conference Finals. But, for those who watched the team play during the regular season, their failures were apparent.

While the Wizards maintained continuity, they failed to adapt to the ever-changing game.

The most successful teams in the NBA started to focus on spacing and running an efficient offense. Randy Wittman’s club focused on quite the opposite. Instead, Wittman preached defense and ran an outdated offense that set the team back during the regular season.

The Wizards had a chance to get homecourt advantage late in the season, but suffered losses to the likes of the Philadelphia 76ers and Minnesota Timberwolves.

Their defense was solid, for the most part, but their offense was brutal. At some point, Wittman had to make a change, otherwise his chances of sticking around in the nation’s capital were going to plummet.

Wittman made the necessary changes during the NBA Playoffs after finally deciding to play Paul Pierce at the four spot.

The team’s spacing improved and Washington suddenly became a super-efficient offensive team in the postseason. John Wall and Bradley Beal had room to orchestrate the offense while Marcin Gortat became a threat diving towards the basket.

Wittman, who’s been labeled as one of the most stubborn coaches in the NBA, said all the right things during media day on Monday. He talked about the versatility the team added during the summer and his desire to play more small-ball this upcoming season.

It’s nice to hear Wittman cite advanced statistics and talk about wanting to do certain things differently, but we’re going to need to actually see these changes being implemented.

Today, the Washington Wizards started training camp at Towson University. From the looks of it, the Wizards have already begun putting emphasis on the need to improve spacing and pace:

Wall said today was really different than last year’s first practice. A lot more running because they want to run and space the floor more. — Jorge Castillo (@jorgeccastillo) September 29, 2015

Something new at Wizards practice: 4 boxes (corners and wings) were taped around the 3-point line for spacing purposes. — Jorge Castillo (@jorgeccastillo) September 29, 2015

It’s almost as if Randy Wittman has been trolling us ever since he took over for Flip Saunders back in 2012.

The stubborn, old-school coach has become open to changing an offense that he’s been running for years. Honestly, after hearing Wittman talk about wanting his team to play faster with better spacing, I thought that I was reading an article from the Onion.

Wittman hasn’t had the pieces that he needed to play more versatile lineups, but he finally has players that he can utilize in multiple ways.

We’ll get to see Otto Porter, Jared Dudley, Alan Anderson and Martell Webster all spend time at the power forward spot this season. Wall will have room to drive and the defense is going to have two options: 1) collapse on Wall and leave a shooter open, or 2) pray that Wall’s defender doesn’t get burned.

On paper, the Washington Wizards don’t scream “championship contender”, but they have all the qualities of a team that could make a deep run in the NBA Playoffs. They’re probably the most versatile team in the conference. It’s just a matter of utilizing the players correctly.

We’ve focused a lot on the team’s spacing, but the team’s pace has to improve too. It’s great to see Wittman finally put emphasis on transition offense — a style that should obviously benefit the fastest point guard in the NBA and his back court mate, Beal.

Wittman is starting to do all of the things he should’ve done years ago. Better late than never, I suppose.