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Wizards coach disagrees with Gortat's critique of bench

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports / Reuters

Washington Wizards center Marcin Gortat left his coach very little choice following his bitter critique of the second unit.

Gortat minced no words over the weekend as he said Washington had "one of the worst benches in the league," and added that something needed to be done since, "it's not fun anymore."

As expected, Scott Brooks stood up for his barren bench.

"I look at things from a whole, because this is how - when I played, I was a backup, and I didn’t like to be divided," Brooks told Ava Wallace of the Washington Post. "We don’t have two teams here, we have one basketball team, and right now we’re not happy and content on being 2-7."

Washington's dismal record, as Gortat pointed out, is a product of the bench. The second unit holds the eighth-worst plus-minus in the league as compared to the starters who have been roughly average.

This comes after Washington spent in excess of $110 million this offseason between the likes of Ian Mahinmi, Andrew Nicholson, Jason Smith, Marcus Thornton, and Tomas Satoransky to rebuild the reserves. They have collectively yet to make an impression.

But then again it's still early, and Brooks is hoping to keep everyone together as they ride out a miserable start to the year.

"It puts a lot of pressure on our team to compete against the tough schedule that we’ve had - and I’m not making an excuse and nor have our guys made an excuse - but we’ve stayed competitive," Brooks said. "I want to get everybody back in the mix so we can really judge how we play and how we can put the units together and we can find out a good rotation."

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