If you had to pick one player on whom to pin the fate of your team, that player might not be Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. At 28 years old, he’s fully matured as a player, and he’s not a franchise star, averaging a little more than 11 points per game throughout his career. And yet, he tends to show up when needed, hitting pivotal shots in the NBA Finals as a Laker, for one, and in this omicron variant–muddled season, he’s proven a rare highlight for the up-and-down Wizards.
You might not pin your hopes on him, but Wizards management certainly has.
The trend in the modern NBA has been to focus on star power—preferably the power of two to three stars. The Wizards generally have been no exception, ever since Michael Jordan donned a Wizards jersey. For years after Gilbert Arenas fell short, they hoped that John Wall, a hard-driving, shoot-first-ask-questions-later guard, would transcend his many injuries and dominate the game with Bradley Beal. When he failed to, they traded him for an even more aggressive player (arguably the epitome and terminus of aggression) in Russell Westbrook.
As any DC sports fan knows, the approach hasn’t worked. The Washington Wizards, a small-market team, have not won the Finals since 1978, back when they were known as the Washington Bullets. They have not been to the finals since 1979, the year before Washington legend Wes Unseld’s final NBA season.
But after years of falling short, last year, after Westbrook flamed out with a first-round playoff loss to the Sixers, the Wizards took a different, more unusual approach. They flipped the championship-less Russell Westbrook for the better part of a starting squad—a series of role-players, focused on defense and ball movement, in exchange for a scoring star. Over the off-season, Westbrook was sent to the Lakers, while Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, and Montrezl Harrell ditched the flashy purple and gold for trim bands of red, white, and blue.
In that trade, the Lakers placed their bet that championships come from star power, while the Wizards were betting it comes from the team. Add to the mix the hiring of rookie head coach Wes Unseld Jr.—the son of the man who seemed to take the Wizards’ championship luck with him when he retired—and his emphasis on old-fashioned teamwork and grind, and the team seems built for a new kind of play that, if nothing else, will be different from years of ball domination. And the new-attitude Wizards did get off to a historically great start—until things got rocky.
It’s the first year for the new roster in one of the messiest years in NBA history. Now, as the Wizards start to develop into whatever this team is actually going to be, the question might be: Can a uniquely balanced squad, where everyone shares the spotlight, actually work in an era of superstars? Or will the Wizards stop short and make their starters disappear, as the team pursues yet another rebuild?
The person who might be able to give you the answer to that question is the person who’s seen teamwork and stardom play out on the Finals stage—Caldwell-Pope himself. When it comes to championship experience, it’s his name that keeps coming up more than the rest.
Players and coaches speak of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope not as the traditional superstar floor general, but as another kind of leader and mentor for the young team, one who reflects the new team-first, relationship-driven culture that Unseld Jr. is building. He’s childhood friends with Bradley Beal. He’s looked out for Kuzma since the long-budding-star’s rookie year. His tensions with Harrell have made headlines.
If you want to understand whether the team dynamic is built for the long haul, it’s a good idea to talk to the man some people call Pope, and some call KCP.
Caldwell-Pope says he feels at home in Washington. He may have slotted into the roster a little more easily than his Lakers comrades because he grew up in a region he describes as similar to the DMV—the Atlanta metro, another Southeast city with plenty of trees and space.
“I get more like a country-city feel here [than in L.A.]. I never see so many trees around the main highway,” Caldwell-Pope says. “Back home [in Atlanta] I have that, where I get to see the big cities, the big buildings, but I still get to hear the field. I get all four seasons.”
That natural fit is something he shares with the coach, who, as son of Unseld Sr., was raised in the actual DMV, in Maryland. The two seem to have gelled in a way that has worked for the franchise—when the franchise is working. Unseld Jr. came in at the start of the season noting that the defense was lacking and wanting to open up communication between himself and players. It’s a different culture than Caldwell-Pope is used to.
“He randomly just walks up. Everyone can have conversations with him, no matter what it is,” Caldwell-Pope says. “You can come to him and talk about whatever. I appreciate it, coming from another team.”
Caldwell-Pope feels like their approaches resonate, to the point where he feels comfortable voicing his on-court observations and guiding the coach and other players during games. “I think he looks at me like a leader,” Caldwell-Pope says.
But it’s not just Caldwell-Pope. Unseld Jr. make sure all voices are heard.
“Everybody can be a leader,” Kuzma told reporters after a midseason win against the Orlando Magic. “Everybody can say something to somebody, hold each other accountable without, you know, taking it as somebody hating on you or something. That’s when good teams really come alive.”
That’s not necessarily the standard approach. On a team like the Lakers, players like Caldwell-Pope, who isn’t a superstar and never will be, taking a leadership role might never happen. In today’s NBA, the superstar rules the team, and no one rules a team like LeBron James. But complementary to Unseld Jr.’s approach, the Wizards’ big shot, Bradley Beal, is a different type of leader, according to his teammates.
“He’s just so low-maintenance, and he’ll let you rock out,” says Kuzma. “He’s just super laid-back; he’s not on you if you take a bad shot.”
Beal and Caldwell-Pope also grew up together, playing travel basketball against each other as kids, which turned into a lifelong friendship. “We were around each other the whole summer,” Caldwell-Pope says. “Our moms became cool, and we started hanging out even more.”
They now spend time around DC and Virginia, taking the team out to dinner or bowling together, and Beal is Caldwell-Pope’s guide to the stadium (because KCP still gets lost on the way to the locker room at times).
Together, they’re the core of a different kind of team culture than the Lakers had, according to Caldwell-Pope.
“I feel like it’s more balanced. And everybody has a voice,” he says. “I like that, a lot of great dialogue.”
It was apparently working for the team. The Wizards’ start was their best in 50 years. And that’s despite Beal’s limited effectiveness early on, his scoring down and his vaccine status becoming national news as he refused vaccination right up until DC mandated it to play.
In that period, the Wizards were winning without a star. The numbers looked great, and betting on defense, always the less flashy pursuit, seemed like the right, and lucky, call: The NBA had made rule changes at the start of the season to favor defense in the league for the first time in decades, and that played to the new starters’ strength, particularly Caldwell-Pope’s.
“Obviously, across the league, he’s known as a guy that can really defend, and we have put him in those situations,” says assistant coach Mike Miller. “We’ll put him many times against the top scorer from the other team.”
Is it really possible, in a sport built on obsessive self-improvement and pure willpower-driven competition, to play without ego? It depends on the player you look at.
One younger player who seems to have flourished on the Wizards is Kuzma, and Caldwell-Pope seems to take pride in that development.
“Kuz is my rookie. He was drafted the first year I was in L.A., and we’ve had a relationship since his rookie year. It’s just gotten stronger since we got traded,” Caldwell-Pope says. “I can get at Kuz a little bit, and he’s able to take it.”
Kuzma has been a star, in the sense of media coverage, almost since he was drafted into the league. Out of the gate, he embraced the Lakers lifestyle. He dated a Kardashian. He stars in Puma ads where he claps back at critics. He gets jeered on social media for wearing out-there fashion—a surreally oversized pink Raf Simons sweater got him openly mocked by former teammate LeBron James.
And yet, with the move to DC and a smaller media market than L.A., Kuzma has blossomed, hitting game-winning shots in high-pressure situations, something Beal attributes to a renewed focus on “just hooping.”
It’s not just Kuzma. Caldwell-Pope’s leadership extends to many young players on the squad. He speaks about younger players like Rui Hachimura, Corey Kispert, and Deni Avdija in similar terms.
“[KCP] always comes in last for me, and he tells me what I’m doing wrong, and he does a great job,” second-year forward Avdija says. “I love taking advice from KCP, another guy with a ring. He’s a great dude off the court, and he’s a great player on the court.”
There are some limits to that egoless approach, however. It remains to be seen whether Kuzma will be happy here long term. When asked at a press conference about whether he enjoyed being able to grow in a smaller media market, he had to think for a moment.
“There’s definitely pros and cons for sure,” Kuzma said. “But I don’t know. I mean, honestly, I’m enjoying my time here.”
It gets especially complicated when the team isn’t winning. Just as the NBA began to settle down into the new rules, omicron hit, putting the league back in flux.
The Wizards’ collaborative approach was put to the most severe test possible. First- and second-year players were called on to play major roles. Like others around the league, the Wizards had to rely on the almost-never-used hardship exception, which allowed them to sign players from the G-League Capital City Go-Gos to temporary contracts to replace players placed in COVID protocols. The question was put in stark terms. Could knowledge and communication, a system, and a culture make up for missing talent?
“We have really relied on our veteran players to help us through these times because we’ve been taken out of our routines, things that we were just getting used to,” Miller says. “[Caldwell-Pope] will be vocal in film sessions to talk about coverages or people in the league; he uses those experiences to help in all of those things.”
But by the midpoint of the season, the Wizards were 21-20, in contention for the playoffs but not guaranteed, and overall little better than before the Lakers trade.
Complaints started coming in. Harrell and Spencer Dinwiddie, the other off-season additions and starters who needed to be on board with the cooperative approach, began complaining publicly in the press, particularly about not getting the ball enough. Caldwell-Pope’s relationship with Harrell hadn’t seemed extremely strong from the beginning.
“I’ve known Trez for a while, seeing him in the summertime in Atlanta,” Caldwell-Pope says. “That relationship is still growing. But we’re still brothers at the end of the day.”
After Harrell complained about Caldwell-Pope not passing him the ball while playing the low-ranked Oklahoma City Thunder, though, media reports proliferated that they had thrown punches at each other in the locker room during halftime.
KCP might be uniquely built for Unseld Jr.’s system because he’s ultimately more about relationships than points alone.
“You don’t just win; I don’t just win. We all win,” Caldwell-Pope says he reminds his teammates. “You don’t lose; I don’t lose. We all lose…everybody ain’t got no egos over one another.”
He was not necessarily destined for the NBA. He was more excited about football in high school and says he almost missed playing in college because he didn’t focus on getting through the admissions process.
“I didn’t realize I had the opportunity [to play in college] until my senior year of high school, where I had to lock it down and get my grades up to even get into college,” Caldwell-Pope says.
Even then, it was only after a conversation with his family that he committed to basketball in college, as it provided more opportunities in the long term. He didn’t necessarily want to leave the college experience for the draft, either. When he did enter the NBA after his second year, he was miserable his first couple of years because he was away from his family.
“That was probably my toughest two years,” he says.
Since that focus on relationships is something he shares with Unseld Jr., whether Caldwell-Pope and the Wizards can find a way to make it work poses questions about what kinds of team culture can thrive in competitive sports—especially when Beal has faced criticism for not taking a more dominant, aggressive role on the team. Ultimately, Caldwell-Pope plays a role and often can’t carry the team alone. While he’s hit big shots, he’s also come up with the blooper of the year, going up for a dunk and being blocked by the backboard on a night with zero points.
Still, some of the fundamentals have started to take shape this season: A hometown coach and heir to team royalty got the defense going; the team found a young star in Kuzma as his abilities started taking off when given the freedom to focus on hoops; and Caldwell-Pope found a home with his childhood friend and the room to be a leader. It’s just a matter of whether there’s enough to create a foundation for the future.
This story originally ran in our March issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.