Wizards promote Sheppard and Brown after historic start originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
Amid the third season of their tenure leading the Wizards' front office, and following the team's best start to a season in 47 years, Tommy Sheppard and Sashi Brown have received promotions and multi-year contract extensions.
The Wizards announced the news on Wednesday morning, as Sheppard will now be team president and GM, while Brown will serve as president of Monumental Basketball and special advisor to Ted Leonsis at Monumental Sports and Entertainment.
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Sheppard has overseen the Wizards' basketball operations and strategy, while Brown has built out the team's analytics operation. Collectively, they have helped lead the Wizards to a 10-3 start this season, the best for the franchise since 1974-75.
In their first year leading the team, in 2019-20, the Wizards missed the playoffs. Last season, they took a step forward as the eighth seed in the East. And this year, they appear to have improved quite a bit more, as they currently hold the best record in the conference.
Along the way, they have made substantial changes to the roster highlighted by two trades, the first that sent John Wall to the Rockets for Russell Westbrook and then one this past summer that sent Westbrook to the Lakers for Montrezl Harrell, Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
Sheppard and Brown were also instrumental in hiring Wes Unseld Jr. as the team's head coach in June. He has led the Wizards to their 10-3 record in his first year on the job.
In the past three years, the Wizards have also made other moves worth celebrating. They got Bradley Beal to sign a max contract extension in October of 2019. The trade for Daniel Gafford in March made a huge difference. They also traded for Davis Bertans in the summer of 2019, which was a lopsided deal.
Leonsis highlighed some of Sheppard and Brown's attributes in a quote via press release.
“Tommy has effectively improved our team each year of his tenure by following the plan he laid out to us as his vision when we hired him as general manager and Sashi has been instrumental in making us a leader in analytics, research and player engagement while efficiently streamlining operations across all of our basketball teams and venues,” Leonsis said.
“Their combined efforts have put us in a position to compete now with an exciting and hard-working team while also having the flexibility to execute our long-term strategy of building a championship program that is a leader in the community.”
