[citation needed] On April 2, the Wizards fired long-standing team president and general manager Ernie Grunfeld, replacing him with longtime assistant Tommy Sheppard.
[3] Shortly after the Washington Wizards exited the 2018 NBA Playoffs in late April, General Manager Ernie Grunfeld was quietly granted a two-year extension for his incumbent role with the team.
The Wizards then boosted their depth by acquiring veterans Thomas Bryant,[9] Jeff Green[10] and Dwight Howard[11] in free agency.
Meanwhile, the team chose not to re-sign five players whose contracts had expired and became unrestricted free agents: Mike Scott, Tim Frazier, Ty Lawson, Chris McCullough, and Ramon Sessions.
[16] As the preseason drew to a close, the Wizards made a couple additional personnel changes: On October 15, the team sent Meeks along with a future conditional second-round draft pick to the Milwaukee Bucks in a salary dump,[17] receiving nothing more than the Bucks future conditional second-round draft pick in return.
McRae was called up to fill the empty roster spot left by Meeks' departure, and Ian Mahinmi was tabbed to start in place of Howard, who was still recovering from his injury.
Howard continued to be sidelined from his injury, and the Wizards were approaching a deadline to add another active player to their roster before being penalized by the league.
However, Howard's injury returned and forced him to exit the first half of the November 18 game against Portland that the team would eventually lose.
Shortly after the game, the team sent down Brown to the Go-Go, and signed Okaro White to a one-year contract to avoid being penalized after waiving Randle earlier.
It was an arrangement that would continue after Howard announced he would be getting spinal surgery to heal his injury, keeping him sidelined for an additional 2–3 months.
[25] Despite being healthy enough to play at Center, Mahinmi's poor performance saw him languish on the bench, collecting DNP-CDs for most of November and December.
While the Wizards looked to remain competitive, their playoff contention hopes were dashed on December 29, when it was announced that John Wall was out for the rest of the season due to a chronic Achilles tendon injury relating to Haglund's syndrome.
A day later, the Wizards also traded one of their highest paid players, Otto Porter Jr., to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for the expiring contracts of Jabari Parker and Bobby Portis, as well as a protected 2023 second round pick.