Photo used under a Creative Commons license with Keith Allison.

To satisfy your your Wizards fix, DCist is teaming up with Kyle Weidie and Rashad Mobley of Truth About It, who will take turns penning a column on Washington’s professional basketball team every Wednesday throughout the season. You can read Kyle and Rashad on all things Wiz here.

Over the years, I’ve had numerous teachers tell me that teaching children is definitely not something that can be taken lightly. Either the passion and the patience to guide children is there, or it’s not. A teacher who tries to coast or just collect a paycheck every two weeks will usually get exposed, and eventually fired.

The same concept applies to the NBA. The teachers, in this case, are usually highly -paid coaches and the students are young men in their 20s, but the basic principle is the same. There are impatient coaches like Phil Jackson who choose to coach veteran players that require less teaching and more coaching. Then there are the patient ones like Byron Scott or Avery Johnson, who are willing to teach and endure the growing pains that come before success. Coaches who find themselves stuck in situations that don’t fit their skill set end up fired and replaced, like Eddie Jordan.

This bring us to Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders.