In the short term, things may be even worse than last year. But it’s also a time to see which players could help the Wizards be a contender sometime in the future.
In comments to reporters, Washington Wizards general manager Will Dawkins said the team is still in its “deconstruction” phase. It’s an acknowledgement of the obvious — coming off the worst season in franchise history, the Wizards are going to be bad again this year. Probably worse.
They have a few veterans with the potential to be useful role players on good teams. They have a few youngsters who might someday be useful players on a good team. What they don’t have is the talent to win more than the 15 games they won last year. That’s by design.
The team’s plan has been to be bad, maximize their chances in the NBA’s draft lottery, and hope to land a franchise-level talent who can lead them into title contention sometime around the end of the decade.
The likely top prize in the next draft is Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey. In 2026, it might be AJ Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer. Any one of those talents could set the franchise on a trajectory it hasn’t seen since the 1970s.
The past couple drafts netted the team French wing Bilal Coulibaly and French forward/center Alex Sarr. Either could be a building block. Either could be…something less than that. Outright bust feels somewhat improbable (though certainly possible) given the athletic tools and defensive ability each has show.
Other youngsters who might be contributors someday include Bub Carrington, Tristan Vukcevic and Kyshawn George. The latter two figure to spend a lot of time with the Go-Go this season.
Before last season, I wrote semi-seriously that the team needed to force feed Coulibaly more than 3,000 minutes. He got 1,700. I was more serious about the importance of him getting to an offensive usage rate above 15%. He finished at 14.2%.
The core of what I wanted to see from the Wizards and Coulibaly last season was a commitment to giving him opportunities to make plays (and mistakes) in what was sure to be a lost season. I didn’t see much point in letting mediocre veterans burn possessions as the losses piled up.
The Wizards braintrust had different ideas. They let mediocre veterans burn possessions while the team lost and the youngsters drifted. Wizards fans hope the team’s theory of player development is correct. The franchise hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt, though the current regime is new and the primary decision-makers have history with successful teams.
With Deni Avdija traded, the upcoming season should be primarily devoted to what I suggested before last season: giving Coulibaly and Sarr and Carrington opportunities to make plays (and mistakes). Coulibaly flashed tantalizing potential in 2023-24…and disappeared for long stretches as well.
Sarr had a handful of good moments in summer league…and one of the worst games viewers had the misfortune of seeing. And other terrible summer league performances, as well.
Carrington competed well and had some impressive stretches in summer league — enough to make reasonable observers think maybe he could be a good NBA players.
The Wizards can funnel possessions through Kyle Kuzma, Jordan Poole, Malcolm Brogdon, and Jonas Valanciunas, and the team might get a few wins past the 15 wins they accumulated last year. Smarter would be to steadily shift responsibility to the kids, trade a few of the veterans by the trade deadline, and find out what they have in Coulibaly, Sarr and Carrington.
Yes, it’ll be brutal. Yes, they might win 12 (or fewer games) instead of 15 or 18. As a long-time watcher of this team, I suspect it’d be difficult to parse the difference between a team going 13-69 vs. 16-66. Mileage may vary.
In his remarks, Dawkins suggested fans embrace the growing pains because those pains are part of the learning process for youngsters, and it’s part of reconstructing the moribund roster they inherited — one that was built on wishes and make-believe.
With a series of good decisions and some luck, Dawkins, Michael Winger, Travis Schlenk, and Brian Keefe have a chance to build a team that’s real. The key to that is living in reality — assessing what’s really there and making decisions accordingly. There’s no time like the present to starting finding out what’s real and what’s not.