The
Wizards can’t play it safe in the draft.
For three years, on Tommy Sheppard’s watch, they have stayed where they were in the first round and gone for solid rotational players:
Rui Hachimura (ninth pick, 2019),
Deni Avdija (ninth, 2020) and
Corey Kispert (15th, 2021). Each has been fine at times in his pro career. Kispert came on during his rookie season, and his shooting prowess is as advertised. Avdija is a sharp passer and secondary ballhandler who isn’t afraid to stick his nose in defensively. And Hachimura took a huge efficiency step forward from deep this past season, hitting 45 percent on 3s.
But they all fall in the “high floor, low ceiling” bin; i.e., they’re good, but they’re not good enough to move the needle. You love having them around, but they can’t, alone, take you very far. Washington can’t pick the same type of guy again this year — not in an Eastern Conference that is only going to get tougher next season.
For these
and other reasons, the Wizards need to reach for a star in this draft.
If they’re going to give
Bradley Beal the full bag, and they’re already locked in to paying
Kristaps Porziņģis $70 million through 2024 (assuming he picks up his $36 million option for 2023-24), and they have any intention of trying to re-sign
Kyle Kuzma (he, most assuredly, will opt out of his deal after next season, making him unrestricted in ’23), it’s a financial necessity to acquire a major talent on a (relatively) inexpensive rookie deal next month. That’s the additional benefit to striking it rich on a
Ja Morant — the team that gets a rookie of that caliber enjoys two or three years of way-above-his-salary production before it has to commit to a nine-figure extension. The best chance the Wizards have to find a similar impact player in this draft is to trade up from their current 10th spot in the first round into the top three, maybe four.
That means making anyone — anyone — besides Beal and Porziņģis available to do so. I think the Wizards know this, and will be much more aggressive in the draft than they’ve been in recent years.
(Yes, the Wizards also need to address their hole at point guard. One crisis per column.)
This isn’t a bad draft, but it isn’t all that deep. Washington could get a good prospect staying at No. 10,
like, perhaps, Baylor’s Jeremy Sochan or G League guard Dyson Daniels. (At least those two aren’t allergic to defense.) But, chances are, whomever Washington picks if it stays there will have significant question marks. Meanwhile,
Houston (which currently holds the No. 3 pick),
Sacramento (No. 4) and
Portland (No. 7) have all been rumored to be at least willing to discuss dealing their picks. And though there’s no guarantee the Wizards would get an elite player by moving up as high as No. 3, the past 20 years of
NBA drafts show picking third overall has, generally, gone a whole lot better for teams than picking 10th has.
3rd Pick vs. 10th Pick, 2002-2021
3RD PICK
| | 10TH PICK
|
|---|
| Evan Mobley | | Z. Williams |
| Lamelo Ball | | Jalen Smith |
| R.J. Barrett | | C. Reddish |
| Luka Doncic | | M. Bridges |
| J. Tatum | | Z. Collins |
| J, Brown | | Thon Maker |
| J. Okafor | | J. Winslow |
| Joel Embiid | | Elfrid Payton |
| Otto Porter | | CJ McCollum |
| Bradley Beal | | J. Fredette |
| E. Freedom | | Austin Rivers |
| D. Favors | | Paul George |
| J. Harden | | B. Jennings |
| O.J. Mayo | | Brook Lopez |
| Al Horford | | S. Hawes |
| A. Morrison | | M. Sene |
| D. Williams | | A. Bynum |
| Ben Gordon | | Luke Jackson |
| C. Anthony | | Jarvis Hayes |
| M Dunleavy | | Caron Butler |
If we assume Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren and Auburn’s Jabari Smith Jr. will go, in some order, to Orlando at No. 1 and Oklahoma City at No. 2, the draft really will begin at No. 3 with the Rockets. Houston’s general manager, Rafael Stone, wants to build through the draft, but he’s also got a rather impatient owner in Tilman Fertitta — who, I’m guessing, wasn’t thrilled at being 23rd in the league this season in attendance. (At 24, your Washington Wizards!)
Houston had a great draft last year, bringing in
Jalen Green,
Alperen Şengün,
Usman Garuba and
Josh Christopher as primary building blocks. It would be easy for the Rockets to add another foundational piece this year at No. 3, either Duke’s Paolo Banchero or Purdue’s Jaden Ivey.
Sheppard needs to short-circuit that thought process.
Teams have had to use significant future capital just to move up a couple of spots in recent drafts, as when the
76ers added a future first to the third pick in 2017 in their trade with
Boston for the No. 1 pick.
Dallas added a protected 2019 first to the fifth pick in 2018 to move up two spots in the deal with
Atlanta that netted the Mavs
Luka Dončić. More apples to apples in Washington’s situation might be the 2019 draft night trade between
Minnesota and
Phoenix, when the Wolves traded the 11th pick and veteran forward
Dario Šarić to the Suns for the sixth pick.
The Rockets wouldn’t want a high-priced veteran, in all likelihood, to pair with their youngsters. But Washington certainly has multiple younger rotational players it could package with the 10th pick. The Wizards can’t trade any future firsts until two years after they fulfill their obligation to send a first-rounder to Oklahoma City — via Houston, with whom Washington completed the 2020 trade that dealt
John Wall for
Russell Westbrook. The earliest Washington can complete that deal is in 2023, but the pick is protected 1-14 in 2023, meaning if the Wizards have one of the 14 worst records in the league that season, they’ll keep the pick. It is also protected 1-12 in 2024, 1-10 in 2025 and 1-8 in 2026. The Wizards
can trade their first-round pick in a given year on draft day of that year, though, regardless of whether their obligation to OKC has been met.
The Wizards have Hachimura, Avdija and Kispert, along with
Isaiah Todd, the former G League Ignite talent who spent most of last season with Washington’s G League affiliate, the Capital City Go-Go. Any combo of some (not all) of those players, along with No. 10 — and, perhaps, the first available future first-rounder after the Wizards are done dealing with OKC — would be worth it to get up to No. 3. If the Wizards were to pull that off, I’d recommend they take Banchero, a plug-and-play forward
who has the kind of skill set and personality the Wizards have been lacking in frontcourt players for so, so long.
And if the price gets too high with Houston, Washington should focus with laser precision on No. 4, where the Kings are desperate to end their 16-year (!!!) playoff drought. Sacramento (and Portland) look to be more interested in win-now vets. The Wizards have a handful of those, too — Kuzma,
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and
Daniel Gafford among them. Don’t get me wrong; I love KCP and Gaff. Gafford works hard, he’s proven to be a solid rim runner/lob target, and he’s on a reasonable contract for multiple years. But he can’t play alongside Porziņģis, and KP is probably best suited to play the five in today’s game than the four, anyway. Nor has Gafford been able to solve his proclivity for getting into foul trouble.
Ideally, the Wizards would keep Kuzma off the table. He had a breakthrough season for Washington, both offensively and on the glass.
He was beyond clutch in game-tying or game-winning situations down the stretch. The only reason he’s on this list is I can’t say with certainty that the Wizards will pay him market rate when he hits free agency — after the big payouts to Beal begin, combined with the two-year outlay for Porziņģis (and there will be added payroll if Washington trades for a veteran point guard). The Wizards have not been a luxury tax-paying team under Ted Leonsis, and though people can change their minds, Leonsis has been fairly consistent over the years in how he does business.
If Washington got up to No. 4 but Banchero was off the board, the next target should be Iowa’s Keegan Murray, the 6-foot-8 forward who averaged 23.5 points and 8.7 boards last season and shot 40 percent on 3s — and who crushed his interviews last week with NBA talent-evaluator types in Chicago at the NBA Draft Combine. When’s the last time the Wizards had a legit All-Star candidate at the three? Caron Butler? It’s been a minute. It’s been more than a decade, actually.
Which is where we always come back to when it comes to the Wiz. This fan base — this demoralized, ridiculously patient, success-starved fan base — has been waiting for a legit championship contender for 50 years! You can count on one hand the number of young, emerging stars this franchise has taken in the draft who truly engendered hope. I’ll give you Juwan Howard (1994) and Rasheed Wallace (1995) in concert with Chris Webber — whom Washington got from
Golden State. By contrast, almost no one here knew or had seen Kwame Brown, whom Washington took No. 1 out of high school in 2001.
Wall (2010)? Yes. Beal (2012)? Yes. And that’s really about it.
But Beal, Porziņģis, Kuzma, a legit one
and Banchero or Murray? To paraphrase the ultimate franchise rebuilder, Thanos: You could enjoy that very, very, much.
