The Wizards are expected to take a patient approach to their rebuild, according to Josh Robbins of The Athletic, who hears from a team source that the front office plans to continue evaluating its young core through at least the end of the 2027/28 season.
In addition to the current Wizards players who have one or two NBA seasons under their belts, like Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, Carlton Carrington, and Kyshawn George, that young core figures to feature at least one or two rookies from the 2025 draft class (Washington controls the sixth, 18th, and 40th overall picks), as well as the player(s) the team drafts in 2026.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Washington will remain at or near the top of the draft lottery for the next three seasons. Houston is an example of a club that has taken a few years to evaluate its young core while supplementing those players on rookie scale contracts with veteran free agents and making a significant move up the standings in the process.
As Robbins explains, the Wizards simply don’t want to give up on any of their young players too early by including them in a trade for a win-now veteran before they get a better sense of what those youngsters can become. Robbins points to the Kings trading Tyrese Haliburton less than two years after drafting him or the Pelicans trading Dyson Daniels after his second season as the types of moves the Wizards will look to avoid in the coming years.
We have more out of D.C.:
- Washington will send its 2026 first-round pick to New York if it lands outside the top eight. If that pick ends up in its protected range, the Knicks will instead receive the Wizards’ 2026 and 2027 second-rounders. Given how important it is to the Wizards to keep that first-rounder after having no luck in the 2025 draft lottery, Robbins says it’s “very difficult” to envision a scenario in which the club risks losing it. In other words, Washington appears likely to be one of the league’s five worst teams again in 2025/26.
- Robbins wouldn’t be surprised if the Wizards look to trade up from No. 6 or No. 18 for a specific player they like. As he points out, they moved up one spot in the 2023 lottery to nab Coulibaly and two spots in 2024 to draft George.
- The Wizards would like to upgrade their backcourt this summer and have done “extensive due diligence” on draft-eligible guards, sources tell Grant Afseth of RG.org, who identifies Jeremiah Fears as a name to watch if the Sooner standout is available at No. 6.
- A team source who spoke to Robbins believes that – with Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper virtually certain to be drafted first and second – the Wizards have six players in their next tier and will decide from among the prospects still available in that group. That tier consists of V.J. Edgecombe, Ace Bailey, Fears, Tre Johnson, Kon Knueppel, and Khaman Maluach.
Sixers can trade down with the wizards but they’d want one of their young players for the trouble I would presume.
Wizards have 2 1sts. 6 & 18 for 3 seems fair to me & smart for both teams. Ace Bailey would be absolutely perfect for DC & he prob won’t be there at 6. Philly don’t have nearly as big a need for Ace or VJ so they can afford to move back & get a valuable extra asset.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean Washington will remain at or near the top of the draft lottery for the next three seasons.”
Lol no, that’s exactly what it means. Detroit spent 5 years at the bottom of the league, and that’s what Washington will do too. Especially after the 2024 draft, where no one they picked will get them anywhere, and after dropping to 6th in this year’s draft, which reduces the chances of getting “the guy” significantly compared to picks 1 or 2.
If anything, they may even do it for longer, since the new lottery odds give teams who are in the 16-26 range better chances to move into the top 4 and push out the bottom 4 teams, which is exactly what happened this and last year. Stuff like that will make teams that suck suck even longer.
“As Robbins explains, the Wizards simply don’t want to give up on any of their young players too early by including them in a trade for a win-now veteran”. Lol, forget veterans, they need to find ways to get players who have talent, which the guys they have, namely Sarr and Carrington, don’t possess. I fully expect Sarr’s value to plummet next season after he spends another year showing nothing, looking like a random guy plucked out of some kind of athletic competition and not like an actual basketball player. The Wizards will waste 2000+ valuable minutes on him, and on other guys like Carrington and AJ Johnson, and will get absolutely no return and no end product with them in the end.
But hey, this is what you get for winning 30-something games leading to draft years 2021, 2022, 2023, which had a massive talent pool, and then deciding to tank for year 2024 with the poorest and shallowest draft class in memory.
Some players they have are promising, namely Bilal and Kyshawn, but guys like that increase their value playing for teams that compete for something. Like Bridges did in Phoenix, like McDaniels is doing in Minnesota, like all those wings in Oklahoma. Washington will have a very hard time building Bilal’s and Kyshawn’s stock while tanking.
Especially next year
They have to be a top 8 pick to keep their own pick
Also to add onto your points the Rui and Deni trades are looking BAD BAD Rn
Wizards fan here and I disagree. You have to watch their games to see they have talent. They are all just very young snd raw. Sarr leads the pack as a JJ type player to develop. They move vets that will improve the standing (deni A) and will move smart and Middleton for future picks. Poole will be the big move to take steps back for better lotto odds and darts at the board. After years of being a bad to middle team I’m glad they finally reset and are building a team like OkC did.
I watch the Wizards and want them to do well, for what that’s worth. I spent 1 year in America as an exchange student when I was 15, living in a D.C. suburb.
Where I live in Europe, I have access to all 82 games the team plays in a season, so I watch the games. I watched Sarr, I watched Carrington, I watched the rest. I did not see promising things.
It’s good that they finally reset, but the timing could not have been worse, doing it in the 23-24 season. Picking at number 2 in 2024 was equivalent to picking somewhere from 9 to 20 in 2021. The team has the least talented group of young players I’ve seen in years of watching the NBA, and it showed on the court. One thing is tank, the other is to get the 2nd-worst point differential in league history.
Sarr comes from a basketball family and spent years in Real Madrid’s academy, but looked like he had never touched a basketball before turning 16 or 17. I just cannot be optimistic about him. I hope I’m wrong, but there’s not much in it, to be honest.
With that coach, there’s virtually nothing Deni could have done to improve the team’s standing in a meaningful way. And seeing how cheaply the team gave him away is just… On one hand, I can understand wanting to trade the player to get draft picks and be bad, but on the other hand, the value the team got for him – Carrington, 1 frp and change tells me that the people who are in charge don’t have good understanding of what they have on their hands. Avdija was probably the most talented player the team drafted since John Wall, and the return for him, considering he was on one of the best contracts in the league, was just abysmal. If they made such a poor judgment about players’ value and quality in that situation, how can they be trusted going into the future? How can they be trusted to draft well from college or from overseas if they could not see a value in the player right in front of their nose, who was playing for the team for years? How can they be trusted to make a good trade for a promising young player in the league after something like this?
There have been movements, which one would expect a team in this position to do, and they have been correct. Sign veterans, trade them, get whatever picks you can, 2nd rounders and such, get contracts teams want to get rid of, etc. But that’s not enough to make me feel optimistic about the team’s future.
The 23-24 season and draft were a write-off, and with the brutal lottery luck this year, if this player at 6 will not amount to something special, the probability of this cycle being a write-off is, unfortunately, high as well.
That’s my opinion. I know that some believe that there’s light soon ahead, but I do not. I expect another 5 years of tanking starting with season 25-26. I do not trust this team to make good, decisive moves apart from the absolutely obvious ones, when the team gets the number 1 or 2 pick in the draft. And the chances of that have been reduced with the new lottery odds, that’s why I’m giving it 5 more years from now. Because it will happen again that 1 or more franchises will jump into the top 4 and will push the team down.
“Robbins says it’s “very difficult” to envision a scenario in which the club risks losing it.” – They’d only risk losing it by trying to win games. Such a radical idea that it’s difficult to even envision. That’s Silver’s NBA in 2025.
This season, WSH should do the young players already on their roster a favor (because I felt sorry for them last year). First, draft Fears, and then pursue a healthy, veteran (non-fossil) PG in the offseason. They needn’t worry, as long as they keep the ball boy as their HC, there is no risk of winning too many games.