What I’m hearing about the Wizards’ strategy for the NBA Draft and their rebuild

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WASHINGTON — In the immediate aftermath of the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, several executives and scouts from front offices across the league expressed to me a profound empathy, rather than schadenfreude, for the Washington Wizards.

The Wizards finished the regular season with the league’s second-worst record, and the lottery netted them the worst possible outcome: the sixth pick in the draft. Never mind that being assigned the No. 6 pick was the second-most likely potential result for Washington, at 20 percent; if ever a franchise needed luck, it was the Wizards. In the words of one executive from a rival team, the Wizards’ falling to sixth instead of getting the first or second pick “set them back years.”

Now is an ideal time to re-evaluate where Washington’s rebuild stands. The post-lottery emotions have mostly subsided, allowing a more clear-eyed, less melodramatic perspective. The draft looms next week, on June 25 and 26.

Will Wizards officials change their roster-construction plan? How much longer will the team remain at, or near, the bottom of the NBA standings? And, perhaps most pressing of all, did the lottery result — so soul-crushing to many of the team’s fans, so empathy-inducing to rival teams’ employees — really set the Wizards back years?

I think the most accurate conclusion to draw is that drafting sixth will prevent Washington from expediting what already had been a lengthy, deliberate timeline. If the evaluation of this draft class by The Athletic’s NBA Draft analyst Sam Vecenie is accurate — that Cooper Flagg is a future All-NBA player, that Dylan Harper sits alone in second tier as a future All-Star or high-level starter and that the third tier of four or five players are merely high-leverage starters — then it will be difficult in this draft for Washington to add the star it covets. Not impossible, but difficult.

To put it another way: drafting Flagg or Harper would have given the Wizards their clearest, cleanest opportunity so far in their rebuild to draft someone who will be a future star.

Over the last two years, Washington has added, either through the draft or via trade, a large number of young prospects, led by Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, Bub Carrington, Kyshawn George and AJ Johnson. Wizards officials value bites at the apple. The team has attempted to obtain as many promising young players and future draft picks as possible and will continue to do so. The goal is to develop those youngsters to their potential and give them opportunities to play early in their careers.

It would be a mistake to label the Wizards’ plan as solely hoping for lottery luck. Optimizing the team’s lottery odds is an important component, and will remain so at least through the 2025-26 season. But the team’s brass has prioritized adding prospects it likes wherever those prospects land in the draft. The Wizards traded Deni Avdija last June primarily to add two first-round picks, one of whom was Carrington at No. 14. George went 24th. Johnson was drafted 23rd months before Washington acquired him from the Milwaukee Bucks and Khris Middleton for Kyle Kuzma.

A danger always has been that, despite taking lots of bites at the apple, Washington could wind up with a group of merely good players, with none of them transcendent enough to truly drive winning. This is why it’s so important for a rebuilding team to land an early pick in a draft that has difference-makers at the top. If evaluated properly, those most-prized prospects are the most likely players to become future stars.

The Wizards’ most encouraging news about Coulibaly, Sarr, Carrington and George is that none of them figure to be busts, and that’s a sign that the team has improved its scouting since Michael Winger was hired as Monumental Basketball president, Will Dawkins was hired as the Wizards’ general manager and Travis Schlenk joined the organization as its senior vice president for player personnel. For instance, even if Coulibaly does not pan out on offense as a shooter and playmaker, he at least has shown more than enough signs that he will become a high-level defender. (I’ve omitted Johnson as a non-bust only because he amassed 595 minutes of playing time since his trade from the Bucks to the Wizards, which I regard as too little time to make a definitive judgment.)

Duke big man Khaman Maluach has the potential to develop into an effective rim protector. (Robert Deutsch / Imagn Images)

So far, none of the Wizards’ current young players have shown that they will become stars. But a lack of clarity is to be expected from this group of youngsters. They’re still super early in their careers, and none of them entered their drafts as elite prospects in the way that Flagg or even Harper are regarded. Keep in mind that Coulibaly is only 20 and that he had compiled a minimal amount of experience before his 2023 draft. Sarr and Carrington are even younger than Coulibaly. Carrington and George each played only one year in college. It will take them time to develop.

The Wizards’ front office would counter that, after a few more years, even without a future star, it should be able to amass enough good young players to take a route similar to the Houston Rockets’ recent roster-construction strategy. The Rockets, it can be argued, did not draft a superstar in their current iteration (although center Alperen Şengün, drafted in the middle of 2021’s first round, finished 16th in the 2024-25 season’s All-NBA voting, just barely missing out on the third team), but have a young core headlined by Şengün, Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr. and Amen Thompson. The Rockets took a step forward by hiring a top coach, Ime Udoka, and adding capable veterans such as Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks, Stephen Adams and Jeff Green to supplement the young core.

The Rockets made their own luck in part by maintaining enough cap flexibility to have the wherewithal to add those veterans. The Wizards’ decision-makers intend to have enough flexibility and future draft picks a few years down the line to supplement their young nucleus, either through signings or trades.

A challenge for the Wizards’ front office and coaching staff in the years ahead will be to accurately evaluate their players — and do so before rival teams make accurate determinations and, if necessary, augment the core through trades. While fans may say that a team correctly evaluating its players should be easy, there are cautionary examples from recent years to suggest otherwise. Tyrese Haliburton and Dyson Daniels are examples of mid- to late-lottery picks who were traded early in their careers by the teams that drafted them and subsequently ascended to much higher levels.

A team source told The Athletic that the front office plans to continue to evaluate its players through at least the end of the 2027-28 season, which would be the second season for Washington’s 2026 first-round pick. Although team officials could alter their young nucleus before the 2028-29 season, the lengthy timeline is a sign that team officials intend to give young players time to develop and that team officials intend to evaluate those young players thoroughly.

If the evaluation period continues through the 2028-29 season, that would give Wizards officials four full seasons from now to make progress on another aspect of their plan: enhancing the franchise’s appeal to players in the league. As shown in The Athletic’s 2025 NBA player poll, in which the Wizards ranked second among players’ choices for the league’s worst organization, the franchise still has a lot of work to do. But within four years, all renovations to Capital One Arena will be completed, and the team likely will have moved into a brand-new practice facility within Washington’s city limits.

Still, even though team officials are taking a long-term approach, there’s no question that the upcoming draft is a key one.

It would not be a surprise if Winger and Dawkins attempt to move up in the draft to select a prospect they like. Two years ago, the Wizards moved up one spot for Coulibaly. Last year, they traded Avdija to give them a chance to draft Carrington at 14. Also, last year, the Wizards traded up two spots to grab George at 24.

In addition to this year’s sixth pick, Washington holds the 18th and 40th picks.

A team source said the Wizards’ draft board is similar to Vecenie’s. In Vecenie’s third tier of “high-leverage starters,” he has identified four players: Duke wing Kon Knueppel, Baylor guard VJ Edgecombe, Texas wing Tre Johnson and Rutgers wing Ace Bailey.

In their third tier, the source said, the Wizards likely have six players, listed here in alphabetical order: Bailey, Edgecombe, Oklahoma guard Jeremiah Fears, Johnson, Knueppel and Duke big man Khaman Maluach.

Tre Johnson (left) sank 40 percent of his 3-point tries during his one-and-done season at Texas. (Mark Zaleski / Imagn Images)

Another key, of course, will be the 2026 draft, which is said to be deeper at the top than this year’s draft.

The 2026 draft is the final year that the Wizards could convey a first-round pick as part of the 2020 trade that brought Russell Westbrook to Washington. The Wizards will keep that first-round pick next year if it lands in the top eight.

To guarantee that Washington retains that pick, Washington would have to finish the 2025-26 regular season with one of the league’s four worst records, because the fourth-worst team in any given season can fall in the lottery to no worse than the eighth pick. The fifth-worst team would have a 0.6 percent chance of falling to ninth. The sixth-worst team would have a 3.7 percent chance of dropping to ninth and a 0.15 percent chance of dropping to 10th.

Given the importance to the Wizards of retaining their 2026 first-round pick, it’s very difficult to imagine any scenario in which the team risks losing that pick.

All indications will be that Washington’s rebuild will remain a patient one.

The team’s plan has not changed.

(Top photo of Bilal Coulibaly and Jerami Grant: Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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