WASHINGTON — Let’s start with Deni Avdija.
Because, although the Wizards had their highest draft pick in more than a decade and took 19-year-old French center Alexandre Sarr second in Wednesday’s NBA Draft, a part of Wizards Nation lost its collective mind upon hearing that Washington traded the 23-year-old Avdija to Portland before the draft for veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon, two first-round picks and two future second-rounders.
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One of the firsts, No. 14, was for this year’s draft, which Washington used to take Pitt freshman guard Bub Carrington. The other is a 2029 first that will be the second-best of the three picks the Trail Blazers control that year: their own, Boston’s or Milwaukee’s.
So, back to the folks who wigged out on the news. “Deni is just 23!” they wailed. “He’s on a great contract! He’s coming off a career year! He shot 37 percent on 3s last season, on reasonably high volume! He was sixth in the voting for Most Improved Player! Why would the Wizards trade one of their best players?”
Because Avdija is 23. Because he’s on a great contract. Because he’s coming off a career year. Because he shot 37 percent on 3s last season. And, because, the Wizards won a whopping 15 games last season, despite Avdija’s quite real uptick.
There wasn’t a better time to ship him out than now. You would never get a better return on investment — the ninth pick in the 2020 draft, a player who has definitely improved, but who probably doesn’t have much more room left before he hits his NBA ceiling — than getting four draft picks for him. (This does not include Brogdon, the 31-year-old vet, whom I’m guessing will be re-routed somewhere else before the summer ends for even more picks.)
No one from a 15-67 team is untouchable. And given that the Wizards’ new front office didn’t draft Avdija, they weren’t going to be all that committed to him long-term. It’s the nature of front offices in all sports. The Commanders’ new general manager, Adam Peters, didn’t draft Sam Howell. So no matter Howell’s potential and grittiness, he wasn’t Peters’ guy. Peters sought his own quarterback, and got him, in Jayden Daniels.
The four-year, $55 million extension Avdija got last fall was designed precisely to make Avdija more tradeable down the road, if the Wizards desired, with descending salaries after next season’s $15.6 million. Kyle Kuzma’s deal last summer was structured the exact same way. Mission accomplished with Avdija; stay tuned with Kuz.
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More importantly: Do you not understand the long-term play here? The Wizards’ short-term goal for the 2024-25 season is to stink, as much as humanly tolerable, so that Washington has as good a chance as possible to grab one of the potential superstars who will be at the top of the 2025 draft.
Most everyone paying attention knows about Cooper Flagg, the incoming Duke freshman. He could be generational. If the Wizards get the No. 1 pick next year and can draft Flagg, everything changes for this franchise. But even if they don’t get him, after Flagg, there are four more players who would, the minute they walk into Capital One Arena, be the best newcomer on the team: Rutgers incoming freshmen Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper, 18-year-old French point guard Nolan Traore and Baylor incoming freshman VJ Edgecombe. Behind them are a half-dozen other prospects who should be, at worst, as good as most of the top prospects in this year’s draft.
The ’25 draft is as loaded as the ’24 draft is a crapshoot. And the 2026 draft, currently headed by forwards Cam Boozer and A.J. Dybantsa, is also going to be full of talent at the top. The Wizards are determined to have a seat at the head table in ’26 as well. Understanding all that provides clarity to Washington’s moves Wednesday.
With each of its three first-rounders, including Miami wing Kyshawn George, taken 24th after the Wizards traded the 26th and 51st picks to the Knicks to move up two spots, Washington went for the upside play, the MO of Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger and general manager Will Dawkins since their arrival.
They’re not going to deviate from the profile: positional length, defensive switchability, multiple position possibilities.
Sarr, with his 9-foot-2 standing reach and 7-4.25 wingspan, and ability to guard in space off of switches (look at him handling, pretty well, G League Ignite guard Ron Holland, taken fifth Wednesday by Detroit), fits the bill. He could be a center; he could be a four down the road. Carrington is 6-4, having grown seven inches in five years, and played both guard spots for Pitt. George is 6-8 and wiry and the old man of the trio, at 20; he, too, played all over the place for Jim Larrañaga at the U.
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There are questions about Sarr’s offensive ceiling in the NBA, and his rebounding. He has a lot of work to do to become a credible offensive threat. He is, most assuredly, not Victor Wembanyama. But he is not a project. It’s not guaranteed that he will become a dominant big man in this league, but it would surprise if he whiffs.
The hope for Wizards fans is that Sarr comps to Memphis’ Jaren Jackson Jr., taken fourth by the Grizzlies in the 2018 draft. At the time, the Grizzlies were transitioning from the “Grit-N-Grind” era teams of Marc Gasol and Mike Conley. They’d acquired Dillon Brooks, a second-round pick by Houston in 2017, in a draft-night deal the year before. But Jackson was their future “star.”
In Jackson’s rookie season, Memphis went 33-49 and got the second pick in the 2019 draft as a reward. The Grizzlies took Ja Morant at two, and acquired rookie forward Brandon Clarke from OKC. In 2020, Memphis got Desmond Bane in a three-team draft night deal from Boston. In two years, Jackson went from being the most talented young player on the team to the third- or fourth-best, which is more in line with his skill set — a very good defensive player and shot blocker, but not a first option. He, now, shines in his correct role. Things have been on the uptick in Bluff City ever since.
Washington, currently, is at the Jaren Jackson Jr. stage of its construction, hoping its Morant, Bane and Brooks are just around the corner.
At least we know Sarr wants to be in D.C. He didn’t work out for any other team than Washington, including the Hawks, who had the first pick. Sarr and his people didn’t want any part of Atlanta, nor did they want to fall below Washington. That is, in and of itself, major progress. A top pick in the draft identified the Wizards as the team for which he wants to play.
“I think, you know, it’s a really interesting team,” Sarr said Wednesday. “They’re kind of really young right now. I think they’re rebuilding. I think they’re really turning in the right direction. It’s exciting for any player to be a part of this.”
Dawkins already had loads of intel on Sarr, who spent more than a day or two in Oklahoma City while Dawkins was the Thunder’s vice president of basketball operations; Alexandre’s older brother, Olivier, has been in the Thunder’s building most of the last three years, spending most of his time with OKC’s G League team. Olivier Sarr was a soccer player until he was 14; at 15, he hit a major growth spurt. Now, he’s 7 feet tall.
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“It’s a unique opportunity, I guess I would say I had, in this draft,” Dawkins said, “to see some of the family members from players that I was with in other situations. The best thing is you just have an idea of who they are, because you’ve been with their families, and you really know where they come from. So probably (it would be) a little bit of an advantage.
“But (Alexandre’s) completely his own person, and he’s completely different from Olivier. But we know where they come from, and we know what they’re about. They’re both serious, and they both want to get better. And physically, Olivier grew into a monster. And if you just continue to watch Alex behind him, where you first meet him to where he is now, you see him on a similar trajectory.”
The Wizards have had their eyes on Carrington, who doesn’t turn 19 until next month, during the whole pre-draft process. They loved how he handled being thrown into becoming a starting point guard in the ACC as a freshman without complaint, or big eyes, playing against the likes of Duke’s Jared McCain and North Carolina’s R.J. Davis. Carrington didn’t dominate all the time, but he never backed down, either, and by the end of the season, he played all 40 minutes in the ACC tournament semifinal against North Carolina, scoring 24 points.
He is, as an admiring opposing head coach whose team played Pitt last season told me for my NBA Draft Confidential, “an old-school, East Coast, Baltimore, tough-a– guard.”
Baltimore raised “Lil’ Bub,” the son of “Big Bub,” his father, who coaches the strong Baltimore Elite AAU program. Lil’ Bub played on Team Melo, Carmelo Anthony’s EYBL squad, and grew up in runs with the likes of fellow Charm City hoopers like Will Barton and Malcolm Delaney. Carrington said Anthony and Delaney are among his most important mentors. A busload of 52 people, including teammates of Carrington’s from St. Frances Academy, drove up Wednesday morning from Baltimore to New York to see Carrington get his name called and shake hands with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
“Yeah, they came kinda deep,” Carrington said.
These, then, are the chess pieces that Dawkins and Winger are methodically putting on the board. Bilal Coulibaly and Tristan Vukčević last year; Sarr, Carrington and George this year. Corey Kispert, the last significant player remaining from the previous regime, is likely in line for a rookie scale extension this fall. Longer-term plays like two-way guard Jules Bernard, who put up strong numbers last season for the Wizards’ G League affiliate, the Capital City Go-Go, and guard Jared Butler, whose two-way deal was converted to a regular NBA contract late last season, are now in the pipeline.
It’s a damn long way from where the Wizards have to get for this teardown to be worth it. But the foundation is coming into focus. Around this time next year, we’ll know how much clearer and longer the road ahead is going to be.
Required reading
Robbins: Wizards took big swings in the draft, headlined by Alex Sarr
Vecenie: Winners (Wizards, Jazz) and losers (Pistons, Bucks) from Day 1
(Photo of Alexandre Sarr: Evan Yu / NBAE via Getty Images)
