21–22 NBA Previews: The Washington Wizards (#24)
Living inside of me is a hatred of the Los Angeles Lakers so profound that I want to put the Washington Wizards much higher in these rankings. I want to talk myself into the idea that the cadre of Lakers cast-offs the Wizards picked up in exchange for Russell Westbrook is going to miraculously turn the Wizards into a solid playoff team while the Lakers go up in flames. I still think the second half of that proposition could happen, actually.
The Wizards, though, will not be good this season. When your third best player is Kentavious Caldwell-Pope—or, maybe, Kyle Kuzma? Montrezl Harrel?—there’s a limit to your upside. Still, after all these years extricating themselves out from the contract of John Wall—which, of course, became the contract of Russell Westbrook—there’s reason for optimism here. Bradley Beal seems to want to be on this team for some reason. If and when he decides he doesn’t, the Wizards will be able to pick up a bevy of assets in his exchange; they’ll be able to start fresh then. If the vibes are good, they’ve got tradable pieces they can cobble together to surround what should be one of the league’s best backcourts in Beal and Spencer Dinwiddie. You could argue for this. You could argue, given how difficult it is to acquire a player as good as Beal in the first place, it’s worth seeing what happens.
After all, by my count, the Wizards have 12 players who are good enough to crack an 8-man NBA rotation. That’s something. They only have two players obviously good enough to be starters, and that’s why I have them as one of the 10 worst teams in the league, but 12 decent NBA players is a lot. That 12 doesn’t include Corey Kispert, their brand new lottery pick, who has potential as an athletic wing with promise as a movement shooter. It also doesn’t include Isaiah Todd, a second-round flyer with a remarkable amount of offensive fluidity and talent for a dude who is 6’10”.
Nevertheless, Beal’s situation is tricky. He’s about to play his age 28 season, and while he’s an incendiary scorer in just about every possible way, he doesn’t do much else. Beal’s particular kind of superstardom is in his ease-of-fit. You could plug him into any roster, and he would make that roster significantly better. As the sole star on a team, though, he’s overextended, even if he’s scoring 30+ points every night. He’s not an instinctive distributor, and beyond eating up possessions on offense, he doesn’t really make life easier for anyone around him on either end of the floor. He’s a woeful defender. He doesn’t rebound. The list goes on.
Beal, I’m suggesting, would ideally be the second best player on a great team. He’d ideally be alongside an explosive athlete who is a great defender and an excellent distributor. You know, somebody like in-his-prime John Wall. It’s sad, right? The Wizards never really surrounded Wall and Beal with a good roster. In some ways, it feels like we’ve glossed over just how great they were as a duo.
It’s hard not to get the feeling that the Wizards would be better off pivoting to a rebuild—that by the time they’ve got elite stuff to put around Beal, Beal will be a little too old to be what he is right now. Time, sadly, goes on while we wait around seeing if things work out. On the other hand, Brad Beal doesn’t show up on your roster every day, especially when your roster plays under the name The Washington Wizards. Fun as it is to watch Beal problem solve his way into 30 a night, I’d rather see him elsewhere. I hope the Wizards come to that conclusion before Beal’s whole prime gets wasted, but I also understand why that’s unlikely to happen.