The Wizards selected a French player with the second pick overall in the NBA draft Wednesday night, one of three French players to go in the top 10 in the first round. All the cool kids are doing it.
They picked 19-year-old Alex Sarr, a 7-footer who averaged 9.7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 17.2 minutes for Perth in the National Basketball League, the premier basketball league in Australia and New Zealand.
Of course, you already knew that from all the NBL games you’ve watched.
Now, last year’s French Wizards pick, Bilal Coulibaly, has someone he can watch Jerry Lewis movies with (for the children, Jerry Lewis was a comedian/actor who, for some inexplicable reason, is worshiped in France).
It seems like a good idea. “I think Alex is a special, special young man. He has a humility to him but also a confidence,” Wizards general manager Will Dawkins said. “He left home at 14, went to Madrid, played there for a few years, went to America, tried something new with OTE [a U.S. youth league], wanted another challenge, went to play with grown men in Australia. So he’s someone that’s always looking for more.”
More importantly, do you know what Sarr has? Upside. Everyone wants upside.
“In Alex Sarr, the Wizards are getting a player with plenty of upside who can contribute immediately,” the Monumental Sports Network — Wizards’ owner Transparent Ted Leonsis’ network — said on its website.
“His ability to stretch the floor gives him ‘unicorn’ upside if he can continue to improve in dealing with physicality,” Sports Illustrated said.
I would guess a unicorn with upside is better than just upside.
Upside is the new currency of the NBA — this, and the $76 billion in TV rights the league is about to grab, despite nobody watching their showcase event, the NBA finals.
Upside, according to Webster’s dictionary, is an upward trend, or a positive aspect, such as “a young star with lots of upside.”
Webster says there is another meaning for upside — up on or against the side of, as in “smacked him upside the head.”
When it comes to picking players, the Wizards have had plenty of experience with that kind of upside.
In 2022, when they drafted Johnny Davis with the 10th pick overall in the first round, The Athletic reported that the Wizards “believe in his upside.” Since then, he has spent much of his time playing in the G League.
That’s been a big smack upside the head.
They believed Jan Vesely had upside with the sixth pick overall in the first round of the 2011 draft. Turned out the only upside he had was the one he displayed when kissing his girlfriend on camera after being picked. “Jan Vesely has enormous kissing upside,” dcist.com (remember them?) said in their headline.
Really, when it comes down to it, every draft pick is about upside — a prediction of future performance that is a little bit of analyzing the numbers and a lot of hoping for the best.
These days, with the influx of foreign players, the average fan has little to go on when it comes to expectations.
Fans aren’t watching these players hone their skills in the Big Ten or the ACC.
Save for the geeks who work hard to watch overseas basketball, there is more demand for trust in the decision-makers picking these players.
For Washington, that means newcomers Dawkins and the man who hired him, Michael Winger, president of basketball operations. Both arrived in the District last year with impressive credentials.
Winger was part of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s front office from 2010 to 2017 and then became general manager of the Los Angeles Clippers, who posted nothing but winning seasons and went to the Western Conference finals in 2021 under Winger. Dawkins was the vice president of basketball operations in Oklahoma City from 2020 to 2023.
There hasn’t been much to judge them by yet.
They drafted Coulibaly last year, and he showed enough in his limited play this season to be curious. But they also traded for Jordan Poole, the former promising guard from Golden State who led the league in embarrassing play. Then again, the result was 15 wins, which was the point of this year and will be again next year as the franchise looks to be first in the talent assistance line.
That may explain the team’s decision to trade Deni Avidija to Portland for guard Malcolm Brogdon, the 14th pick in Wednesday’s draft, a first-round selection in 2029 and two second-round picks. The team chose 18-year-old Bub Carrington who played at Pittsburgh this past season.
“We’ll always be aggressive,” Dawkins told reporters. “We’ll always try to be strategic, and when you have time to prepare, you kind of identify your players and the people you want to go get and do your best to go get them. Sometimes it works out — it takes two to tango — but we try to identify people first, try to identify talent, and if we can get them, we’re going to get them. I think you’ve seen the last two years that we’re willing to move and go get who we want to get.”
I saw lots of angst in Wizards World last night (it’s easy to count heads in Wizards World — it’s not very big) on social media for a trade of a player on a team that won 15 games – as if anyone has a clue about the right way to dig out of a bottomless pit.
The Wizards have been down so low it looks like upside to them.
⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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