Bilal Coulibaly trade continues befuddling offseason for Wizards

Washington traded picks with the Indiana Pacers to select Frenchman Bilal Coulibaly, a teammate of top overall selection Victor Wembanyama last season on the Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans 92 club. Coulibaly is a forward who is believed to have a high upside.

Washington's strategy seems to be to take chances on players who will help the team win in a few years, so Coulibaly makes sense from that standpoint. However, this is also the NBA, where there is no such thing as patience with young players. We've seen this movie before, and it doesn't usually end well.

There are always one or two "project" prospects in the NBA draft who rocket up the boards and get taken much higher than they should be. Then when those players expectedly struggle during their first season or two, they are viewed as damaged goods. Mo Bamba (drafted by Orlando in 2018) and Jonathan Kuminga (Golden State in 2021) are recent examples.

That's not to say Coulibaly will be a bust, and there's certainly a chance he could become very good. However, taking him that high—and trading up for him, for that matter—seems perplexing. Few mocks had him going in the top 10, with some projecting him as low as No. 20. Grabbing him at No. 7 is, simply put, a reach.

If the Wizards were truly that high on Coulibaly's potential, they should have traded down, not up. They could have acquired more picks that way, and it would've been less of a risk to draft the same player they drafted regardless, only with a later pick.

Instead, the Wizards have a young player who is under unnecessary pressure to perform as a top-10 pick right away, even though his scouting report suggests he'll need some extra time to develop.