Former first-round pick getting 'tremendous opportunity' with trade to hometown team

Whitmore, a Maryland native who will turn 21 on Tuesday, was selected out of Villanova with the 20th overall pick in the 2023 draft. It was viewed as a steal at the time for the Rockets, given that the 6-foot-7 forward was widely viewed as a top-10 — or even top-five — pick leading up to the draft.

However, while Whitmore flashed some major upside as a scorer off the bench during his first two NBA seasons, he wasn’t able to carve out a consistent role for a deep Rockets team. He made a total of 98 appearances from 2023-25, averaging 10.8 points and 3.4 rebounds in 17.4 minutes per game, with a shooting line of .449/.357/.707.

The Rockets worked with Whitmore and his representatives in recent weeks in an effort to find a new home, per Charania. He should get an opportunity to play more significant — and more consistent — minutes for a rebuilding Wizards team that will be looking for some of its young players to establish themselves as long-term building blocks.

Moving Whitmore will help generate a little extra flexibility below a first-apron hard cap for a Rockets team that was expected to have to part with Whitmore or Jeenathan Williams to stay below that threshold once its reported deals for Kevin Durant and Clint Capela are official.

Houston will acquire Chicago’s 2026 second-round pick and Sacramento’s 2029 second-rounder in the deal, a league source tells Josh Robbins of The Athletic.

The Wizards, meanwhile, have no shortage of cap exceptions they could use to take on Whitmore’s $3.54M salary without sending back a player themselves. They could use the $5.3M trade exception they generated at February’s deadline when they moved Johnny Davis, but they also have a larger trade exception, plus the mid-level and bi-annual exceptions.

Washington will have until Oct. 31 of this year to decide whether or not to exercise Whitmore $5.46M team option for the 2026-27 season. Assuming the Wizards pick up that option, he’ll become eligible for a rookie scale extension a year from now.

Chicago and Denver were reportedly among the other teams that expressed some level of interest in Whitmore before the Rockets made a deal with Washington.