Wizards' Biggest Mistake of the Decade Revealed

The Washington Wizards have wrestled control of their franchise's direction back, shifting focus from middling playoff-hopefuls into a rebuilding unit with a clear goal and process to show for themselves.

They have new management to thank for how the team is now discussed in media circles, with President of Monumental Basketball Michael Winger and team general manager Will Dawkins taking over two summers ago and quickly redirecting Washington's focus with a re-start.

Their new decision-makers have avoided some of the same pratfalls that doomed the previous regime, with several making for intriguing candidates when ESPN conducted a ranking of the worst roster-related mistake every NBA team has made since 2020.

Arguably the biggest misstep they've made over the last five years, which was the decision to end the Bradley Beal era a year after the could've tanked for Victor Wembanyama, isn't a roster-specific blunder, but several of Washington's draft selections to open the decade qualify.

They took Deni Avdija over Tyrese Haliburton in the 2020 NBA Draft and then Corey Kispert right ahead of Alperen Şengün and Trey Murphy a year later, and though those both go down as regrettable choices, former GM Tommy Sheppard saved his worst call for last.

He memorably whiffed on Johnny Davis, a hypothetical scorer who never looked the part of an NBA player across his two and a half seasons in D.C. He instantly flamed out before earning league-wide recognition as one of the worst draft picks of the last decade, earning a nod from Zach Kram as the franchise's biggest black spot of the decade.

"Among lottery picks from 2020 through 2023, the worst career box plus-minus (BPM) belongs to Davis, the No. 10 pick in 2022. BPM calculates that Davis has made the Wizards worse by a whopping 6.2 points per 100 possessions," Kram reported.

"Davis' surface stats don't look any better: 3.5 points, 0.6 assists and 11.4 minutes per game with ghastly 40%/27%/56% shooting splits. Not every lottery pick pans out, but few bust as dramatically as Davis. Worst of all is who Washington missed by selecting Davis; the next guard taken in the 2022 draft, just two spots later, was Jalen Williams."

That's about as brutal of a break as a longtime bottom-feeder like the Wizards could have imagined, with Williams already blossoming into an All-Star and the second-best player on the championship-winning Oklahoma City Thunder earlier this summer. Davis, in the same amount of time, has played in just 112 games, having been booted by the new front office in the Marcus Smart trade.

Davis didn't come close to sticking his landing in the league, but the Wizards' lack of a coherent vision at the time and their quick rebound in the years since prevented them from approaching the top of Kram's list. They rang in at No. 18, three full tiers down from the most devastating decisions the league's seen in recent years.