OPINION:
I guess Washington Wizards fans should be feeling good about the Oklahoma City Thunder winning the NBA championship, right?
After all, Washington’s front office has Oklahoma City Thunder DNA running through it, right? Team President Michael Winger spent seven seasons with the Thunder working for front office guru Sam Presti from 2010 to 2017.
General manager spent 15 years working in Oklahoma City from 2008 to 2023, from an intern to vice president of basketball operations.
Surely some of the Sam Presti magic in Oklahoma City rubbed off on the Wizards decision makers, right?
So maybe that could mean Tre Johnson — Washington’s first-round pick in the NBA draft — is Washington’s version of league MVP and Oklahoma City champion Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, right?
Why not? There was a lot of moaning about the Wizards ping pong ball luck in the lottery, the team with the second worst record in the league winding up with the sixth pick in the draft.
It was understandable. After all, if their luck had taken a decidedly un-Wizards-like turn and they wound up with the first pick, Wizards fans would have been on the phone ordering tickets for next season to see what many believe is a game-changing player — Cooper Flagg.
Tre Johnson was a great shooter at Texas and may be the best shooter in the draft. But he is not seen as a franchise savior. He is considered a piece — a valuable piece — of the collection of young players Washington is assembling to become relevant.
Alexander was picked No. 11 in the first round by Charlotte in 2018, then traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, where he was named to the NBA All-Rookie second team before being traded to Oklahoma City in July 2019.
I doubt anyone thought Alexander was any more than a piece while they moved him around — not even Winger, who was the general manager with Los Angeles when Alexander was traded in the deal for Paul George.
It’s certainly possible Johnson could be a player with Alexander’s impact. The reality is he is 19 years old and nobody really knows anything. The reality is that the nobody knows if the young players — Bub Carrington, Alex Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly, Kyshawn George and others — will wind up being anything more than typical Wizards draft picks, which means overhyped, overpaid pieces that don’t, at the very least, add up to 50-win seasons or an Eastern Conference appearance.
Those are modest goals, yet the franchise hasn’t achieved them since …. well, the Thunder weren’t in Oklahoma City. They were in Seattle, known as the Supersonics, and defeated Washington in seven games in the NBA finals in 1979.
Yes, the Oklahoma City Thunder didn’t even exist the last time the Washington NBA franchise was relevant.
So far, under the Winger-Dawkins regime, the Wizards have won just 15 and 18 games in the last two seasons and accumulated multiple draft picks, hoping to find a franchise savior like Alexander.
This is the plan to date, after owner Ted Leonsis failed miserably to make his basketball team consistently competitive since he took over majority ownership following Abe Pollin’s death in 2010.
It’s painful.
The NBA franchise has never been more invisible in the city, last in the league in attendance in a year when the league had its second-highest attendance ever. And Leonsis is raising season ticket prices. At this point, there has to be more to show for this rebuild than another teen-win season and piling up invisible players into the NBA draft for the next decade.
They made a big trade this week, dealing guard Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey and a second-round pick from this draft to the New Orleans Pelicans for guard CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk and a 2027 second-round pick.
It’s a bookkeeping trade as much as anything that will help Washington gain more salary cap space, in the world of NBA trades that excites accountants.
And it may help with the development of young players like Johnson. But questions remain about the way Washington’s young players are developing. The team continues to be a defensive liability, and Johnson has questions about that part of his game.
Their coach, Brian Keefe, was named the worst coach in the league in an anonymous poll by The Athletic.
They’ve been developing young players and trading for veterans for 45 years now — different owners, different general managers — with pretty much nothing to show for it.
What could make this time different? Maybe the Oklahoma City connection. Three years ago, the Thunder went 24-58. Now they are NBA champions — the franchise’s first title since the last time Washington had done anything truly worthy of raising ticket prices.
• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.