The Washington Wizards’ long, strange, often painful rebuild finally has its prize: AJ Dybantsa.
After many seasons spent wandering through a wilderness of trading veterans, collecting prospects, losing games to improve their draft position, and asking fans to squint hard at the future, the franchise used the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft on Dybantsa, a forward out of BYU who led college basketball in scoring during his lone freshman season and has long been viewed as a potential professional superstar. He’ll have help from guard Trae Young, a gifted (if imperfect!) former All-Star whom the Wizards just signed to a long-term contract.
Now comes the fun part—or, perhaps, the terrifying part. In Washington, those are often one and the same. Dybantsa wasn’t drafted to be adequate, a nice, rotation-level player. He was picked to be a difference-maker, a big, athletic, shot-creating wing who can grow into the kind of player the whole organization revolves around. There are plenty of reasons to believe that Dybantasa can’t miss; every year, plenty of can’t-miss prospects do just that.
So, what should Washingtonians know about the newest Wizard? Glad you asked:
He fits the profile
Young players seldom help NBA teams win right away. Dybantasa is only 19 years old. Fans shouldn’t count on him walking into Capital One Arena as a finished product. Expect out-of-control drives, wildly-inefficient shooting nights, defensive lapses, overall inconsistency, and other frustrating things as he finds his professional footing.
That said, Dybantsa ought to be the most exciting Wizards rookie in a very long time—likely since the team’s last No. 1 overall pick, John Wall. Standing 6-foot-9 with a strong, rangy physique and blessed with explosive athleticism, Dybantsa has the physical tools to dominate. He’s also a precociously-skilled scorer at all four levels—behind the arc, midrange, at the rim, and at the free-throw line–with polished and creative footwork. He can shoot over smaller defenders, attack bigger ones, and create his own offense seemingly at will.
Oh, and he’s also an incredible dunker:
Today’s NBA is built around the type of player Dybantasa is expected to become: a big wing who can create offense for himself and others. If he shows flashes of that future, the building will feel different.
He’s no Kwame Brown—but he’s also not perfect
Any teenager drafted No. 1 overall by the Wizards is bound to summon the ghost of Kwame Brown, the long-ago top pick whose NBA career was profoundly middling. This isn’t fair to Dybantsa, who wasn’t alive when Brown was drafted in 2001. But it’s a perfectly understandable sentiment coming from a fan base that has been burned by draft busts many, many, many times.
Fortunately, comparisons between Brown and Dybantsa start and end with “Wizards,” “No. 1 pick,” and “very young.” Unlike Brown, Dybantsa is not a mystery box being drafted straight out of high school because he looks the part on a practice court. Dybantsa was one of the most closely-watched prospects in prep basketball, arrived at BYU as the nation’s top recruit, and then spent his college season living up to expectations. Would you like to watch an entire freaking hour of highlights?
Of course, there are questions about Dybantsa’s game. His three-point shot is not yet automatic; to reach his NBA potential, he’ll have to improve. Similarly, his off-ball game is underdeveloped—like many elite prospects, he’s spent most of his life with the ball in his hands, something less likely to happen when playing with a ball-dominant guard such as Young and other teammates, including multiple-time All-Star Anthony David, who demand touches and shots.
On defense, Dybantsa’s size and athletic ability are easy to see, and should help him guard multiple positions, a near-must in the switch-happy pro game. However, he had a lot of lapses at BYU, and NBA wings are a lot tougher to guard than those in the Big 12.
Some fun facts to enjoy, before stat nerds start debating his usage rate
- Dybantsa’s full name is Anicet Dybantsa Jr.
- He’s from Brockton, Massachusetts, and played high school ball at multiple stops, including Saint Sebastian’s in Massachusetts, Prolific Prep in California, and Utah Prep in, well, take a guess.
- He began playing basketball at age 5, after his father, Ace, bought him a bedroom door basketball set with Spider-Man decorations
- His father also instilled his work ethic. Once, when Dybantsa got a C- grade in school, Dad had his AAU coach bench him—but not before Dybansta drove six hours to the game.
- Dybantsa could have gone anywhere to play college basketball; he says he chose BYU because he wanted his experience to be distraction-free. (Dybantsa also endorses Red Bull, which wasn’t a problem despite the Mormon church-owned university’s mixed feelings about energy drinks).
- A First Team All-American, Dybantsa is just the third college freshman to lead the nation in scoring average. One of the others? His new Wizards teammate, Young.
He’s not Darryn Peterson
For weeks, Wizards fans have been debating whether the team should take Dybantasa or Kansas guard Darryn Peterson. The case for the latter was very strong.
Like Dybantsa, Peterson is seen as a franchise-changing talent—a big, skilled backcourt creator who can potentially run an NBA offense while scoring with efficiency and shooting the lights out from deep. If Dybantsa represents the archetypal modern wing, Peterson represents the archetypal lead guard. Lots of draftniks and former players ranked him No. 1 among this year’s crop of prospects.
However, Peterson’s lone college season was, in a word, weird. Mysterious injury issues meant he didn’t play much, and because of that, there are lots of lingering questions about his health and grit.
By taking Dybantsa, the Wizards are betting against Peterson. Don’t expect the debate to end anytime soon.
He fits a franchise that is done tanking
It’s no great secret that the Wizards have spent the last three seasons trying to be atrocious—excuse us, deconstructing their roster—in order to improve their odds of getting a premium draft pick and corresponding talent. But their luck hasn’t been great. They missed out on Victor Wembyama and Cooper Flagg by single ping-pong balls, and while young players like Alex Sarr and Tre Johnson have shown some promise as consolation prizes, Dybantsa should be in a different category. He immediately becomes the team’s cornerstone, someone to build a competitive team around.
And the Wizards are trying to be competitive. Widespread tanking led the NBA to recently adopt changes to its draft lottery system—said changes are too complicated to get into here, but basically, they make it much harder for the league’s worst teams to land the top picks in the draft, and easier for mediocre teams attempting to win to do the same. Thanks to their lottery luck this year, the Wizards have essentially caught the last chopper out of tanking Saigon. They have no intention of going back, and adding Dybantsa to Young, Davis, and some young players starting to find themselves should put the franchise in contention for the Eastern Conference postseason play-in games.
For years, the Wizards have sold their fans patience. No longer. Dybantsa is the payoff. The future is no longer lottery odds, cap space, and developmental reps for the NBA equivalent of puppy daycare. The future is a 6-foot-9 walking bucket strolling into Capital One Arena as the No. 1 pick and being asked, sooner rather than later, to make all the pain worth it.
