This Washington Wizards season hasn’t been as bleak as some campaigns in the past. There’s promise within their rebuilding ranks; prospects like Alex Sarr and Kyshawn George continue looking like keepers with star upside, while Bilal Coulibaly and Tre Johnson have flashed some promising signs through the first few weeks of NBA action.
They’ve cobbled together respective possessions against some competitive teams to start, but the fact is that their record stands at 1-7, and that’s what judges are going to evaluate when putting together a league-wide ranking of the best and worst teams right now. The Wizards are building for the future, but potential is a lot less tangible than the recent results that are taken into account for a static exercise like this.
Power Rankings Bludgeoning to Match Team Results
The Wizards rang in at dead-last in Bleacher Report’s most recent roundup, with their league-worst -15.8 net rating dooming them.
“The young, rebuilding Washington Wizards have been absolutely dreadful this season. That net rating is the worst in the league,” Andy Bailey wrote. “However, no reasonable observer of the NBA could have expected anything different from this group. This roster boasts nine players on their rookie contracts. Individual progress is far more important than wins and losses.”
“And second-year big man Alexandre Sarr is giving them plenty of progress to analyze. Despite his team losing his minutes big, he is averaging 19.0 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.3 blocks, while shooting 45.5 percent from deep. After a ho-hum rookie campaign, Sarr is showing enough to suggest he might develop into a real star. If we’re still feeling that in the spring, this campaign will have been a success.”
His unimpressive on/off numbers can be attributed to the context associated with the team-wide statistic, as few of his Wizards peers have taken jumps as big as what he and George have offered. Veteran scorer CJ McCollum has come out cold, recent addition Cam Whitmore has struggled early-on to adjust to a minimized role and in-house prospect Bub Carrington looks to have taken a step back.
