WIZARDS TAKE AJ DYBANTSA NO. 1, AND THEY HAVE A REAL TEAM

The Washington Wizards had the worst record in the league, won the lottery, and on Tuesday night at Barclays Center they did the thing everyone expected and still could not quite believe a rebuilding team gets to do. They called AJ Dybantsa's name first. It is the third time in the common draft era that Washington has held the number one pick. The first was Kwame Brown in 2001. The second was John Wall in 2010. The franchise knows better than anyone that the pick is not the prize. What you do with it is. This time the early signs say they understand that. Start with the player, because Dybantsa is the kind of prospect that does not come around most years. He is a six foot nine wing who spent his one season at BYU leading all of Division I in scoring at 25.5 points a game, on 51 percent shooting, while adding 6.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists. Lead the entire country in scoring as a freshman and you have already answered the question most prospects spend three seasons trying to answer. He can get a bucket against anyone. The how is what makes scouts lean forward. Forty percent of his shots came at the rim, and he finished 63 percent of them, including 90 percent of his dunks. He is a downhill problem, long and powerful and fluid, the body of a forward with the handle of a guard. When his teammate Richie Saunders went down with an injury, Dybantsa did not shrink. He averaged 28.5 points over the next ten games. The bigger the role, the bigger he played. He is not a finished product, and the honest version of this story says so. His jump shot is a work in progress, 33 percent from three on real volume. His decision making still runs ahead of his processing. His defense, despite all the tools, is the part of his game that has to catch up to the rest of it. None of that is disqualifying for a 19 year old. It is the to do list. The floor is a high level scorer and the ceiling is a franchise centerpiece, and at number one you are buying the ceiling. Here is the part that should make Washington fans sit up. Dybantsa is not landing on a tank job. He is landing on a team. For years the Wizards collected young talent the way rebuilds do, and the cupboard is genuinely full. Alex Sarr, the French big, just put up 16.3 points, 7.4 rebounds and 2 blocks a night at 20 years old, the rare center who protects the rim and passes. Bilal Coulibaly is a long, two way wing in his third season. Kyshawn George, Bub Carrington and Tre Johnson are all real rotation pieces who can shoot, handle and defend. That is a young core most teams would trade a future for. And then Washington did the thing rebuilds usually refuse to do. It added veteran star power, bringing in Anthony Davis and Trae Young. Suddenly the timeline is not five years out. You have a top five level big in Davis, a primary creator in Young, a 20 year old anchor in Sarr, a connective wing in Coulibaly, and now the first pick in the draft to grow into all of it. That is not a lottery team stacking ping pong balls. That is a roster with a present and a future at the same time, the hardest balance in the sport to strike. The fit is clean. Dybantsa is a scoring wing who thrives attacking downhill, and he walks into lineups with a lob threat in Davis, a gravity creator in Young, and shooters around the edges. He will not be asked to be the whole offense on night one, which is exactly what a 19 year old scorer needs. He gets to develop the jumper and the defense inside a structure, not on a team that needs him to drop 30 just to stay close. None of this guarantees anything. Kwame Brown is proof the Wizards can get the pick and miss the moment. The difference this time is that the moment is not riding on the rookie alone. Washington built a real team first and then added the best 19 year old in the country to it, which is the right order to do it in. The future the Wizards have been promising for a decade finally has a face. It is six foot nine, it led the country in scoring, and on Tuesday night it put on a Washington hat. The rebuild is over. The team is here.