The Washington Wizards have a long and unfortunate history of draft blunders in the last decade alone. Fortunately, a handful of great selections and a few key trades have kept the franchise afloat during this time.
The 2022 NBA draft did not change their momentum. The Wizards selected the 20-year-old shooting guard Johnny Davis out of Wisconsin with their tenth pick in this past year’s draft. The biggest problem has been the fact that he has been awful.
He has hardly played in the NBA and has been busy developing in the G-League. Normally that would be a great choice for a team looking to win games, however, Davis is averaging 11.9 points per game on average efficiency at best for the Capital City Go-Go.
There have been many players selected after the Washington Wizards pick that have far outperformed Johnny Davis.
This selection wouldn’t look so horrible if it weren’t for the fact that both Jalen Williams and Jalen Duren were drafted within three selections of Johnny Davis. Williams currently averages more points per game in the NBA (11.7) than Davis has scored in total (11). Duren also averages over 11 rebounds per game in games where he starts and nearly ten points as well.
Not only has Davis been incredibly underwhelming but both Williams and Duren fit positional needs for the team as well. Not only that, but Duren is nearly TWO YEARS younger than the Wizards rookie.
In his recent matchup against the Wizards, Jalen William scored more points in the first half alone than Davis has on the season. That game was truly embarrassing on multiple different levels.
Johnny Davis has been so poor for the Wiz that even undrafted guard AJ Green out of Northern Iowa for the Milwaukee Bucks has blatantly outplayed him. Putting up more than Davis’s entire point total in one game against the Charlotte Hornets. In this same game, Green also matched Davis’s assist total on the season and grabbed a third of the rebounds as well. This is an undrafted player playing the same position as the tenth pick in the draft.
Even Jordan Goodwin, another undrafted player, albeit in his second season, has been far superior to Davis this season.
This isn’t the first time the Washington Wizards have dropped the ball in the draft, and it certainly won’t be the last. They need to stop passing on star players every year if they want to grow as a team and as a franchise.