3 Wizards players who definitely should not be back next season

Johnny Davis should not be back next season

Many rookies struggle to adjust to the NBA. The athleticism, the speed, the force, the split-second decision-making and the execution of a defensive scheme are all many times harder than what they did in college; it’s a steep learning curve. All sorts of players have a slow start and go on to have productive NBA careers.

The rookie season of one Johnny Davis, however, seems like something much worse than simple rookie jitters. He wasn’t just bad in his first year; he was abysmal, unequivocally one of the worst players in the league. Of all 388 players who logged at least 400 minutes last season, only Blake Wesley on the tanking San Antonio Spurs had a worse Box Plus-Minus. In terms of true-shooting percentage, Davis checked in at 385th.

None of the things he was supposed to be good at coming out of Wisconsin bore out. He couldn’t gain separation, he shot 24.3 percent from deep, and he was a trainwreck defensively. He appears to lack the athleticism needed to score as a guard in the NBA, and at no point in the season has he even shown flashes to the contrary.

Davis might find a way to survive in the NBA. It’s at least in the realm of possibility. But the odds of that are so incredibly low that the Wizards need to find a way to offload Davis ASAP, while he may hold some modicum of value in a trade. Otherwise, they will end up waiving Davis in a couple of seasons. He’s been that bad.