The Washington Wizards entered the offseason with a plan and if you ask anyone in the front office, things are going according to plan at the moment.
Washington wanted to get younger this offseason, while also taking swings on players that can potentially blossom into a key piece for the Wizards moving forward.
One player that's grabbed the attention of many heading into the season is Cam Whitmore, who many feel a change of scenery could be the thing to propel him into the star he was projected to be when entering the season.
However, Whitmore wasn't exactly in the Wizards plans, especially considering general manager Will Dawkins probably could have never expected the Villanova product would be available for the ridiculously discounted price he was.
Instead, the team's No. 6 overall pick Tre Johnson seems like the player the team was planning their offseason around all along.
When the team elected to move Jordan Poole in exchange for CJ McCollum just before the NBA Draft, at the time the trade didn't seem to make the most sense at first.
Nonetheless, as time went on, it seemed like the motive behind the deal was not only to move off Poole's contract, but also to maintain some financial flexibility with McCollum's contract expiring after the 2025-26 season.
And while that may be a driving force behind why the front office elected to make the move, drafting Tre Johnson seems like it may have played a factor in landing the veteran guard from the New Orleans Pelicans.
At 34, McCollum isn't exactly in the point of his career where he'd prefer to be on a rebuilding team.
Despite that, the guard is one of the best professionals in the league and he seems. to be more than willing to take on the roll as a mentor while he's on the Wizards.
The pairing of McCollum to be the vet to help Johnson during his rookie season is the ideal fit and it seemingly hasn't taken long for that to prove to be true.
When asked what he's learned from McCollum so far, Johnson gave a very encouraging answer:
"Just his pace," Johnson said. "He’s [McCollum] moving at like 70% speed. He’s not gonna go 100 unless he needs to."
Although that may not seem major to some, it's widely known that the one thing rookies struggle with when they enter the league is slowing their game down.
Players who play too fast and can't adjust often make mistakes and if Johnson is already learning that slowing down his game is what the vets do, the McCollum acquisition is already proving to be very beneficial.