Kris Dunn's career renaissance is a missed opportunity for the Wizards

Kris Dunn very well may be the single best perimeter defender in the NBA, an apt designation befitting one of the most resilient players in the entire league.

Dunn plays a physical, swarming style of defense that consistently locks the opposing team’s leading guard in Alcatraz. His defense is one of the key reasons the LA Clippers have emerged as perhaps the second-leading threat in the Western Conference behind the Oklahoma City Thunder.

But Dunn spent a considerable amount of time out of the NBA over the first half of the 2020s, and the Wizards were one of the teams that failed to identify just how impactful he could be at the NBA level.

Dunn spent 20 games with the Capital City Go-Go, the Wizards’ NBA G League affiliate, over the course of the 2022-23 season. Remember: this was the last season of the Bradley Beal-Kristaps Porzingis era in Washington, when the team’s stated goal was to compete for a playoff spot.

The Dunn we see today playing for the Clippers would have been an impactful player for those Wizards, yet he was marooned in the G League until the Utah Jazz signed him late in the season.

Sure, at the time, Dunn was beyond “damaged goods” — he was all the way out of the NBA. Dunn was the No. 5 overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft out of Providence College, and he bounced around for a while before falling out and eventually making that comeback with the Jazz. 

Nonetheless, given how porous the Wizards’ perimeter defense was that season, even an offensively challenged player like Dunn with his defensive skillset would have not only been in the Wizards’ rotation with adequate opportunity, he probably would have been starting.

The Wizards ultimately never signed Dunn from the Go-Go, allowing the Jazz to scoop him up and watch him become an impactful player at the NBA level once again. 

Considering how important Dunn is to everything the Clippers do today, never signing him to the active roster looks like a costly oversight by the Wizards. Even as the team transitioned to a rebuild, Dunn would have been an impactful veteran. 

Veterans like Malcolm Brogdon and Marcus Smart on the roster today have very little left in the tank, and Smart especially is nowhere near the level of defensive player he once was. Dunn is 31 years old and is enjoying a career renaissance sticking to opposing guards like white on rice — he would have been even better for a mentorship-type role than even Smart, in my opinion.

Hindsight is obviously 20-20 — no teams signed Dunn until the Jazz picked him up off the Go-Go’s roster, not just the Wizards. But Washington certainly had the cleanest look at the veteran’s return to relevance, and his increased importance for a very good Clippers team has to sting a little bit for the Wizards.