Welcome to our Wizards player review series. We’ll go through each guy that played meaningful minutes and look back on their season. Here’s Julian Reese.
The last games of the Wizards’ season were a testing ground for borderline NBA talent. Nobody else made quite the impression that Julian Reese did, at least on the scoresheet. The young two-way center averaged a double-double, 11.8 points and 10.5 rebounds, in 13 appearances.
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Reese played big minutes in a few tanktastic exhibitions. But gobbling this many rebounds, including more than four offensive boards per game, has to mean something. We can at least conclude that Reese is a workhorse with a nose for the ball.
It’s tempting, from here, to elevate Reese as a promising diamond in the rough, even a candidate for a standard NBA contract. I’d pump the brakes a bit there.
Look a little deeper, and you’ll see a very raw collection of tools. As a 6’9 center who doesn’t shoot threes, he already has an uphill battle toward NBA relevance. He plays with a chaotic, shoulder-down approach, which helps him beat out guys for rebounds, but also translates to a clunky offensive game.
He committed an impressive 32 turnovers, compared to 24 assists, in his 154 minutes. His turnovers ran the gamut — illegal screens, dribbling foibles, swipe-downs on rebounds. To stick around as a threatening roll man, he’ll have to develop smoother hands:
His finishing, similarly, is a work in progress. He shot 52.9 percent from the field, mostly on shots near the rim and from floater range, a number that will have to improve. Overall, on shots inside eight feet, he converted 56 percent of the time, worse than all but two NBA big men (Derik Queen and Jusuf Nurkic).
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A big reason for that: he made just 34 percent of his shots in the paint, but outside the restricted area, one of the worst numbers in the league. His floater looks a little mechanical, a line-drive last resort.
The shooting looks far away. He shot 63 percent from the line and generally avoided jump shots. He doesn’t have to be a threat from three-point range to stick in the NBA. But he does have to haul in passes and finish in a variety of ways near the rim.
He’s still figuring out how he can be a threat on offense. He’s shown some flashes slipping screens and getting behind big men. (The flip side of that is the illegal screen calls.) Admirably, he likes to get ambitious with his passing at the top of the key when he has the chance. Off the dribble, he tends to lean into defenders with long, slow steps:
As he adjusts to the speed of the game, we could see him refine moves like that. But as it is, he doesn’t have enough feel and touch to offset a lack of pure downhill explosiveness.
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On defense, he’s of course a ball of energy. The rebounding is a real NBA skillset. Like most rookie bigs, he tends to get jumpy near the rim and will take time to settle into NBA schemes and strategies.
The Wizards don’t have another big that fits Reese’s mold as it stands. (It’d be wonderful if you could combine the best of Reese and Tristan Vuckevic.) It’s worth monitoring Reese as a developmental project. His pure energy and effort is valuable, and we’ve seen guys around the league, like Charlotte’s Moussa Diabate, develop around that as a baseline.
Reese signed a two-year contract as a two-way guy, so we could see him start next season shuttling between the NBA and G-League. Best case, he shows enough to grab spot minutes a fourth big man.