WASHINGTON — The Washington Wizards’ efforts to develop Tre Johnson as a basketball player started two weeks before the team drafted him sixth Wednesday night.
On June 12, one day before Johnson’s workout for team officials, Wizards general manager Will Dawkins showed Johnson some video clips from Johnson’s lone season at the University of Texas. Those film snippets revealed Johnson taking some plays off. Dawkins wanted to gauge Johnson’s feel for the game, see how Johnson responds to constructive criticism and also motivate him for the next day’s workout.
Dawkins’ blunt feedback helped in the short term.
“I appreciate him,” Johnson said Wednesday night, after Washington picked him. “I feel like in my workout, he kind of pushed me, and I needed that.”
The Wizards soon will begin learning whether it will help in the long term. Johnson, a 6-foot-5 swingman, ranked as perhaps the best shooting prospect in this year’s draft after he hit 40 percent of his 3s as a college freshman. However, there are elements of Johnson’s game that require significant improvement, including his defense, finishing at the basket and physical strength.
“It’s important to be transparent,” Dawkins said after the draft’s first round Wednesday night. “There’s a lot to like with Tre. But there are some areas he’s got to grow in, just like every other 19-year-old player, and we’d rather address it on the front end, see if he can improve upon it, see what his answers are. It was just fun banter and conversation.”
Dawkins was engaging in a bit of understatement there. It wasn’t just “fun banter.” In an ideal world, it will help establish a pattern in which Johnson eliminates his shortcomings and systematically solidifies his strengths. The Wizards need to hit on their selection of Johnson and help him come as close as possible to fulfilling his potential.
In that sense, Johnson is no different than Washington’s stuffed cupboard of young prospects, which includes wings Bilal Coulibaly and Kyshawn Johnson, guards Bub Carrington and AJ Johnson and big man Alex Sarr. There is a lot of work to be done.
On Wednesday night, Winger and Dawkins made another move. They traded the draft rights to 18th pick Walter Clayton Jr. to the Utah Jazz for the draft rights to 21st pick Will Riley, the 43rd pick, a 2031 second-round pick and a 2032 second-round pick.
Riley, a 6-foot-8 swingman from the University of Illinois who won the Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year award, has a good feel for the game, drives confidently to the basket and has potential as a playmaker.
“Adding Tre and Will, they’re like-minded players,” Dawkins said. “They have some versatility. They compete. They get after it. And we’re going to give them the same runway that we’ve given all the other players that we’ve drafted to work on their craft.”
Will Riley averaged 12.6 points and 4.1 rebounds per game during his lone season at Illinois (Jeff Hanisch / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
The Wizards’ front office also had Rutgers wing Ace Bailey high on their draft board, and most likely ranked Bailey higher than they ranked Johnson. However, in one of Wednesday’s biggest surprises, at least from the general public’s perspective, the Jazz snapped up Bailey with the fifth pick.
That had to be painful for Washington. Throughout the final weeks of the 2024-25 season, the Wizards and Jazz raced to the bottom of the league standings, attempting to outtank each other. In their season finale, the Wizards defeated the Miami Heat 119-118 when Carrington hit an off-balance buzzer-beater to end the game. The victory ensured that the Wizards finished with the NBA’s second-worst record.
The Jazz could exit the lottery with no worse than the fifth overall pick, while the Wizards could receive no worse than the sixth overall pick. And that’s precisely what happened: Both teams fell to their worst possible draft slots.
And now, fairly or unfairly, Bailey and Johnson will be inextricably linked in the eyes of Wizards fans for years to come.
Tuesday’s trade of Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey and this year’s 40th pick to New Orleans for CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk and a 2027 second-round pick will create avenues for Johnson and Riley to play extensively as rookies.
“Both those guys are young,” Dawkins said. “They’ve got to get better on the defensive end and just get more efficient where they can. But a lot of stuff is … just catching up with the speed of the game, working on their bodies, improving their habits. Things like that will go a long way.
“But fortunately, these two guys, they ‘eat the gym.’ They’re in there, they’re workers and it’s in their DNA. So, I feel pretty good about whatever their weaknesses are and at least shoring those up.”
(Top photo of Tre Johnson: Steve Roberts / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)