Tag: Washington Wizards

Kyle Kuzma and Khris Middleton trade grades: Who won the Wizards and Bucks deal?

Who won this deal?

Here’s a curious trade that we heard rumblings about recently: the rebuilding Washington Wizards and the contending Milwaukee Bucks are making a swap of shooters.

It’s obviously less simple than that, and we’ll get into it. But Khris Middleton is off to Washington, while Kyle Kuzma is now a Buck. To be honest, it’s kind of a weird deal all around, a bit of a head-scratcher on each side of it. But we’ll get into that.

So who won or lost this deal ahead of the 2025 NBA trade deadline? Let’s hand out some grades for each team involved in this one.

The trade details

Bucks get: Kyle Kuzma, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and a second-round pick

Wizards get: Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson and a pick swap

Bucks grade

Hmm. Can’t say I completely get this one.

Middleton isn’t the All-Star player he once was, averaging just 12.6 ppg this season, although he’s hit over 40 percent from three this year. And health is obviously a concern.

But Kuzma has taken quite a dive this year. He’s hit a career-low 28.1 percent from three and 42 percent from the field. He’s down from 22.2 ppg to 15.2. Bleh. He’s got over $40 million left on his deal through 2027, while Middleton has a player option for 2025-26.

This is what all this tells me: the Bucks think they can get Kuzma to rebound in a bigger way when surrounded by more talent. Will it actually happen? TBD. And they’re willing to deal a former first-rounder in Johnson to see.

It’s a risk, and they sent away a former championship winner in the process. Meh.

GRADE: C

Wizards grade

At this point, you want to grab as many draft picks and possible young players to grow as you can, and the Wizards did just that. You have to wonder if Middleton exercises his player option, but that’s secondary.

The Wizards got out from under Kuzma’s contract, will get a pick swap and Johnson was a first-rounder in 2024. That’s … something? Also how much will that pick swap be worth someday?

Again: all kinds of weird all around. But the Wizards did better than the Bucks did.

GRADE: B-

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The 2024-25 Washington Wizards are high key the worst team in NBA history

There’s no way the Wizards should be this terrible, man.

Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes

Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had a great week so far.

The Wizards have not.

This team might not have the same historic 28-game losing streak the Pistons did last year — yet. But that doesn’t mean that this Wizards team is better than that team.

After digging into the numbers a bit after Washington’s latest loss, this team might actually somehow be a little worse.

Washington is in the midst of a 16-game win streak, which sounds pretty terrible on its own already. It gets even worse when you realize that the team’s point differential in the last 16 games is -19.3, which is the worst in the NBA in that span by about 7 points.

But folks. That’s not all. This gets even worse when you realize that the Wizards are in the middle of their second losing streak of 16 games or more this year — a franchise record in so many dreadful ways.

But, guys. It doesn’t end there.

This team has the worst overall point differential in NBA history at -15.23. That’s worse than last year’s Pistons. That’s worse than the Process Philadelphia 76ers. That’s worse than any of those dreadful Bobcats teams from back in the day. It’s bad, guys. Really, really bad.

The Wizards are on pace for a 10-72 season, which would be the worst season for any team since the 2016 76ers. The team’s current 12.8 percent winning percentage is among the five worst in league history.

I say all that to say that the Wizards stink. And things will probably get worse next week when names like Kyle Kuzma, Jordan Poole and more are on the trade block.

Of course, there’s a reason for all of this. The Wizards are tanking right now. This team’s rebuild phase is only just beginning — they’re calling it the “deconstruction” phase. Whew, boy. If this is what deconstruction looks like, I wonder what things might look like once everything is down to the studs.

This is bad. The Wizards are bad. All I know is that Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper better be waiting at the end of this road.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

Speaking of how bad the Wizards are…

(Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Bronny James got MVP chants in Capitol One Arena on Thursday night! He was actually getting buckets, too. Charles Curtis has more here.

I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or to just laugh at this happening to my team.

My team? What am I saying? I’ve always been a lifelong Cleveland Cavaliers fan. Good for Bronny. Love to see one of our native sons doing so well.

*cries tears of anguish*

Shootaround

— Here’s Bryan Kalbrosky with 12 big names you should be watching at the NBA trade deadline next week.

— Cory Woodroof has the full list of starters for the East and West in the All-Star game.

— Here’s Bryan with the biggest snubs, including LaMelo Ball, who went from leading in fan votes to not making the game at all. People are mad about that one.

— Terry Rozier’s gambling scandal might completely break the sports world.

That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for rocking with us today. Appreciate you. Let’s do this again next week. Peace.

-Sykes 💯

Nikola Jokic suggested benching, pay cuts for Nuggets teammates after brutal loss to Wizards

Nikola Jokic is so frustrated with the lackluster Nuggets right now.

Through just about a fourth of this NBA season, Nikola Jokic has had another remarkable MVP-caliber campaign. The reigning MVP has been absolutely dominant from start to finish, perhaps better than ever. You could not say the same for his middling (and weirdly disjointed) Denver Nuggets, who have lost seven of their last 11 games at the time of this writing.

After the Nuggets fell to the league-worst Washington Wizards on Saturday night — in a game where Jokic put on a masterclass with 56 points, 16 rebounds, and eight assists — the big man was clearly tired of everyone else’s lackadaisical efforts.

When asked about what he wants to see from his Denver teammates after the embarrassing Wizards loss, Jokic, in a very Serbian way, suggested that the other Nuggets get pay cuts for not doing their jobs properly. He expanded on that by saying that perhaps a benching or two for underperforming Nuggets players would also have an effective message moving forward.

Hoo boy. It’s not often that Jokic is this direct and openly frustrated.

How can you blame him?

And here’s a video of Jokic’s biting comments:

It’s not hard to see why Jokic would finally be this critical of the other Nuggets. At times this season, it has felt like Jokic has had to defeat other teams by himself, at least production-wise. Denver is literally the NBA’s best team when he’s on the floor on a statistical basis, and it’s the worst team, by far, when he’s off. Jokic is so great that he can elevate the Nuggets to wins by himself sometimes, but that’s not sustainable. He can’t do it every night.

Denver’s problems also all seem to stack on top of each other.

After signing a max contract, Jamal Murray has not pulled his weight. At all. Despite a push to be more versatile, Michael Porter Jr. still kinda looks like a one-dimensional scoring forward. Thanks to general manager Calvin Booth, the Denver bench, for the umpteenth straight year, is a disaster. Part of that blame also lies on head coach Michael Malone, who hasn’t figured out an adequate non-Jokic lineup in a long time, but there’s only so much a coach can do when they only have 7-8 viable every-night rotation players.

What’s even worse is it’s not readily apparent that these Nuggets like playing with each other anymore. They look like a team with internal tension in the organization that is letting that bleed over to the court. Jokic aside, they have been making the same careless mistakes on both ends of the floor for six weeks now.

That is no longer an anomaly. It is a trend. It just might be who these Nuggets are. They look like a team ready for a big change in the form of a shake-up trade or someone getting fired. Or both.

It’s not Jokic’s style to call everyone out like this. In fact, while completely justified, I’d be shocked if he ever even demanded a trade out of Denver. He’d sooner retire after his current contract expires before making a big public scene. Rocking the boat is just not who he is.

So, it speaks volumes that Jokic is now deciding to speak out because he’s breaking character. He’s fed up because he wants to win, and he wants more help doing so. The other Nuggets — players, coaches, and front office included — had better start listening.

Pat Connaughton/Blake Wesley NBA Tracker: Nov. 11-17

A couple of solid games for the two former Irish players.

Notre Dame’s two NBA representatives turned in some fine performances during the past week. While they didn’t happen concurrently with each other, they still happened.

After six-point showings on back-to-back nights, [autotag]Pat Connaughton[/autotag] delivered his scoring and rebounding high for the young season with 10 points and seven boards Nov. 16 against the Charlotte Hornets. It also was his fifth consecutive game with exactly two assists.

Over three games for the past week, Connaughton averaged 7.3 points and 4.7 rebounds a game. This was despite shooting 36.4% from the field.

[autotag]Blake Wesley[/autotag] turned in a couple of scoreless performances during the week. However, he did have 10 points and two assists in a Nov. 13 win over the Washington Wizards. For his four games during the week, he achieved a scoring average to 4.0 and an assist average to 1.0.

You might be curious how about how these two players looked over the course of the week. Well, here they are:

Cooper Flagg must join the NBA’s Eastern Conference to balance out the league

The NBA NEEDS Cooper Flagg in the Eastern Conference.

With all due respect to fans of woeful NBA teams like the Utah Jazz and Portland Trail Blazers, it’s time we have a frank conversation. And I apologize for how it will exclude your totally valid (but, to me, ultimately tertiary) needs as diehard supporters of your respective favorite teams.

The NBA’s latest truly generational draft prospect, Duke’s Cooper Flagg, must play in the Eastern Conference when he likely jumps to the league in the summer of 2025. Full stop.

There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it, either.

If we want to have a truly healthy and balanced NBA, throwing another potential franchise superstar like Flagg into an already-stacked West is a dire scenario for the league. The sheer talent disparity between the two conferences — the West has had more All-NBA players every season for 26 straight years — is already way too glaring.

The East’s embarrassingly slow start to the 2024-2025 season only confirms as much. It’s still a small sample size (less than 10 games into the year at the time of this writing), but here are some eye-opening early numbers to keep in mind if you’re one of those people who’d like to see Flagg play somewhere West of the Rocky Mountains:

  • Only two East teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics, currently have a winning record. That’s right. Quite literally, everyone else outside of Cleveland and Boston in the East is straddling the line at .500 or lower. Yikes.
  • Eight of the NBA’s 10 best records so far belong to Western Conference teams. Eight. EIGHT.
  • The West, itself, is winning over 70 percent of its games head-to-head with the East so far. That’s roughly a 57-win pace over an 82-game season, by the way. A real ho-hum kind of dominance.
  • The East, itself, is also being heavily dragged down by the struggling Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks, who were supposed to be bellwethers as conference heavyweights. From injuries and age to good old-fashioned bad luck, these two teams are instead mired at the bottom of the standings. Tough scene.

I know it’s tempting to say we’ll appreciate someone with Flagg’s unique all-around abilities wherever he plays. Which, sure. That’s part of the deal we make as sports fans. Sometimes, it’s just about sitting back and appreciating the show talented athletes can put on.

You take what you can get. I understand.

Still, this massive disparity between the NBA’s East and West simply cannot continue. Flagg and the San Antonio Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama are/were considered two of the best draft prospects in the league in years. For both of them to play on Western teams in a conference where, for example, a 50-win team was the fifth seed last season (a 50-win team was the No. 2 seed in the East) would be an unmitigated disaster for competitive balance.

Western teams already tear each other apart all year. Meanwhile, the 2-3 squads fighting at the top of the East get to be on cruise control as they please. A possible superstar like Flagg going West would just make it even worse. It’s not tenable or sustainable for players or fans of Western teams. (The conference really needs more “nights off,” if you know what I mean!)

The East needs an injection of potential all-time youth and talent. Badly.

So, this is my message to fans of fledgling squads like the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors. I’m really rooting for you.

Go capture that Flagg.

The NBA’s interconference competitive balance might depend on it.

Watch: NBA superstar Steph Curry gifts Jayden Daniels his jersey

Steph Curry gifted his jersey to Jayden Daniels after Monday’s game between Warriors and Wizards.

Washington superstar rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels attended his first Washington Wizards game as the Commanders quarterback on Monday night. As you might expect, when the Wizards showed Daniels, alongside his mother, linebacker Bobby Wagner, and minority owner Mark Ein, the crowd went crazy.

Daniels being in attendance was such a big deal that the official NBA X account posted the video of him in the crowd.

A noted basketball fan, Daniels was into the game and rooting for the hometown Wizards against the legendary Steph Curry and four-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors.

Golden State would win, as Curry led the way with 24 points. Afterward, Daniels would meet Curry, and the two would speak. The NBA superstar took off his jersey, signed it, and gifted it to the NFL’s hottest young quarterback.


The star quarterback has helped lead the Commanders to a 7-2 start, their best start since 1996.

Goran Dragic: ‘I really think that I overachieved’

When Goran Dragic came in as a second-round pick, nobody thought he would last well over a decade in the NBA. Not even himself. Now officially retired, Dragic will be on hand for the NBA’s 33rd game in Mexico since 1992, featuring his favorite …

When Goran Dragic came in as a second-round pick, nobody thought he would last well over a decade in the NBA. Not even himself. Now officially retired, Dragic will be on hand for the NBA’s 33rd game in Mexico since 1992, featuring his favorite franchise, the Miami Heat, going up against the Washington Wizards on November 2.

The former All-Star jumped at the chance to travel to Mexico City to participate in numerous NBA-hosted events, including a Jr. NBA coaches event, prior to Saturday’s matchup. Dragic spoke with HoopsHype about his 15-year career, what separates the Heat from other teams, Luka Doncic, and more.

Report: Former Wisconsin Badger to have option declined, become free agent

Report: Former Wisconsin Badger set to have option declined, become free agent

The Washington Wizards are declining to pick up former Wisconsin Badger Johnny Davis’ team option for the 2025-26 season, according to The Athletic’s Josh Robbins.

That means Davis, who joined the Wizards as the 10th overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft, would become an unrestricted free agent.

Related: Big Ten basketball power rankings entering 2024-25 season: A first look at the expanded conference

This news doesn’t come as a huge surprise as Davis continues to struggle to establish his position at the NBA level. The shooting guard is currently playing just 5.3 minutes per game for a Wizards team that again projects to finish near the bottom of the league.

Those 5.3 minutes per game, albeit just three games into the 2024-25 season, also include averages of 0.7 points, 0.3 rebounds and 0.3 assists on 25% shooting. Those numbers are all down from his totals from the 2023-24 season — a year that saw him appear in a career-high 50 games at the NBA level.

Davis is currently listed on the Wizards depth chart behind rookies Carlton Carrington and Kyshawn George, veterans Corey Kispert and Jared Butler, and others. That, again, for a team that currently ranks No. 30 in ESPN’s latest power rankings.

Davis’ career-long NBA averages include 13 minutes per game, 3.9 points, 1.7 rebounds, 0.8 assists and 0.3 steals on 39% shooting and 28% from three. That is in 81 total games over two-plus seasons in the league.

The Wizards can still re-sign the former Badger star once he becomes an unrestricted free agent. Give his diminished role with the organization, it’s hard to see that becoming the case.

A change of scenery could be what’s necessary for the 2022 AP Big Ten Player of the Year and First-Team All-American. This will be a story worth monitoring with few former Badgers currently playing at the NBA level.

Contact/Follow @TheBadgersWire on X (formerly Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Wisconsin Badgers news, notes, and opinion.

Wizards’ Brian Keefe on Alex Sarr: ‘He has the ability to be a three-level scorer’

Alex Sarr entered the draft touted as a versatile player who can do plenty and the Wizards believe they can tap into that potential.

Alex Sarr entered the 2024 NBA draft touted as a versatile player who can do plenty on the court, and the Washington Wizards believe they can tap into that potential this season.

Sarr averaged 9.4 points, 4.3 rebounds and 1.5 blocks on 52% shooting from the field last season with Perth in the NBL. He scored in double figures 14 times, including a season-high 18 points, five blocks and two rebounds on Jan. 26 against the S.E. Melbourne Phoenix.

The 7-footer has an evolving offensive game but has the ability to eventually develop into a consistent scorer. Wizards head coach Brian Keefe, speaking with Chase Hughes of Monumental Sports Network, believes Sarr can act as an offensive hub at times.

He’s got the ability to be a three-level scorer at some point. But one thing that has stood out to us is his ability to see the game and read the game. He’s a good passer, so we want the ball in his hands to explore those opportunities for him to make plays for himself and others.

Sarr showcased some of that ability in the NBA Summer League last month in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, the second overall pick struggled to score, averaging 5.5 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.5 blocks on 19.1% shooting from the field in four games.

The low point of his stay in the desert came on July 16 after he went scoreless in 29 minutes and missed all 15 of his shot attempts from the field, including seven from beyond the arc. He did record nine rebounds, three assists, three blocks and one steal.

Sarr certainly had an underwhelming debut, but the organization likely isn’t all that concerned with the results of summer league. They believe Sarr has a bright future ahead and can eventually develop into a key player for the franchise.

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Boston’s Jayson Tatum hangs 51 points on the Washington Wizards

Check out the St. Louis native’s historic performance in this highlight video.

When Boston Celtics All-Star forward Jayson Tatum breaks a shooting slump, he doesn’t pull any punches. And he didn’t in his 51-point pummeling of the Washington Wizards, powering the Celtics’ 116-87 beatdown of the Wiz at Capital One Arena on that fateful day.

The St. Louis native put up the third-most points of his career on his way to shooting 18-of-28 from the floor overall, 9-of-14 from beyond the arc and 6-of-6 from the charity stripe. Tatum nabbed 10 rebounds and 7 assists to round out his stat line. He committed one turnover — late in the game at that.

If you were among those taking the game off and need to see his historic performance for the first time or just want to bask in the glory of the former Duke star’s big night, check out the highlight clip put together by the NBA embedded below.

Check out the “How Bout Them Celtics,” “First to the Floor,” “Celtics Lab,” and the many other New England sports podcasts available on the CLNS Media network. 

Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ

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