NBA Draft Rumors: Wizards wavering on who they take at #1?

In the latest Stein Line, Marc Stein provided new intel about who the Washington Wizards might be picking at #1, and it might be changing from the consensus.

From Stein:

With only a few days to go before Tuesday night’s first round of the NBA Draft, multiple draft experts have passed along that they legitimately believe Washington could select Kansas’ Darryn Peterson over BYU’s AJ Dybantsa with the No. 1 overall pick.

“Increased consideration” is the way one well-placed insider put it.

Regular readers know that I don’t really curate a full 1-to-60 draft board … but I can certainly say that I’ve been expecting Dybantsa’s name to be called first by Adam Silver in Brooklyn for literally months.

Peterson’s camp, of course, expects to invalidate such expectations and prevail in a photo finish. The Wizards, as you’ve surely heard by now, are the only team being granting a private workout with the Kansas star in advance of the draft.

How serious are the Wiz about selecting Peterson after all the Dybantsa hype? Is such chatter some sort of smokescreen? These are natural questions that we can probably only answer for sure shortly after 8 PM ET on Tuesday.

Yet we can certainly say this much now: Jazz owner and BYU alumnus Ryan Smith would undoubtedly be giddy with this outcome. Especially just one year removed from the Jazz going 17-65 to post the league’s worst record and coming away with the fifth pick in the Cooper Flagg Sweepstakes.

Dybantsa slipping to No. 2 this June, for Smith and his Jazz, would be a dream.

There’s a ton to unpack here. First, it’s clear that Darryn Peterson’s talent is keeping the Wizards front office up at night. To me, this feels like the Wizards are worried. The amount of rumors we keep hearing is one of two things. They’re worried that they’re not making the best choice, or they’re still trying to bait the Jazz into a trade for the #1 pick. In a weird way, it makes me feel even better about the #2 pick in this draft. All the pressure is on the Wizards, Utah gets to take the one they don’t pick. And best of all, the Jazz win either way. I can’t blame the Wizards either. Dybantsa and Peterson are both elite prospects. They both have the potential to be top-10 NBA players eventually, maybe more. And that’s what the Wizards are probably worrying about. Get this wrong, and that might be the difference between an MVP and an All-Star.

But what about Cam Boozer? Stein has info on that as well.

PS — What we can also say, according to league sources, is that neither Duke’s Cam Boozer nor North Carolina’s Caleb Wilson are in contention to go No. 1 overall. Boozer is widely projected to go to Memphis at No. 3 and Wilson is expected to go to Chicago at No. 4 as Bryson Graham’s first-ever draftee as the Bulls’ new lead decision-maker.

So we know that only the Jazz have interest in Cam Boozer, not the Wizards. We’ve seen a shift lately in what has been the consensus lately, it’s just hard to tell what’s real.

Advertisement

It has definitely felt like the Wizards have been trying to bait the Jazz into trading for the #1 pick and AJ Dybantsa. But with all the draft experts saying that Dybantsa was the first choice, why would they want to trade that to the Jazz? Maybe there’s some merit to this rumor about Peterson. If they’re just as happy with Peterson, it makes more sense that they would try to trade the pick to the Jazz.

Or maybe we’re hearing this rumor now because they know that Utah has another preference? Do they know that Utah might prefer Peterson instead of Dybantsa? Could this be that they’re trying to get Utah to trade up for him? Maybe, but something tells me, just like Stein says, the Jazz are going to be happy either way. And if they end up with AJ Dybantsa, it’s going to be one of the best sports stories in Utah history. To think that AJ Dybantsa might be in a Jazz uniform feels like a sports movie.