A rebuild is only as good as the establishing pieces brought in by management.
It should be common sense, but sports fans may never learn how to separate objective analysis on young talent from the blind hope that comes with fresh faces, especially when it concerns a team they already have a vested interest in.
The NBA Draft is meant to symbolize that hope. It’s where the bad teams go for the chance to pick a franchise cornerstone, something productive to focus on while others square off in postseason dances. Trying to guess the brand of player these 18-year-olds will blossom into isn’t easy, with memorable misses costing jobs and organizations years of forward momentum.
Just as quickly as ridicule will surround those failures, praise will find the draft hits. Nailing one pick is already a reason to celebrate— that’s a prospect to mold and develop under years of team control during their most impressionable professional years.
But basketball is a team game, requiring more than one player to succeed. Positive returns on multiple picks are indicative of something bigger, a movement, where young cores are brought together and competitive teams materialize with proper care and nurturing.
Wizards Entered Second Draft Cycle
This past summer, the Washington Wizards front office entered their second draft cycle since taking the reins of the team, a year after taking Bilal Coulibaly seventh overall in the prior draft cycle. That pick has aged well, combining potential with early returns, but the 2024 class was where we could see the movement forming.
General Manager Will Dawkins took Alex Sarr with the second overall pick, selecting a more-or-less no-brainer who most scouts had going towards the top of the order. They then chose Bub Carrington at No. 14, a long, multi-level scoring guard who’s already outperformed his placement in the draft.
Two picks that have already aged well, but nothing crazy.
The third player the Wizards took in the first round, though, is where Dawkins and his crew made their money. They honed in on Kyshawn George at No. 24, a wing with two-way potential who many saw as a second-round talent. He had good physical measurables and signs of a jumper, garnering less initial hope than star prospect Sarr or college killer Carrington.
Nine months later, and he’s arguably the most impressive rookie the Wizards have rostered.
Sarr and Carrington have each locked in All-Rookie Team-worthy seasons, but George already looks like a pro at just 21 years old. He shoots and defends at an NBA level, flashes a more diverse game, and does everything you want from a role player, regardless of age. The Swiss forward not only brings it every night but also looks like the kind of player that teams will want in their rotations for the next decade or more.
George only just arrived— he’s already here to stay.
George’s Jump Shot: Fluid and Recognizable
George’s game all starts with his shooting stroke.
Offense is the more important end of the floor, and college-made rookies often struggle at scaling their jumpers to the NBA 3-point line and the bigger, more seasoned defenders waiting for them down the court.
The forward wasn’t immune to that first-year hurdle, but there was little reason for concern. His jumper looked almost too good to fail, mechanically sound with the compactness and repetitive consistency of a born shooter.
The comparison for his shot is Mike Miller, the flamethrowing role player who won multiple titles with the Big Three Miami Heat a decade ago as a spot-up specialist late in his career.
George shares the one-time Wizard Miller’s effortless release, which starts with the forearm. While Miller was a bit quicker getting the ball out of there, both shooters get their looks off with a more relaxed snap of the elbow. The touch comes from their fingertips, and the power comes from their bases that require minimal bending of the knees.
They don’t have to jump super high to remain effective from 25 feet out, a result of their shared height at 6-foot-8, natural release point at the forehead, and an overall game that can thrive without extreme athleticism.
Miller won Rookie of the Year in an otherwise desolate 2000 rookie class with his league-ready mechanics, while George took a bit longer to find his role. He got plenty of chances as Kyle Kuzma’s backup while discovering his rhythm, firmly settling in as a regular shot-taker when 2024 turned to 2025.
Not counting Monday’s game against the Raptors in which George exited early after turning his ankle, he had shot 37.3% from behind the arc on 5.7 attempts per night over his last 18 games, starting in every game he was available since Kuzma was traded to Milwaukee on Feb. 6. He’s averaged 11.4 points over that period, just a few ticks below old friend Miller did during his rookie campaign.
It was only a matter of time before his jumper came around, and he’s already developed into one of Washington’s lead kick-out options. His shooting is a handy commodity to offer, the one skill that no team can ever seem to get enough of.
That Size Goes Both Ways
Unless you’re a lead creator or filling a hyper-specific need on offense, the only way to buy yourself heavy minutes in this league is with a helpful mixture of offense and defense.
George can certainly shoot, demonstrating the kind of skill that will always be at a premium in the NBA, but his defense has elevated him into someone who would get minutes in many non-tanking situations.
He uses all 83 inches of his wingspan when matched up against the other team’s top options— an opportunity he’s found himself thrown into more often since Bilal Coulibaly’s season ended prematurely with a hamstring strain.
George moves his feet quickly while maintaining sturdiness, combining a body capable of filling gaps with the hands to get in a player’s grill.
Few rookies can scale their isolation defense up to the level of the league’s best stars, and he’s already found a way to get his defense represented in the box score. George recorded at least three steals in six of his last complete games, and even had a five-block game two weeks ago.
That sort of two-way tenacity and IQ shows us that he already knows how to maximize the most essential parts of his game and represents his awareness for what he has to do to stay on the court. Multidimensionality is how you make yourself essential and avoid getting played off in a big moment, and his preternatural maturity can certainly handle those raised stakes.
How does that Maturity Translate to When it “Counts?”
George has the mental toughness to overcome a draft selection late in the first round and looks like he belongs at the highest level. He not only looks and talks like a ready-made pro for long stretches during games, but has already shown up big in some clutch situations.
The Wizards have started a brand new losing streak, dropping five in a row after briefly overtaking the Utah Jazz for the league’s second-worst record, with George playing crucial roles in the brief bit of winning the team experienced in jumping from 13 to 15 wins earlier this month.
The Detroit Pistons got the better of the Wizards on Mar. 11, but Washington got revenge two days later in a 129-125 nail-biter. George went bucket-less through the first three quarters before hitting three in the fourth, including this set of game-tying and go-ahead jumpers after the final two-minute mark.
Those weren’t any flukes, either. Two days after that, the Wizards had to fend off the Nuggets, the same contenders whom Washington had already miraculously bested once this season.
Jordan Poole was the next day’s story, drilling a 35-footer just before the buzzer to give his team the lead and the win. George once again saved his best for crunch time. He’s repeatedly shown the wherewithal to relocate off-ball, hitting from the corner to set up Poole’s heave 16 seconds later.
Role Players Are Like Ice Cream
A role player’s combination of tools and understanding of how crucial they are to sticking it out long-term in the NBA can be visualized by an ice cream sundae.
The base of the sundae — the ice cream itself — represents the player’s basic skills that they bring on a possession-to-possession basis. In George’s case, he’d get a scoop for his shooting touch and another for his versatile wing defense. Those are his two most valuable qualities, which is why he has value if it had to be summarized in a quick pitch.
The whipped cream atop the ice cream is experience, where one learns how to hone those skills over repeated 82-game seasons. Important, but not so much as the fundamental skills someone possesses. The chocolate syrup drizzle, considerably thinner than the whipped cream, represents how that consistency translates to the clutch, a much smaller sample size that plays a disproportionately substantive role in how a contributor is viewed and relied upon.
That just leaves the cherry on top – the intrigue. It’s not why we ordered the sundae, or why that player gets as many opportunities as he does, but it adds that extra bit of excitement that comes with a foreign flavor.
George’s cherry can be anything he wants it to be. He’s only 64 games into his young professional career, giving him plenty of time to work on his craft and experiment in-game.
From what we’ve seen of him so far, though, it’s hard not to get excited about his juice as a playmaker. He’s averaging just 2.5 assists per game on 15.7% usage, but that scales up to 3.4 dimes per 36 minutes, an indicator of a positive ball-mover in the frontcourt.
He’s shooting under 33% from 3-10 feet, giving opposing teams little to worry about when George makes his drives, but he’s still making defenders pay when they double him when he sets his sights for the rim. He already knows how to reward a rim-running roller, capable of tossing lobs and dumping off passes into the dunker’s spot when he’s commanding all of the attention in the paint. This is when we taste the cherry, the sweet treat in his game.
Kyshawn George is What the Wizards Need
George has been everything you’d want out of a late-first-round draftee, especially one whom the Wizards only acquired mere months before the draft. They dealt Daniel Gafford to the Dallas Mavericks at the 2024 trade deadline, getting Dallas’ first-rounder as the return’s headline.
That shrewd trade and its payoff have been just another reason to believe in this Washington rebuild. Washington’s management is clearly tilted towards high-feel, defensive-minded young guys, and George, overlooked and quietly promising, represents how this Wizards core fits into the NBA.
Kyshawn George may not be a star, but he’s as complete a role player as you can ask a rookie to be.
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