INDIANAPOLIS — A scan of the Washington Wizards’ locker room can show promise, but not how you may think. Because after the team’s 16th loss in 18 games, when rookie Will Riley pulls on a graphic shirt featuring Aaliyah — a singer who died four years before he was born — and Tre Johnson, the team’s other prized 19-year-old, never takes off his street clothes due to his injury status, you can still spy the soothing sights of maturity.
In the same space, there’s Khris Middleton and his bottle of red, his knees mummified in bags of ice and his old-man feet dunked into a commercial-size mop bucket. Middleton, 34, serves as the reminder that one day, eventually, all of the baby Wiz will grow up, too.
“Guys that have been through the league, been through the ups and downs and how steady they are in terms of character and how they work,” Wizards Coach Brian Keefe said in praise of the team’s veterans, Middleton and CJ McCollum. “CJ and Khris have been tremendous in their leadership.”
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For fans rooting for this era of Wizards basketball, it can feel like waiting for your toddler to get his learner’s permit. You know, or at least hope, that eventually this roster full of teens and second- and third-year players will learn to play NBA basketball, become viable assets who will either get extended to stay here and rebuild the franchise or become attractive trade options for other teams. And you believe that if Washington’s plan works, and the Wiz kids actually develop into pros, that some time in the future, the team’s locker room should be filled with vets needing yellow mop buckets.
Well, that’s why Middleton and fellow 34-year-old veteran McCollum shouldn’t be overlooked. They are not part of the long-term plan here, no. Their $30 million-plus expiring salaries might be their most attractive qualities in terms of how they can best help Washington in the near future. However, for the 2-16 Wizards who actively want to develop their draft picks, without actively trying to win (the team must keep its 2026 protected top-eight pick from the John Wall-Russell Westbrook trade in 2020), the young’uns still need direction.
Perhaps the pair of old guys are here a year or two too early. The Wizards aren’t ready to compete, like the 2023-2024 Houston Rockets who were all sorts of young but still signed a former champion in Fred VanVleet and noted agitator in Dillon Brooks to bolster the roster.
Still, every now and then things need to be settled. Slowed down, just a bit. So, even on a night when the Wizards played as unappealing a brand of basketball as they have all season and looked a little bit turkey-wasted the night after Thanksgiving, it mattered when McCollum pulled Kyshawn George, his 21-year-old backcourt mate, aside and shouldered the blame for George picking up a foul.
“I was just telling him, ‘That’s on me.’ I’m running out, I could’ve just stayed for you. So next time, I’ll stay but we got to communicate collectively a little bit better,” McCollum said, explaining his message to George. “There’s just little stuff like that, where it’s like, that’s his foul in the box score, but that was a mistake on my part that I could have corrected and prevented the whole situation. So it was more like a dialogue, like, ‘Hey, that’s on me. I’ll make sure I just protect the basket. You get out, we got to talk. We got to be on that same accord.’”
It’s not just learning how to talk while defending; the Wizards have to learn everything. Their latest lesson: what not to do after a rare win. On Wednesday night, behind McCollum’s 46-point heater, Washington soundly defeated the Atlanta Hawks. Then came Friday in Indianapolis, against the bizarro version of the defending Eastern Conference champs, and Washington scored a season-low 86 points and lost by 33.
No one from Springfield, Massachusetts, will be calling for a printout of that box score to hang in the hoops hall of fame. Keefe didn’t believe his guys had the necessary “juice” and “thrust” on offense. And though it could ultimately benefit the Wizards to lose this game, against the Indiana Pacers (3-16) who are also gleefully spiraling into next year’s lottery, a result like Friday’s might peck at a young player. That’s when a former champion with a gifted wine bottle in his locker and his feet submerged in ice water can be of assistance.
“I try to see what’s needed. I feel out the room, seeing guys’ reactions, emotions, or whatever it may be and try to flip that,” Middleton said. “If it’s a negative thought, make it positive. … It’s just learning how to handle success. It’s hard in this league, especially when you lose so many games in a row before you win a game, and then [next game] you lay an egg. That’s not what you want to see. That’s not how you get better as a group, so come in tomorrow and we get to look at this film and we get to look at ourselves.”
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