The 2024-25 season was anything but smooth for the Washington Wizards, but for General Manager Will Dawkins, the bumps along the way were part of a bigger, intentional rebuild. Two weeks after the team’s season officially ended, his message remains clear: the foundation is being laid—and the work has only just begun.
“This season was meant to be one of exploration,” Dawkins said in his end-of-season press conference. “With that comes a lot of discomfort. A lot of growing pains. But we finished with energy and connectedness, and on a good note.”
While fans remember the late-season heroics of rookie Bub Carrington and a few surprise wins down the stretch, Dawkins emphasized that the real progress was structural. It started with a commitment to playing the long game.
The Wizards opened the season with the youngest roster in franchise history, and by the end of the year, three rookies had logged over 1,800 minutes each, the first time that’s happened in the NBA in more than two decades. “We’re pouring into the future,” Will Dawkins explained.
Stylistically, the team also began to find its rhythm. The Wizards finished 4th in pace, marking the second straight year as a top-five team in that category, and shifted toward a more modern offensive approach. Thirty-four percent of their shots came from beyond the arc, and three rookies hit over 100 threes—an NBA first.
Ball movement was a major priority under head coach Brian Keefe. The Wizards jumped from 19th to 7th in total passes league-wide, signaling a clear shift toward team-oriented basketball. “We were finding and taking the right shots,” Dawkins said. “And we were playing the right way.”
But the front office knows offense is only one side of the equation.
Defensively, the team struggled out of the gate, especially with early-season injuries. Still, by February, just before the Wizards seven-game road trip stretch, Dawkins said the team had climbed to a top-15 defense. Strategic trade deadline moves brought in veterans Marcus Smart and Khris Middleton as well as rookie AJ Johnson. That’s when the Wizards started to make visible improvements.
“That’s when you started to see what Wizards basketball is going to look like,” Dawkins said. “We’re not close, but we’re closer.”
He also praised the growth of players like Jordan Poole, Corey Kispert, Bilal Coulibaly, and Justin Champagnie, all of whom developed through the team’s “zero-zero mindset”—treating each day as a new opportunity regardless of wins or losses.
Looking ahead, Will Dawkins issued a direct challenge to his roster: take the next 170 days seriously. “That’s 46% of the year that we’re off,” he said. “We can’t be off. We have to turn that into time where players are getting better, the team’s getting better, everybody’s taking a jump. The goal isn’t to be watching NBA basketball in April, May, and June.”
For a franchise trying to escape the cycle of short-term fixes, the tone from Dawkins remains steady and measured. No wild promises. No dramatic declarations. Just a vision of sustainable success built over time.