The 2026-27 Washington Wizards won't be your average freely-playing overachievers who magically rise up the league's standings. As prospect-heavy as their lineup promises to be, they have too many veterans with opportunities to be squeezed out of the campaign ahead of them to ignore, and those still-unanswered questions of fit promise to convolute the season ahead.
If we're solely evaluating on-court concerns when parsing out the likeliest complicating culprit of the bunch, Trae Young has long-stuck out as the obvious answer. His play style is the most historically-inflexible among Washington's newcomers, but at the very least, he's already been financially compensated in the form of a hefty offseason contract.
That's the biggest difference between he and Anthony Davis . They're nothing alike as players, with Davis having spent a longer, more accomplished career collecting buckets with a wide-ranging skillset while routinely guiding respectable squads on the defensive side of the ball, but they're both looking to cash in wherever they can. And with Davis still waiting on the sort of long-term, big-money sort of contract that Young inked out of free agency, expect this cloud to remain over Washington beyond the offseason.
Just because his agency group and the franchise tabled extension talks last month doesn't mean that the narrative's going to just vanish. He's expected to return to those conversations after the first leg of the Wizards' upcoming season, where the parties are expected to evaluate Davis' comfort within the organization's competitive timeline.
Whatever comes next, whether that be the extension he wants, a trade or an awkward holdout, is expected to be directly tied to the manner in which he and the rest of the Wizards open the fall.
Davis isn't just some passenger along for the ride in Washington. If he's playing up to his standard while his younger teammates reveal their lack of complementary experience, we as viewers will know.
Oct 24, 2025; Dallas, Texas, USA; Dallas Mavericks forward Anthony Davis (3) shoots as Washington Wizards center Alex Sarr (20) defends during the first quarter at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Despite the legendary-long list of injuries he's accrued 14 years into his Hall of Fame-worthy career, he seems all ready to go for October's regular season tip-off. The ailments he'd previously sustained to his hand shouldn't prevent him from making his long-awaited Wizards debut in the weeks to come, and he's still productive enough to the point that fans are expecting immediate results.
Even with the Dallas Mavericks, another team he never asked to join who engaged in a much more complicated relationship with the star than anything Washington's prepared for, he averaged over 20 points per game over 29 injury-riddled appearances as a still-productive shot-creator, shot-blocker and rebounder. The Wizards, already stacked with considerably-more tertiary ball-movers than what he had to work with in Dallas, should make Davis' life as easy as ever in regularly feeding him around his favorite scoring zones around the court.
As if Young's regular entry passes aren't enough to excite a strong screener, he'll also have a pair of fellow big men to eat regular minutes at his side in Alex Sarr and Deandre Ayton . Davis has complained about having to manage an entire team's rebounding workload in the past, and the pair of seven-footers should make for fine reinforcements amidst their joint quest to close down Washington's interior.
There's a world in which he shows up in October ready to ball out just for the rest of his unproven supporting cast to shrink under the lights and against the dense Eastern Conference, an outcome that's sure to feed into Davis' darkest doubts regarding Washington's odds to take advantage of his final prime years. Given his potentially-beneficial context, though, all eyes now fall on Davis' attempts to answer the expectations that he's welcomed alongside those he's already brought upon himself .
Consistently producing on both ends of the court and complimenting the expansive young corps are more important than his appearing in all 82 outings, but he'll need any advantage he can capture should he look to secure the four-year, $275 deal that he could theoretically encounter. He's a much more known quantity compared to the rebuilding Wizards, all the more reason to focus on Davis within a lineup full of possible protagonists.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/nba/wizards/onsi as Anthony Davis' Latest Reveal Adds Even More Pressure to Wizards' Season Launch .
