Year 2 of the Washington Wizards’ rebuild begins Thursday night against the Celtics, and while even he has said it will be a multi-year process and they’re still in the first phase, GM Will Dawkins is excited for what’s to come in 2024-25.
“We're playing the endgame. He's very mature mentally, and when I took him to dinner towards the end of that just to see where he was at, he was very positive and knew, hey, this is what I want to work on,” Dawkins said.
“His mindset for his age is rare. We met with all of our players last week and talked about their player development programs and the freedom that we're giving them to play their game, especially our young players. We don’t want to put them in a box; make the right play, make the right read, and be aggressive.
We'd rather have you make a mistake out of aggression than anything else.”
Sarr and Bilal Coulibaly speak French to each other on the floor, which is helping the communication, and rookie Kyshawn George, whose dad is from Montreal, has joined that group as well, so the vocality is present in multiple languages – but Dawkins knew Sarr was special long before that.
“I saw him probably two years ago for the first time in a basketball setting in terms of OTE, but I had his brother in Oklahoma City, so he would come and be in the gym and you'd be like, that's a little different,” Dawkins said. “But then when I really went to all the way out to Perth last year and just saw the physicality and how he kind of caught up and the way he runs the floor can dribble for his size, he was like, okay, this is different.”
Dawkins isn’t just a basketball junkie, though, he’s a Sports Junkie like our guys, so they had to have him weigh in on one other DC rookie: one Jayden Daniels.
“He’s big time. I like the fact he was at different colleges, had that kind of experience, and built himself up and won the Heisman,” Dawkins said. “He came in with that confidence Year 1, and they kept the playbook simple for him, but he's continued to evolve and make those down the field throws. So they got a really good player.”
Take a listen to Dawkins’ entire visit above, as he goes into how he evaluates young basketball talent, especially with how young NBA draft picks can be, as well as what he’s looking for from his team in the early season and more!