When he joined The Junkies about an hour before the Wizards selected AJ Dybantsa, Monumental Basketball President Michael Winger said, ‘we’re going to get the guy we want, and we know he wants to be in DC in the worst way.’
And as it turns out, after over a month of speculation and more recent wonder if Darryn Peterson (or even someone else) could be in the mix, it was Dybantsa selected at the top of the 2026 Draft – and yes, that’s the guy they wanted all along.
“In my brain, I was thinking we just got AJ…we had the opportunity to take these other guys, and I hope that they are who we think they are, and I can’t wait to meet them and get to know them and really dive deep,” GM Will Dawkins told The Junkies. “But, (Dybantsa) is someone who has been at the top of his class for a long time, and we’ve been watching for three or four years, so we know how talented he is.”
That long-term scouting meant the Wizards had ‘a lot of data points’ on Dybantsa, and once they got to actually do a deeper dive and get to know him, the pick was a lock.
“You’re just hoping what you’ve heard about him and who he is is actually true, and we had the chance to go to BYU and talk to a lot of people, and it matched up,” Dawkins said. “And then you get to spend some time with him and his family and representation here in DC, and you feel even better about that.”
It was a decision the basketball department was in lockstep with from the top down, clearly, but once the No. 1 pick was secured, owner Ted Leonsis did what he usually does – he let his basketball people cook, and had little to no influence on the decision to make about the face of the franchise.
“Ted and Zach are awesome; they support us throughout everything. They want to know and we want to give them some information, but this decision was all Michael and myself and our staff,” Dawkins said. “They definitely met him and spent some time watching, but they just wanted to get to know him so they could answer any questions. They’re not weighing too much input on that, if at all.”
And no, despite chatter and investigating all options, there was never any real serious thought about trading the pick, because the Wizards knew they had their guy.
“I think your phone’s busy, and we understand it’s a business and teams definitely made calls; we know how valuable the No. 1 pick is and we want to do our due diligence, but we also know how special and different AJ Dybantsa is, and it really didn’t get close,” Dawkins said. “We knew we wanted to keep that pick for our fans, our city, and the organization for what he can do when you add him to the group we have, so it was going to take something extremely special and extremely rare for us to punt on an extremely special and extremely rare talent in AJ.”
Listen to Dawkins’ entire visit with the Junkies above!
