BY THE TIME the giant bag of ketchup and In-N-Out special sauce was put on the table outside the Washington Wizards‘ locker room on Jan. 14, it was ripped and falling apart.
Only a gigantic group order of burgers and fries could’ve necessitated such a haul of condiments. And on this night, only one player for the Wizards had reason or compulsion to place such a massive order.
That would be the future face of the franchise, second-year center Alex Sarr, who wanted to surprise and treat his teammates to the iconic Southern California restaurant chain, which doesn’t have any locations in Washington D.C. There was one issue though: He had been ejected from the game in the second quarter for spiking the ball above his head in frustration after a foul call. It was, to put it mildly, a questionable ejection for what was more of a bounce than a spike. Nevertheless, it left his team short-handed for the rest of the game against the LA Clippers.
So while he watched the rest of the game from the locker room, Sarr coordinated his plan with a Wizards staffer. The surprise treat had turned into something of an atonement.
It went over well. All but five burgers were gone by the time the Wizards opened up their locker room to the media.
Sarr did not post about his gesture on social media. Neither, for that matter, did the Wizards. Because within the organization there’s already a belief that Sarr has the character and the talent to be the cornerstone of of the franchise after what’s been one of the most arduous rebuilds in the modern NBA.
That is, if the recently acquired Trae Young can help Sarr develop the way the Wizards believe he will.
“Trae understands that the team doesn’t need a savior,” Wizards general manager Will Dawkins told ESPN.
History would suggest otherwise. The Wizards are the only NBA franchise without a 50-win season since the implementation of the 3-point line in 1979-80. They are the only franchise without an All-Star representative in any of the past four seasons, and it’s unlikely that will change when All-Star reserves are announced Sunday.
Enter Young, a four-time All-Star who has averaged better than 25 points and 10 assists over the past three seasons, something no Washington player has ever done in a single season. But the Wizards aren’t looking at him to be their franchise player, the next in a long line of star guards tracing from John Wall to Gilbert Arenas to Rod Strickland all the way back to Earl “The Pearl” Monroe.
“He’s coming in to be a piece,” Dawkins said of Young.
Instead, Washington’s plan is to have the former Hawks star help make the 7-foot Sarr, the No. 2 pick in the 2024 draft, into the player the franchise believes it can build around for the next decade.
“You see a lot of the potential that he has in his game,” Young said. “He’s very smart, especially on the defensive end. Being smart and athletic and that type of size is very uncommon in the league. He was the No. 2 pick for a reason — he’s got a lot of talent and potential and I want to be part of the process to kind of bring it out.”
YOUNG HASN’T SAID or done much since the Wizards acquired him in a trade from the Atlanta Hawks. He’s still dealing with injuries to a knee and quadriceps suffered earlier this season that will keep him out at least through the All-Star break.
The Wizards, of course, have other reasons to be cautious with Young’s health: They only retain their first-round pick this season if it falls in the top eight. If it falls outside the top eight, it goes to the New York Knicks (originally having been sent to the Houston Rockets as part of a trade to acquire Russell Westbrook, eventually landing in New York through a series of other deals).
So for now, Young has mostly been an observer, wrapping his head around this new reality. The Hawks chose to take their next step as a franchise with 24-year-old swingman Jalen Johnson as their frontman after giving Young five cracks at building off his 2021 Eastern Conference finals appearance.
Afterward, he admitted to Andscape’s Marc J. Spears that he was emotional driving to the arena in Atlanta for the final time and was disappointed at how his tenure with the Hawks ended.
But so far at least, Young seems to be embracing this opportunity for a career reset in Washington.
“As a kid, you dream about that type of title,” Young told ESPN, when asked how he felt about not being cast as the face of the franchise in Washington. “But when you’re here [in the NBA] and you’re a part of it, you’re a part of winning, you understand that those things don’t really matter. I’m not a finished product. I know a lot of people may look at me like I am. But you’ve only seen me in Atlanta. You’ve never seen me anywhere else. So I don’t really want to get into too many narratives and what people say, but it’ll all be changed when I start winning games here.”
Young holds a player option for $49 million for next season, and both sides are open to an extension, sources told ESPN. But there’s also the possibility that Young simply picks up his player option and uses next season as an evaluation period with the Wizards as well.
“I came into a kind of similar spot that I did when I was a rookie, but I’m 27 now,” he said. “I’m more mature now. It may look and make me feel like I’m older because I’ve been around for a minute, but I’m not. I’m young enough where I can relate, but old enough I got enough experience. So I’m excited to be around some of these young guys.”
Especially Sarr, who recently became the fourth player in NBA history with 150 blocks and 125 made 3s through his first 100 career games, joining Victor Wembanyama, Chet Holmgren and Kristaps Porzingis.
“If you were to take him versus some of the other centers in the East, just cover up the face and the name, I think analytically he stacks up,” Dawkins said.
Much like his French countrymen, Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert, Sarr is a menace defending the rim. According to Genius IQ, Sarr leads the NBA in contested shots in the paint and restricted area and blocks per game, though Wembanyama hasn’t played enough contests yet this season to qualify for per game leaderboards.
What the Wizards love, however, is not just his rim protection, but Sarr’s ability to defend all five positions. Coach Brian Keefe likes to point to a play in a Jan. 11 game in Phoenix when Sarr was defending Suns All-Star guard Devin Booker on the perimeter.
At first, Booker looked to have a step on Sarr. But Sarr slid his feet, blocked Booker’s shot from the side, controlled it to himself, took off on a fast break and found a streaking Bilal Coulibaly with a crosscourt one-hop bounce pass for a dunk.
“That was special,” Keefe said. “He has an incredibly unique skill set offensively and defensively.”
Sarr is one of seven players to defend 500 or more on-ball screens this season and use drop coverage at least 40% of the time and switch at least 15%. Gobert, by comparison, drops 64% of the time and switches only 4%. Sarr is also one of seven players to match up defensively against centers 30 times a game, forwards for 10 times and guards for 10 times this season.
Offensively though, he’s still growing. In two seasons, Sarr has just 16 scores off lob passes and sometimes lacks the aggression or skill in the post to score inside.
The 10 pounds of muscle he put on in the offseason have helped cut his 3-point attempts from 5.1 per game to 2.7 this season and increased his points in the paint from 5.8 last year to 11.1 this season.
Young will help him get to the rim as he has assisted on 580 lob dunks in his career, the most of any player since he entered the NBA in 2018-19.
But there’s still a lot of room to grow.
IN HIS VARIOUS front office roles in 15 seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dawkins was among the first to see Sarr’s potential. That’s because Sarr was always around as his older brother Olivier shuttled back and forth between the Thunder and their G-League affiliate between 2021 and 2024.
Alex Sarr was 16 when Olivier first joined OKC and just starting to grow into his 7-foot frame. After two years in the Real Madrid program, he came to the United States to play for Overtime Elite in Atlanta. After two years in the States, he signed to play for the Perth Wildcats of the Australian National Basketball League in 2023-24.
“He was playing in a grown man’s league,” Dawkins said of Sarr’s move to Australia. “I waited and went over right towards the very end of the playoffs to go see him to where he’d feel most comfortable over there. And you saw right away he’d be able to be a defensive force in the NBA. But you just saw the fluidity that he played with at that size. And then when we brought him in for a workout, you could see the handle and the shooting and those things, so you knew it would come in time.”
What they didn’t know until they had him in a Wizards uniform was whether he had the temperament to be the future face of their franchise or was better as a complementary player. In many ways, they’re still figuring that part out. Which is why they want to see what he looks like playing alongside an elite point guard like Young.
“I feel like he’s going to make a lot of us look great,” Sarr told ESPN when asked about Young. “He’s going to make me look good, Bilal, Kyshawn [George], Tre [Johnson]. And he’s going to make himself look good if we play well around him.”
Questions about his position in the team hierarchy were quickly swatted away like lazy floaters, however.
“I feel like you don’t necessarily have to flex with people to become a face of a franchise,” Sarr said. “It’s about showing up every day, every game, playing hard, being productive, being consistent and winning.”
That last part is something the Wizards have done very little of lately. Their 11 wins this season are tied for the fewest in the league. They’ve won fewer than 20 games each of the past two seasons and haven’t been above .500 since 2017-18.
One of those terrible seasons helped them land Sarr in the lottery, though it didn’t pay immediate dividends. His summer league debut, when he struggled offensively and ended on a historically bad 0-for-15 shooting night against the Portland Trail Blazers, was cause for concern — though not among Wizards leadership.
“You’re expecting like, ‘Hey, we got to check in on Alex, see how he’s doing,'” Dawkins said. “And it was like the same person, the same level of confidence. I liked that. He was like, ‘I’m ready to get back to DC and now I know what I need to work on.'”
Sarr remembers getting the call to go to dinner with the GM and coach after that dreadful game, like he was getting called into the principal’s office. But after he had spoken to his brother and broken down the tape from the game to understand why he had shot so poorly, he was fine.
“Oh, I definitely remember,” he said with a smile. “When I got invited, I was like, oh s—. It was a funny moment where there was a lot of chatter about me. … I didn’t pay attention to that. I was just frustrated with not performing that well during a game. But after talking to my circle, the people that have always helped me in my basketball journey, I understood that it’s just one game and that I’ve got to work on my game and come back ready for the season.”
THOUGH THE WIZARDS have been a losing franchise for some time — they’ve lost the most games of any team over the past four seasons — in many ways their rebuild is just beginning. On Saturday, they started the youngest lineup in NBA history (an average age of just 20.6) in a loss against the Charlotte Hornets.
One of the reasons Washington’s road back to winning basketball has taken so long is the winding trail the aftermath of the Bradley Beal trade has taken. Dawkins had just joined the franchise when Beal — who held a no-trade clause, and thus all the power in determining his destination — asked out.
“My first 10 days on the job were when we traded Brad,” Dawkins said. “It was one of those situations where you had to build a trust and a relationship very quickly with someone you really didn’t know very well to make the best, most important decision for him and the organization.”
The initial return for Beal seemed light: Chris Paul, Landry Shamet, a slew of second-round picks and first-round pick swaps that seem unlikely to ever be used. But Dawkins and Michael Winger, the Wizards’ president of basketball operations turned Paul into Jordan Poole in a deal with the Golden State Warriors. Last summer, Poole became the centerpiece of the package that brought CJ McCollum to Washington, and McCollum was the key player sent to Atlanta for Young, whose contract lines up with what would’ve been the final two years of Beal’s contract in Washington had he stayed.
That is a tremendous amount of deconstruction and reconstruction for one organization in a short period of time.
But on the same night Sarr was buying his teammates a giant order of In-N-Out, Beal and Young were walking the same corridors of the Intuit Dome.
Beal, who is recovering from season-ending surgery on a left hip fracture, walked with a cane in his right hand to meet Dawkins near midcourt. There were no hard feelings, just an understanding of what Dawkins’ and Winger’s plan for the Wizards’ future was, and why it didn’t make sense for a then-29-year-old Beal to be a part of it.
It’s taken two and a half years for that plan to finally come into focus. Now, the Wizards believe it’s Young who will expedite it.
