AJ Dybantsa Is 100 Percent Sure He Is Going No. 1 to the Wizards. He Is Probably Right.
AJ Dybantsa told reporters this week he is 100 percent sure the Wizards will pick him first overall in the 2026 NBA Draft. Washington keeps doing things to suggest he is right.
The Wizards won the lottery in May with the 14 percent odds. The Jazz, Grizzlies, Bulls, and Clippers rounded out the top five. Washington pulled the lottery favorite to land the No. 1 pick, and the front office now has the kind of opportunity that has not landed in DC in a long time.
Dybantsa was the consensus top prospect entering the year. Then Darryn Peterson of Kansas had a monster freshman season and started pushing for the top spot. Cameron Boozer of Duke had Final Four moments that made executives wonder if he was the safer pick. By the end of the college basketball season, the top three was completely unsettled, and the Wizards were under no obligation to take Dybantsa.
That changed when Washington started scheduling workouts.
The Wizards have spent significant time with Dybantsa in the pre draft process. They have brought him in for measurements, interviews, and scrimmages. The medical staff has cleared him. The analytics staff has signed off. The coaching staff has watched the BYU tape repeatedly and decided his fit alongside Bub Carrington and Bilal Coulibaly is exactly what the Wizards rebuild needs.
Dybantsa is 6’9″. He has the wingspan of a forward and the handle of a guard. He averaged a real all around stat line at BYU. He is the kind of two way wing every team in the league is desperate to find. He can defend three positions. He can run pick and roll. He can shoot off the catch. He is not going to be the best player on a championship team his rookie year, but he is going to be a real difference maker fast.
The Cam Boozer pitch is the other interesting wrinkle. Boozer publicly told reporters this week that he would fit the Wizards’ vision and timeline. That is a polite way of saying he wants Washington to think about taking him over Dybantsa. The Boozer family has worked the pre draft process hard, and the Duke forward has put together compelling tape and interviews. He is not getting the call. The Wizards are taking Dybantsa.
The Peterson conversation is harder to dismiss. The Kansas guard had the most dominant individual freshman season in college basketball. He scored at every level. He showed an All-Star floor as a creator. Some Wizards staffers reportedly preferred Peterson during early board discussions. But Carrington is already the long term lead guard in DC, and adding another small player at the top of the draft would create a positional logjam that does not serve the rebuild.
Dybantsa makes positional sense. Dybantsa makes development sense. Dybantsa makes culture sense. The Wizards have made the call internally, and the player has known about it for weeks. That is why he is so confident in interviews.
The draft begins on June 23. The Wizards will be on the clock at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday night. Adam Silver will walk to the podium. AJ Dybantsa’s name will be the first one announced.
The next decade of Wizards basketball starts there. Washington has waited a long time for this kind of moment. Whether Dybantsa lives up to it will define the franchise.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
