Wizards Plan to Hold Onto Anthony Davis Through Next Season and Bet on a Trade Deadline Rebound
The Washington Wizards have finally made their intentions clear with Anthony Davis. They are not trading him this summer. They are betting on him rebuilding his value during the 2026-27 season and unloading him at next year’s deadline. The plan reads like a slow, deliberate bet, and it is exactly what a rebuilding franchise should do, even if Davis hates it.
According to multiple league reports, Wizards general manager Will Dawkins and team president Michael Winger are aligned on this strategy. They acquired Davis in February as part of a seven-player deal that sent multiple assets back to Dallas. Davis never suited up for the Wizards this season because of injuries he was already nursing when the trade went down. He played zero games for his new team and watched from the sideline as Washington finished the year out of the playoffs.
That is the problem with trading him now. His value cratered. Davis is a 33-year-old big man with a long injury history, a giant contract, and zero recent footage to show contending teams that he can still be the player he was two years ago. No general manager in the league is going to offer real assets for a player they have not seen on the floor in a year. The Wizards know this. So they are holding.
The play is straightforward. Get Davis healthy. Get him on the court next season. Let him post solid numbers on a team that has no expectations and plenty of touches available. By the February 2027 deadline, every contender that needs a defensive big man is going to be in the market, and Davis will be a very real option if he is actually playing basketball.
This is the part of asset management that fans never want to hear about. Davis wants out. He has hinted in multiple interviews that he does not see himself as a long-term part of a rebuilding Washington roster. He is right. He is not a long-term Wizard. But that does not mean the Wizards owe him a trade on his timeline, especially when his market value has dropped through the floor.
The Wizards are doing what the Mavericks did not do. Dallas was so worried about appeasing veterans like Davis and trying to win in the moment that they made the kind of franchise-ending trade that cost everyone their jobs. Washington is taking the opposite approach. They are letting the asset develop, holding patient on the market, and waiting until the right offer materializes.
The names already being floated as potential suitors include the Portland Trail Blazers, who could use a defensive anchor next to their young core, and the Los Angeles Lakers, who are reportedly interested in reuniting with Davis if the cost is right. Both teams will need to wait. The Wizards are not making this move on anyone else’s timeline.
From Washington’s standpoint, the worst-case scenario is that Davis gets hurt again or has a bad season and his value drops even further. The best case is that he plays 65 games, averages 23 and 12, and looks like the All-NBA defender he has been at his best. If even half of that happens, the Wizards can extract real assets from a contender at the deadline.
The patience is also a sign that Washington’s front office finally has its act together. The team has spent the last few years collecting picks, drafting development guys, and building a long-term framework. Davis is a luxury problem on a rebuilding team. They do not need to solve him right now, and they should not rush a solution just because the player is unhappy.
Davis will keep complaining. The Wizards will keep ignoring it. And come February, this strategy might actually pay off in a way the previous front office regime in Dallas could only dream about.
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.
