ESPN’s Vincent Goodwill: What Winning the Draft Lottery Means for the Wizards

The Washington Wizards won the NBA Draft Lottery. AJ Dybantsa sat there expressionless. Cue the takes.

ESPN's Vincent Goodwill came on the show to push back on the read that Dybantsa's body language meant he did not want Washington.

"These guys are trained, media trained," Goodwill said. "They know all the cameras are going to be on them. They are trained to be frozen."

The historical comp Goodwill reached for was the opposite case.

"Even if it's Cleveland and LeBron James, if something like that were to happen where the hometown kid knew he was going number one and knew he wanted to go to the hometown team, and that's what wound up happening, you're still going to keep a straight face," Goodwill said. "No longer is going to be the day where the executive's name for the New York Knicks, in the blue suit, when Patrick Ewing was going to be announced as the New York Knicks number one draft pick in 1985."

Rich filled in the name.

"That was Dave DeBusschere. That was the old-school Knick, Dave DeBusschere," Rich said. "He was pumped up."

Goodwill thanked him for the assist.

"I couldn't remember which Knick it was, but yeah," Goodwill said. "That type of reaction isn't going to happen. These guys are so sophisticated."

The real case Goodwill made was for the Wizards as the destination.

"I don't think it was a mark of, man, I don't want to go to Washington DC, because when you look at all four teams, is there a better situation than the Wizards, a team that has not won 50 games since with John Wall?" Goodwill said. "They haven't won 50 games since Michael Jackson put out Off the Wall."

The opportunity, in his framing, is wide open.

"There's no better place if you're AJ Dybantsa that you want to turn around a franchise, cuz what the hell do they know about winning?" Goodwill said.

Rich agreed. The Mid-Atlantic, in his framing, is starved for a basketball superstar.

"DC is one of those basketball-starved places," Rich said. "We all know from a sports perspective, you just talked about Washington and how that whole community rallies around that football team. The Wizards have never given their franchise much to care about short of maybe a short stint with Michael Jordan on the back end that didn't turn out to be much of a playoff experience. Gilbert Arenas gave them a couple of years. Like they've had splotches, but they've never had anything consistent."

The current Wizards build is what Goodwill thinks gives Dybantsa a real chance to be the centerpiece of something.

"Now you have a potential young piece, healthy, that you can build around, and they've already started the rebuild process," Goodwill said. "Maybe they figure out what they're going to do with the Trae Youngs of the world and Anthony Davises and everything else."

The macro NBA argument Goodwill closed on was about the speed of rebuilds.

"As Detroit has shown, as other teams have shown, the days of the five-year rebuild is over," Goodwill said. "You can turn around an NBA franchise in two to three years if you get the draft right, if you get the coach right. As much as we talk about there's a lack of dynasties in the NBA and a lack of teams having staying power at the top, that means teams at the bottom, if you do things right, you're not going to stay at the bottom very long either."