What The Wizards Have To Work With: 6th, 18th, 34th

As my colleague Jonathan Tjarks brilliantly outlined this week, the Wizards are the team with the highest stakes of the 2011 NBA Draft. Every general manager, whether real or fake, would have drafted John Wall a year ago. But in order for the Wizards to create a winning situation surrounding Wall, Ernie Grunfeld must knock this draft out of the park as Sam Presti did in 2008 when he handed Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka to Kevin Durant.

With the sixth and 18th picks, the Wizards are currently beyond reach of the players I identify as the ‘The Somewhat Sure Thing Big 4’. This group consists of Kyrie Irving, Derrick Williams, Brandon Knight and Enes Kanter and to acquire either of the two non-point guards, Washington would need to be aided by a trade. Because the Wizards have a reasonable amount of depth, they could package Javale McGee with No. 6 to trade up for Williams, but McGee is the most irreplaceable player on their roster not named Wall.

What The Wizards Need: Without question, the Wizards are in dire need of selfless, high basketball IQ players. Those were in short supply as Wall was forced to spend his rookie season tolerating the likes of Andray Blatche and Nick Young while being banged up in the process.

Wall needs to be surrounded by players who are knock-down perimeter shooters, or capable of finishing his offense creation at the rim and preferably both. The Wizards biggest need is therefore on the wing, as it is almost inexplicable how Jordan Crawford put up more than 16 shots per game during his 26 appearances after coming over from Atlanta..

Washington also must upgrade the power forward position, where they are forced to ride out the contract of Blatche. The Wizards played at a deficit at all five positions, but they were easily giving up the most on a nightly basis at power forward, where Blatche played too many minutes and he had next to nothing behind him.

Who May Be Wearing The Wizards Jersey By The End Of The Night: On a Draft Night that will be even more unexpected than usual, it is an exceptionally safe assumption that the Wizards will have these three types of players in on Friday for their post-draft press conference.

1. An athletic small forward with a substandard jumper
2. A physical lunch pale big
3. A do-everything college player with a high basketball IQ

Kawhi Leonard or Jan Vesely at No. 6 would fit the first criteria. The one caveat here could be Chris Singleton, who is a lockdown defender in waiting and wouldn’t need to use his atrocious handle at all because Wall would set him up for stand still jumpers.

Markieff Morris or Kenneth Faried at No. 18 would fit the second criteria, though Nikola Vucevic would be an intriguing alternative.

Jimmy Butler, Chandler Parson or Kyle Singler at No. 34 would fit the third criteria.