The Wizards just got GREAT news...

The Wizards just got some pretty great news after Anthony Davis reveals his plans for this year. Not only how many games he wants to play, but how many wins he wants the Wizards to have. If it all comes to fruition, the Wizards are in a fantastic spot. But speaking of fantastic spots, we got some wonderful Summer League highlights to go over once again as two names in particular continued to impress despite some shortcomings. And it's making a lot of people question the two-way decisions currently on the Wizards' roster, even maybe pushing out a bit of a fan favorite. We got to dive into all the latest results, all the latest news on AD and more all coming up on this episode of Wizards Digest. Look, Summer League, this last game, I know a lot of the guys that we've wanted to see play, they've kind of been sitting for a little while. It was sort of the skeleton crew, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't important. And one guy in particular that I want to talk about is Mr. Akpara. Felix Akpara, he has been, you know, second round pick, drafted by the Magic, but of course now he's on the Wizards. He's been pretty good, like, pretty impressive. Greg Finberg tweeted it out. Look, he threw down an impressive one-handed lob. Then he caught another lob, dunked it home over a contesting defender. You saw those highlights in the intro. And him and Beekman, Reese Beekman, have been pretty solid. Kevin Broome tweeting out a few of the Wizards played really well. Beekman at 14 assists, which we'll dive into in a bit. But Akpara looks like he might be a competent backup big man in the future, though he did commit seven fouls and four turnovers, which is not what you'd love to see. But Nick, I want to just talk about Akpara first, because as good as he's been, and he is currently on a two-way, you start to wonder if his sort of progression throughout Summer League could push one of these two-way guys, currently on two-way deals, like a Julian Reese, almost out of a contract spot. Yeah, and obviously we're going to dive into Anthony Davis later. I think with the Summer League game, you're not seeing any of the most exciting players play. They have a big decision to make here because of what you just mentioned, between a lot of different guys. We're going to dive into Beekman later. I think he is the most impressive by far, at least relative to expectations in the Summer League. I don't know. It makes... Akpara is making them think a little bit. When you look at it from the perspective of yesterday's game, obviously you have Reese Beekman. The assist to turnover ratio is pretty good. 14 assists to four turnovers. And obviously the fouls are going to happen in Summer League. They kind of just play more aggressive. I think they're playing to that. It's not like he's going to go out and average five fouls a game. But they now have a very interesting decision to make surrounding their two-way spots. I think that's the biggest storyline here. And a lot of these guys, basically everyone is fighting for their final spot. Yeah, they really are. The current two-way spots are Akpara, Julian Reese, Juju, and Jameer Watkins. And Julian Reese is an interesting case. And the reason I'm bringing him up is because the future of these kind of second, third string big men in Washington, there are a lot of questions around that, right? So Julian Reese, of course, small sample last year, but averaged a double-double, which is kind of funny. Looking at that, he didn't play very much, only 13 games. But very solid, 53% from the field, one and a half steals a game. But, you know, the Wizards do have a little bit of depth there. And Akpara, I think he'll probably end up spending time on the go-go. But with him being good and starting over Julian Reese in a lot of these Summer League games, you wonder if the Wizards see Akpara as having a brighter future than Reese. And then, you know, as we're going to get into in a second, like, the depth there, like, I don't know. We got Anthony Davis, who's hoping to play a lot. There's DeAndre Ayton. Who knows about the long-term future of these guys? But you still have Vukcevic. And it's like, I don't know. There are a lot of big men. Do you think there's any world where, even though, again, he averaged a double-double, I know it's not, like, real, but whatever, where Julian Reese gets pushed out for a guy like Bikvinic, that, as you mentioned, had a really good Summer League. Overall, shooting 40% from three this year in Summer League. 42%, by the way. Like, that plus his incredible defensive acumen, 3.2 stocks, 14 assists in this last game. I think he, more than anyone, like you said, is forcing a pretty big decision from management to decide, you know, who actually stays, who goes. We have time. There'll be Exhibit 10s. But, like, for him, like, I don't know. I look at these two-way spots, and I struggle to find a way where he's not put on one, because I feel like some other teams might be trying to snatch him and maybe even some other guys up. Yeah. You look at Reese's stats, there's a couple avenues to think about it. You can think about it from the Summer League perspective of their playing, you know, above him because they think he's, in theory, better, or it's because they want to give him more run because they internally believe in Julian Reese a lot more and that he's basically a lock for the team. Now, you know, you look at his stats last year, it's a fake double-double. He looks really good, and you can't really take that away. I think I'd be very hard-pressed to actually cut him in that regard and get him off the two-way contract. But I do think there's other avenues they can maybe work out, but it's a good problem to have. I would be hard-pressed to not put Beakman on the roster, but then someone that we don't want to have let go is going to have to, in that case, you know, be swapped during the two-way contract. Actually, that's why yesterday's game was so important, even though, you know, the mass audience probably wasn't watching. It's crazy. And Seth Trimble, obviously, was another name who's been pretty good, had a bit of a rough performance yesterday. But looking here, again, it is interesting. Akbar had a good game, you had Beakman have a great game, but at this point, I'd still lean Julian Reese just because no matter what we talk about in the Summer League, the G League, even performing in 10-game sample size at the NBA level at double-double is very impressive. Yeah, it is. Look, I don't think anything's going to happen in the next few days or anything, but you really never know. And hey, look, if you do want to stay updated, we are here every single day with all the latest Wizards news, so make sure you are hitting subscribe because 90% of you still haven't done it. It's crazy. You are subscribing! We're over 300 now. Thank you so much, by the way. But yeah, there are some big decisions, but one of the biggest question marks, I think, for the Wizards, as much as we like to talk about the G League and stuff because that's kind of what's going on this time of year, it is the main roster. And we've looked at the depth chart, we've looked at the payroll. One of the biggest questions just straight up is Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis recently was interviewed, and, well, I'll show you what was kind of said. And he makes a bold claim. This is from Wizkins, who was interviewing them on sort of Instagram, I think it was. Can you predict your stat line this year and your record? Davis, I don't really care about record, but we're going to have 40-plus wins. How many games played for you? 82. So, first of all, I think this is pretty good news. Like, Anthony Davis is already ready to lock in and try and play 82 games. Now, I'm already seeing people say, look, you're 100 times more likely to see the Wizards win a championship than you are to see Anthony Davis play 82 games. But, look, we know, right? I don't need to go into the stats for Anthony Davis and why this means a lot, but what I do like to see is that not only is he saying, hey, yeah, like, I want to play 80 games, I want to win 40-plus games. Reasonable expectation. Dude, 40-plus is a nice line to hit, you know, a 500 team, improve a decent bit, obviously, over the last few years, which have not been very pretty, but he does really seem bought in. It's something that we've been talking about for a while, and whether or not he gets that big long-term extension, I don't know at this point, but he seems confident staying in D.C. They've had a bit of discourse about LeBron, and now he's saying he wants to aim to play 82. Look, even if there's, like, a tiny, tiny chance of it happening, I do like that he's out here saying, like, he wants to make it happen. Yeah, he's not going to play 82 games. There's no chance. But what does matter here is that he's healthy, which he seems, again, he wouldn't say that if he wasn't, but also for the first time in what feels like, I mean, over the past week, it's happened, but he's happy to be here. At least it seems that way. Now, we're going to have to see. Maybe he's just saying this because he knows it's the best way for him to get the most amount of money, which is the max extension. But this is very good news on multiple fronts. Obviously, talking with the G-League guys, that's good news because they have a very difficult but good decision to make. And now Anthony Davis is coming out, and for a while there, there was conversation, does he want to be in Washington? Is he actually going to suit up for Washington? Now it's, I'm going to play 82 games for the Wizards. Me and Trey Young are going to go out and hopefully, along with the young guys in the Eastern Conference, it's getting pretty interesting. Obviously, the Hawks moments ago traded for Luke Dort. You have a lot of moves happening across the NBA, and the Wizards are positioned very, very well. And if Anthony Davis plays 60 games, 65 games, for the limit there for the awards, I mean, I can't imagine this team having less than 40 wins. But I'm obviously, we're probably biased higher on most. Well, yeah, as we should be, right? Again, looking at the standings last year, 17 to 65, it's like, you know, it does hurt a little bit. But 40 wins also isn't even guaranteed a play-in spot. But we're here talking about, you know, we think this team really could be a top-five seed. And I still stand by that, looking at the depth chart, looking at what this team could be. Trey Young bought in. Now, he was also listed recently in an article as the most risky contract of the offseason. Maybe that's another story for another day. But just with the development, you know, Trey Johnson could be like a six-man-of-the-year caliber guy. I genuinely believe that. Keyshawn George has been putting in some work. There's some Instagram videos of that. AJ Devontz is obviously AJ Devontz. So this guy's going to come in and probably be the rookie of the year. That's another thing AD said. He's like, I think AJ's going to be rookie of the year. Easy question. The guys all seem bought in. There seems to be a very bright future ahead. So let us know your thoughts. Will Anthony Davis, what are the chances that he plays 82 games? Is it like 5%, 10%? I mean, he wants to do it. Less than that. Well, maybe. Has he ever done it? No, probably a lot less than that. But, you know, it doesn't matter. They want to win. And they're going to do everything they can to do that. And hey, even if he does miss some games, which he almost certainly is, we seem to have a nice little rotation, some bigs coming up through the system. So plus DeAndre in there for now as well. So a lot of great stuff. Leave your thoughts on all of it down below, but that will do it for this episode. Thank you for subscribing, for liking, for tuning in every single day. I'm Josh Goss, my co-host Nick Goss. We'll catch you in the next one.