The Wizards are counting on internal progression this season

The goal of every NBA team during the offseason, obviously, is to improve. Their respective definitions of improvement may be different — some teams want to shore up their chance at title contention; some want to make the jump from being a lottery team to making the playoffs; others want to improve their salary-cap positioning; and still others might want to merely improve their shot at collecting assets for the future — but the goal remains the same.

How each team goes about improving might be different, as well. There are several avenues through which teams can supplement their rosters. They can use draft picks, like the Suns. They can use free agency, like the Rockets. They can use trades, like the Hornets. Ideally, you want to use some combination of all three, like the Celtics, the 76ers, the Thunder, the Nuggets, or even the Kings.

Sometimes, though, certain avenues of improvement are unavailable for one reason or another. Maybe you traded your first-round pick in an effort to make a stronger playoff push the season before. Maybe you’re mostly capped-out after spending big last offseason and retaining an important free-agent. Maybe your best trade assets are second-round picks. In other words, maybe you’re the Washington Wizards.

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Washington traded its first-rounder to the Nets last season in a deal that was both a salary-dump and an attempt to get stronger for the playoffs. (Andrew Nicholson’s contract was sent to the Nets along with the first-rounder, in exchange for sharpshooter Bojan Bogdanovic, who has since signed with the Pacers.) The Wizards mostly capped themselves out for this summer by signing Bradley Beal (five-years, $128 million), Ian Mahinmi (four-years, $64 million), and Jason Smith (three-years, $16 million) to multi-year deals last offseason, then committing to match any offer made to Otto Porter (four-years, $104 million from the Nets) this July.

As a result, the only mechanisms the Wizards had to improve their roster this offseason were their second-round pick (No. 52 overall), one of the two versions of the mid-level exception (contracts starting at either $5.2 million or $8.4 million), the bi-annual exception ($3.3 million), and minimum contracts.

They used those assets to make their only offseason additions: the No. 52 pick was traded to the Pelicans the night before the draft for backup point guard Tim Frazier; perpetually-injured sharpshooter Jodie Meeks (who has missed 147 games over the last three seasons) was signed with the bi-annual exception; and former Hawks forward Mike Scott was signed to a minimum deal. That’s it.

As a result, the Wizards are returning players that accounted for 87.5 percent of their minutes played last season, and will be counting almost entirely on internal progression to drive their improvement during the 2017-18 season. Banking on internal progression can be a risky proposition, given that improvement is not always linear. You don’t have to look much further than last year’s Portland Trail Blazers team for an example of that.

Washington, though, is in pretty good shape as far as that is concerned. The majority of the team’s core is still of an age where they should be getting better year after year.

John Wall, the Wizards’ best player, turns 27-years-old in a week. He’s coming off the best season of his career and should be even better next year. He’s entering his physical prime and showed last season that he has as much control of the entire floor as any point guard in the league. Wall’s abilities on the break are still superior to those in the halfcourt, but the improvement in his pull-up jumper and his decision-making on when to shoot, when to dish, and when to drive helped push his game to another level last season. Another summer of growth should take him to even higher heights. If he can fulfill Kobe Bryant’s All-Defense challenge (or even come close), he’ll rise higher still.

Bradley Beal, incredible as it might seem, only recently turned 24-years-old. He’s been in the league for five years and is not even six months older than Buddy Hield. Beal, too, is coming off the best — and healthiest — season of his career and has moved firmly into the All-Star-caliber player portion of his career. Porter, stop me if you’re sensing a theme here, is also 24 and coming off a career-best season. He posted career-highs in every category save for assists last season, and was rewarded for his improvement with a max deal. A matched-max, but a max nonetheless. Given their age and career progression thus far, it seems likely that neither player has tapped out his potential just yet. There’s always the chance their development stalls, but that’s not been the way it’s gone for them so far.

Even Markieff Morris, while not necessarily as integral to the team’s success as its core trio, is an important player for the Wizards, and is still days away from turning 28 years old. He’s not likely to begin his decline phase this year. Marcin Gortat might begin to drop off, as he turns 34 in February, but a full season from Mahinmi as his backup should at least help make up for whatever age-related decline the Wizards’ starter experiences.

Kelly Oubre Jr., who emerged as a valuable Swiss Army knife defender last season, won’t turn 21 until December and seems to have only scratched the surface of what he can become. If he ever starts to knock down jump-shots with any sort of consistency, he can become a much more valuable player.

Wizards coach Scott Brooks, whatever his faults, has shown a consistent ability throughout his coaching career to push the best of his young players to a reach a higher plane of their talent. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were going to become stars in Oklahoma City no matter who coached them, but it would be folly to deny that Brooks helped them along. The same is true of players like Serge Ibaka, Andre Roberson, Steven Adams, and more. It’s hardly a coincidence that all of Washington’s young players had their best seasons during Brooks’ first year in town. He’s not a perfect coach but he does know how to put players in position to succeed.

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Is merely putting players still young enough to improve, in position to do so, enough to bump the Wizards up a notch? It worked well enough last year, but that’s no guarantee it’ll work out just as well in the future. If it’s doesn’t, Washington may have to make some big changes next summer, because their ancillary avenues for improvement will remain limited so long as they have a bunch of long-term contracts on their books.