DraftAnalysis
Washington holds the No. 1 pick when the draft opens June 23, with AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer headlining a loaded top tier.
The 2026 NBA Draft runs Tuesday and Wednesday, June 23-24, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and the Washington Wizards control it. Washington won the May 10 lottery off a league-worst 17-65 season, holding serve at 14% odds to land the No. 1 pick, per the NBA. What the Wizards do with that pick is the most-watched decision of the offseason before free agency opens.
The top of the board has been a three-man argument all season — BYU wing AJ Dybantsa, Kansas guard Darryn Peterson and Duke forward Cameron Boozer — but the reporting now points one direction. ESPN noted Dybantsa was the No. 1 pick in all 10 of the mock drafts it surveyed, and the Wizards have reportedly narrowed their choice to Dybantsa and Peterson. Peterson, per ESPN, has told the second-pick Utah Jazz that he is done taking team visits — a signal he expects to hear his name at No. 1. Read it as posturing or as confidence; either way, the gap between the top two looks like a matter of taste, not talent.
Dybantsa is the prize. The 6-foot-9 wing averaged 25.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists on 51% shooting as a freshman — among the nation’s best scoring marks — and he set a BYU freshman record with 43 points against Utah before breaking Kevin Durant’s Big 12 Tournament freshman scoring record with 40 against Kansas State. Scouts describe a “built-in-a-lab” scoring archetype with rare positional size and a complete shot-creation package; the knock is occasional inconsistency, which at 19 reads more as a footnote than a flaw.
Peterson, the most polished guard in the class, posted 20.2 points and an unusual 4.2 rebounds for a lead ballhandler, though a hamstring injury that cost him the start of the Kansas season and lingered into his return clouded the season-long read. Boozer may be the safest pick on the board — CBS Sports’ scouts called him the “surest thing in this draft” — after a 22.5-point, 10.2-rebound second-team All-American season at Duke. The fourth name, North Carolina’s Caleb Wilson, led the country in dunks (66) when he broke his left hand in mid-February; the 6-9 forward still averaged 19.8 points and 9.4 rebounds and made second-team All-American, and his stock has held into draft week.
After the top four, the lottery gets murky. In CBS Sports’ post-lottery mock, the order runs Dybantsa to Washington, Peterson to Utah, Boozer to the Memphis Grizzlies and Wilson to the Chicago Bulls, followed by Illinois guard Keaton Wagler to the Clippers at five, Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr. to Brooklyn, Houston’s Kingston Flemings to Sacramento, Louisville’s Mikel Brown Jr. to Atlanta, Arizona’s Brayden Burries to Dallas, and Tennessee forward Nate Ament to Milwaukee at ten. Treat picks five through 14 as pencil, not ink — ESPN’s board has several of those guards essentially interchangeable, and one trade can scramble the run.
The fits tell their own story. Utah would pair Peterson with Keyonte George for a young, oversized backcourt. The Dallas Mavericks, a year after taking Cooper Flagg first overall, would add a two-way guard to a core they are trying to grow rather than reload. And Memphis landing Boozer at three would be the kind of value that only falls to a team when the names above it go as expected.
Then there is the trade board. ESPN floated six hypothetical draft-night deals this month — the speculative exercise that fairly draws eye-rolls — but the underlying point is real: a top-heavy class with a soft middle is exactly the setup that pushes front offices to move up for a known commodity or back for volume. Those scenarios are thought experiments, not reported negotiations, and should be read that way until a deal is actually struck.
One structural fact shapes the whole class: NIL money has thinned its depth. Several college players who in past years would have declared chose to return to school for guaranteed paydays, which is why evaluators rate the 2026 top tier as elite but the back half of the first round a notch below recent classes. For Washington and the rest of the lottery, that raises the cost of missing early — the safety net of a deep middle round is thinner than usual.
The first round tips Tuesday, June 23 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC/ESPN, with the second round the next night. Washington is on the clock first, and everything else — including whether any of those floated trades become real — follows from what the Wizards decide to do at No. 1. For how this class stacks up against past drafts, see our draft history hub.
4 min read
Sources: ESPN · CBS Sports · NBA.com Verified news feeds