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Thomas Bryant is on track to be a long-term piece of the Wizards’ future

The Washington Wizards center is shooting at career-high percentages, which will be really good if this holds up for the season.

By Albert Lee
Chicago Bulls v Washington Wizards
Thomas Bryant has been shooting at career-high rates so far this season.
Photo by Stephen Gosling/NBAE via Getty Images

Washington Wizards center Thomas Bryant has been off to a strong start individually in the 2020-21 NBA season. As Kevin Broom noted earlier today, he hasn’t just been putting up good numbers. He’s putting up efficiency numbers that would make Washington Mystics forward Emma Meesseman look inefficient when she was dominating in the 2019 WNBA Finals.

If you don’t get my NBA-WNBA reference or take offense to it, that’s okay. I’m just trying to stay “on-brand” for some of our commenters, but I digress! So here’s an excerpt what Kevin mentioned about Bryant specifically and his performance against the Brooklyn Nets yesterday:

Over the past three games, [Bryant] shot 26-of-30 from the floor, including 5-of-6 from three-point range. His 12 defensive rebounds may be an encouraging sign that he’ll resume the solid board work he’s done over the previous two seasons in Washington. Bryant also led the team with 3 screen assists, which led to 7 points.

You can watch highlights of Bryant’s performance against the Brooklyn below:

So far this season, Bryant is averaging 17.9 points and 6.7 rebounds in about 29 minutes per game. He is making nearly 67 percent of all of his shots, 50 percent of his threes (9-of-18) and 71.7 percent of his two-point shots.

Granted, the season is just seven games through. But if Bryant can continue averaging close to 60 percent of his shots from the field and keep shooting above 40 percent from three, he’ll be on track to be an All-Star this season. Note that teams won’t have a game this year, but there are expected to be named teams nevertheless — if the Wizards can continue to win games.

The Wizards were always going to be built around its backcourt of Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook. And yes, Rui Hachimura and Deni Avdija figure to be long-term pieces for their future. However, Bryant to this point hasn’t been viewed as a potential long-term piece like the other players.

Again, it’s early. But Bryant is on-track to make himself a long-term piece for the Wizards if he keeps playing at a sustained high level like this all season.