The Wizards beat the Bucks 128-116 on opening night, and it doesn't prove Washington is a good basketball team. It proves Anthony Davis is still Anthony Davis, and that Trae Young runs an offense better than almost anyone alive. Milwaukee's season opener was about the worst possible night to learn anything real about either club.
Start with what actually happened, because it undercuts the highlight-reel version of this game. Washington missed 18 of its first 22 three-point attempts. Milwaukee led for most of the night. Two shaky rosters traded jabs until Washington ripped off a 21-4 run, turned a one-point deficit into a double-digit cushion behind a Deandre Ayton dunk, and never let go. That's a real surge. The final score flatters how the full 48 minutes actually looked, no matter how clean the box score reads in the morning.
And the box score is legitimately good. Davis went for 34 points and 12 rebounds in his Washington debut. Young put up 20 points and 13 assists, the kind of line that organized a team that was bricking jumpers for most of the first half. Davis and Young are why this game was ever winnable. The credit belongs to those two specifically.
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RatingBut look at who was on the other bench. Taylor Jenkins was coaching his first game in a Milwaukee uniform. Tyler Herro and Jaime Jaquez Jr., the headline pieces of the trade that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo to Miami, made their Bucks debuts, Herro scoring 24 and Jaquez adding 22 in a loss anyway. It was a roster still figuring out who's who, coached by a man who hadn't called a single timeout for this group before Wednesday night. Beating that team by double digits says more about Milwaukee's disarray in October, which everyone already knew the moment they moved on from Giannis, than about whether Washington's new core can hang with a team that's actually had training camp reps together.
This is one game out of eighty-two, and dismissing a 12-point road win because the opponent is rebuilding is exactly the kind of thing people say about every opening night. Fine. But the standard for being legitimately good has to be higher than beating a team whose coach had been on the job for one game and whose two new stars had never shared a court with this group in a real one. Washington has real talent now, more than it's had in years, and a floor nobody saw a season ago when this same team finished with the worst record in the league. That's genuine progress.
RTGWhat it doesn't deserve is contender talk off a night when the opponent was barely a functioning roster. Davis and Young were brilliant, the supporting cast missed almost every open look it got, and Ayton showed up exactly when it mattered. None of that is Milwaukee's fault for being bad right now, and none of it is Washington's fault for being good at the two positions that matter most. The real answer to whether this team is legitimate is still weeks and several better opponents away. Anyone claiming otherwise off one night against a team in the middle of a teardown is selling you something.
