The Washington Wizards won the NBA Draft Lottery and will have the first pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, a result that immediately changed the top of the board. In a new mock draft released after the lottery, Yahoo Sports NBA senior analyst Kevin O’Connor projected AJ Dybantsa to Washington and Cameron Peterson to Utah.
For the Wizards, the projection points to a franchise reset built around a player many scouts already view as the prize of the class. Dybantsa, listed at 6-foot-9, led the nation with 25.5 points per game and broke Danny Ainge’s 48-year-old BYU freshman scoring record with a 43-point game. Yahoo Sports captured the mood in one line: “The Wizards finally land their star.”
That pick would also land in a roster that already has more than just young prospects waiting for help. Trae Young is described as a veteran point guard on the Wizards, Anthony Davis is described as an All-Star-caliber big man there if he does not ask out, and Alex Sarr is an effective two-way big for Washington. Kyshawn George, Tre Johnson, Will Riley and Bilal Coulibaly are among the young Wizards players who have shown flashes, which gives the front office a very different problem than most lottery winners face: not whether to start over, but how to fit a top pick into pieces that already need minutes and touches.
Utah’s turn in O’Connor’s mock draft was also notable. He projected Cameron Peterson to the Jazz, calling him a buttery smooth scorer and noting his 6-foot-11 wingspan. Peterson played at Kansas and missed 11 of 35 games, with some of those absences coming after he pulled himself out of games because of cramping he said was tied to taking creatine. Yahoo Sports summed up Utah’s place in the lottery draw with a line that fit the outcome: “The basketball gods finally smile on Utah after the franchise never moved up in the lottery.”
The new mock draft is tied directly to the completed lottery order, so Washington now gets the first real chance to pair its pick with a roster that already includes veterans and young talent. Utah, meanwhile, gets a different kind of relief: a path to a high-end prospect after years of coming up short in the draw. The next move belongs to the teams, but the shape of the draft is already set by one night that put Washington at the front and pushed everyone else to adjust.
For readers tracking the detroit pistons vs cleveland cavaliers timeline, the relevant detail is not a matchup result but the way the draft board has shifted after the lottery. Washington’s win changes the order at the top, and O’Connor’s projections show how quickly one lottery night can redraw the league’s future.
