{"id":179084,"date":"2026-02-26T12:18:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T17:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=179084"},"modified":"2026-02-26T12:18:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T17:18:36","slug":"wizards-sign-jamir-watkins-promote-15-man-roster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2026\/02\/26\/wizards-sign-jamir-watkins-promote-15-man-roster\/","title":{"rendered":"Wizards Promote Second-Round Rookie To 15-Man Roster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday morning, the Washington Wizards rewarded rookie <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/w\/watkija01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jamir Watkins<\/a> with a new two-year contract, per ESPN senior insider Shams Charania. Selected in the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/06\/27\/wizards-draft-jamir-watkins-clear-need\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">second round of the 2025 NBA Draft<\/a> out of Florida State, Watkins originally signed a two-way contract with the Wizards in early July. He&#8217;s received steady minutes for the now rapidly rebuilding franchise since December, averaging 21.0 minutes per contest (25 games).<\/p>\n<h2>Wizards Sign Rookie Jamir Watkins To Two-Year Contract<\/h2>\n<p>Watkins&#8217; promotion coincides with his play in February. The 24-year-old has posted 13.2 points and 1.0 steal per game over his last six contests, tallying double-figures in each. In that stretch, he&#8217;s made 47.8% of his field goal attempts.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Washington Wizards are signing two-way guard Jamir Watkins to a new two-year contract, agents Drew Morrison and Sam Rose of CAA Sports tell ESPN. Watkins has averaged 13.2 points and one steal in his last six games.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShamsCharania\/status\/2027058767334973814?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 26, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Though some scouts attempted to portray him as a 3-and-D wing, it&#8217;s long been evident that isn&#8217;t his archetype.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: 800px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"a61405551f80e72f675225f083759bb9\" image-id=\"fwuQzDlDFpq8\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 3900px; aspect-ratio: 3900\/2700;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<p>In college, Watkins shot 32.5% from 3. As a rookie, he&#8217;s converted 26.6% of his 3-pointers. In the NBA G League, he&#8217;s shooting 26.3% from 3. Even during his recent surge with the Wizards, he&#8217;s only made 30.3% of his 3s. Nevertheless, the 6-foot-6 wing&#8217;s defensive acumen is so far ahead of the curve that D.C.&#8217;s largely willing to ignore his wonky 3-ball. In that sense, he&#8217;s not too different from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/c\/coulibi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bilal Coulibaly<\/a>, whom the Wizards drafted seventh overall in the 2023 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n<p>To that point, Coulibaly has averaged 10.3 points per game throughout his career. As an exceptional on-ball defender, his double-digit scoring average is basically icing on the cake. However, his touch leaves a lot to be desired, as he&#8217;s shooting 42.2% from the field and 30.3% from 3.<\/p>\n<p>Compared to his 21-year-old French counterpart, Watkins isn&#8217;t necessarily the more refined scorer. He gets a lot of his points by cutting and hustling. Yet, he is further along in his physical development, as he&#8217;s three years older and has about 15 more pounds of muscle.<\/p>\n<div ng-show=\"setImageMetadata.credit\" class=\"modal-image-setImageMetadata\">\n<p class=\"ng-binding\">\u00a9 Rafael Suanes-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday morning, the Washington Wizards rewarded rookie Jamir Watkins with a new two-year contract, per ESPN senior insider Shams Charania. Selected in the second round of the 2025 NBA Draft out of Florida State, Watkins originally signed a two-way contract with the Wizards in early July. He&#8217;s received steady minutes for the now rapidly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":179087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1608,62,3],"tags":[4769,50163,4975],"class_list":["post-179084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wizards","category-basketball","category-nba","category-news","tag-bilal-coulibaly","tag-jamir-watkins","tag-nba-contracts"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179093,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179084\/revisions\/179093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}