Deni Avdija finds stability, and maturity, with the Washington Wizards

Washington is the only U.S. metro area the Israeli transplant has ever lived in; the house he purchased in suburban Virginia for him and his mother has become a home. The Wizards’ equipment room is the only equipment room with a professional sketch of his face hanging on the wall.

More than that, the contract meant the endorsement Avdija had craved since entering the NBA three years ago was spelled out for all to see: The Wizards believe in him. The fact that it was a new front office making the offer, not the one that drafted him, was like a double shot of confidence.

“I feel like it cleared something off my chest a little bit,” Avdija said in a recent interview, “and I could strictly focus on basketball.”

That clarity helped lay the foundation for a major step forward during a season in which the Wizards (15-66) needed a few young players to pop — to help shepherd the roster through the first stage of a rebuild and to give their bedraggled fans someone to latch onto.

Avdija fine-tuned his shot, learned how to use his size, sharpened his basketball IQ and matured, all of which led to career highs in points (14.6), rebounds (7.2), assists (3.8) and field goal percentage (51). The Wizards, who lost their final home game of the season, 129-127, to the Chicago Bulls on Friday, at times have run their offense through Avdija on one end of the court and called on him to be a lockdown defender on the other.

He led the Wizards with 24 points and 12 rebounds against the Bulls.

“Deni’s been great,” interim coach Brian Keefe said. “Growth has been tremendous. We’ve put the ball in his hands to make plays for himself, for others. The rebounding has been great. We’re going to keep pushing Deni to do more because we think he can be — do — more.”

The evolution began over the summer in Israel, where Wizards assistant coach Zach Guthrie and athletic trainer Carlos Bustamante decamped to spend a week on Avdija time: work in the first half of the day, beach in the second. Nudging Avdija to the next level meant getting him to harness his physical power. At 6-foot-9, 210 pounds, Avdija has the size, awareness and lateral quickness to effectively defend guards and forwards. But on offense, the Wizards wanted him to get more — and more forceful — touches at the rim.

With Guthrie, Avdija gained strength in the weight room and a new mind-set.

“You’re 6-9. Why are you finishing like a little guard?” Guthrie would ask him, mimicking shooting a floater with his body falling away from the basket. “You’re finishing like [point guard Tyus Jones]. Be 6-9. Pivot, deliver blows, finish.”

Guthrie developed the mantra “dominate simple” to keep Avdija’s mind on track.

“Sometimes it’s easy for young players. They’re like, ‘I want to be good at this and this and this!’ ” Guthrie said. “You are 6-9, athletic, strong and a very good right-hand driver. Some people think you go right too much? Doesn’t matter. Be great at going right. Dominate the simple thing of going right. Then if they stop it or take it away, we’ll build in counters as we go. Just do the thing in front of you and go from there.”

To do the thing in front of him, Avdija needed to be able to see the thing in front of him, so Guthrie worked on slowing his game down. One of the forward’s most apparent areas of improvement this season has been his ability to finish through heavy contact at the rim.

That came not from barreling toward the basket with all his might. Slowing down makes it easier to see the court, make decisions and find gaps. And if there are no gaps, well — that’s where the 6-9, 210-pound thing comes in.

“You see him delivering these blows now,” Guthrie said. “He has so much more control over his body.”

Avdija also had to gain more control of his emotions.

The forward has always occupied a little brother role in the Wizards’ locker room, the endearing joker whose winking attempts to adopt American culture lighten the mood. He has a love affair with country music and a blunt curiosity (“What is a lobbyist?” he once asked during an interview after hearing someone say the word.) For a time, he was fixated on determining which U.S. college he would have attended. He often landed on Southern California because, of course, the beach.

But Avdija was interested in shedding that persona entering his fourth season in the league. He wanted his voice to weigh more in the locker room. He was sick of taking himself out of games by obsessing over small mistakes or a referee’s call. A poorly executed play would snowball into a blah game, which would become five bad days.

“He’s a big enough piece of our team to be able to find ways to impact the game throughout 48 minutes,” third-year forward Corey Kispert said. “And if he lets the bad things roll off his back and continues to play, he’s going to be really good.”

Of all his improvements, Avdija is proudest of the mental leaps, of his consistency and an ability to pull himself out of a spiral.

After his biggest game of the season — a 43-point, 15-rebound effort in New Orleans before the all-star break in February — he sat at his locker wearing Mardi Gras beads and proclaimed he was moving to Bourbon Street. The next game, he had five points and four rebounds in a crushing loss to Denver.

He processed where he erred and moved on. The next game he played, he had 15 points and 15 rebounds in a loss to the Lakers.

“I know numbers are stupid to say, but back in the day, that game was amazing for me,” Avdija said. “And that was not the best game. Right now, I keep it in the high standards. I’m aggressive. Mentally, I’m not letting go of the rope.”

Signing the contract, maturing naturally as a young person and growing into his body all played a part in Avdija’s emergence as an on-court leader. So, too, did the events of Oct. 7, when Avdija’s mother called him downstairs in the middle of the night to watch television reports of Hamas’s attack on Israel.

“We just sat and watched,” Avdija said. “Nobody understood what happened in the beginning.”

In the days after the attack, as Israel declared war, Avdija grew to understand the gravity of the situation. His teammates started asking questions about Israel and Palestine, and he learned that a childhood friend had been deployed to Gaza.

Avdija, who is reluctant to speak about the war, said it was difficult to focus the first few months after the attacks of Oct. 7. In a preseason game, he wore the name of an Israeli soldier who died scrawled on his shoes after he heard the soldier was a fan.

“Listen, it’s probably the worst thing that’s happened to the state of Israel, ever. We’ve never had such a thing, especially with civilians like that,” Avdija said. “It was tough to play. But it gave me some drive to be better here, too. It was my time to kind of represent, show awareness.”

Avdija has felt heavy pressure to represent his country since he became the first Israeli to get picked in top 10 of the NBA draft and just the second to go in the first round.

Controversies such as Kyrie Irving and Meyers Leonard’s antisemitic comments have served as reminders that Avdija is thought to be the only active full-time NBA player who is Jewish. (Ryan Turell, who has spent the past two seasons in the G League, is also Jewish). But for Avdija, the pressure of being “the only” is a constant thrum in the back of his mind.

“Some players, they’ll have kind of all right games, everybody forgets about it and the next game they can drop 20, it’s all good. Me? Every game is like a playoff game,” Avdija said, referring to the Israeli media that make up most of his online consumption. “Everybody’s watching me; everybody’s reporting [on] me; everybody’s cutting my film and talking about it after games.”

Avdija’s mental task this season was to strike a balance. At the same time he sought to shed the feeling that he disappointed a country with every subpar game, he also wanted to play harder than ever to represent Israel.

“With a curse, it’s a blessing,” Avdija said. “Sometimes it sucks to get followed around everywhere, but it’s also fun. Because when you’re in a good situation, you’re playing good, everybody pushes you.”

Asked what he wants out of his career, Avdija shakes his head; it’s too soon to tell. He is clear-eyed about the fact that the organization he loves is rebuilding, which means nearly everyone on the roster is liable to be traded for draft picks.

Still, he wanted to be here in the beginning.

He did find an answer, eventually, for where he wants to end up in his career, but it’s not the name of a team or a city. He pointed to the wall across the Wizards’ practice facility that has on it the names of the franchise’s all-stars, NBA Community Assist Award leaders and league MVP winners.

“If I’m going to play for the Heat or the Lakers in three years, we’ll never know, I don’t know. Right now? This is my home. I want to be on that wall. I want to be making a mark,” Avdija said. “There’s nothing more exciting than to be here from the start. Like, you were one of the first pieces in a team that eventually will go far. It adds some nice charm into the story.”