The Washington Wizards added another name to the mix this week, agreeing to an Exhibit 10 contract with Maryland native Trevor Keels and locking in a training camp invite for the 23-year-old guard.
Keels arrives after the Capital City Go-Go recently acquired his G League rights, and the move gives Washington another camp body to sort through as it keeps filling out the edges of its roster. He’ll join fellow Exhibit 10 signee Alondes Williams in that fight for preseason minutes, with both players likely headed to the Go-Go afterward.
For Keels, the path to anything more than a camp look is still narrow. If the Wizards don’t elevate him to a two-way deal, he’ll be in line for the kind of short-term chances Williams has seen before him, including 10-day contracts. That said, there is at least one trait that keeps him on the radar: his shooting.
A former Duke freshman, Keels entered the 2022 NBA Draft without enough production to land in the lottery and went 42nd overall to the New York Knicks. Since then, he’s slowly built out a more useful scoring profile, one that leans on spacing and perimeter touch.
His G League numbers aren’t spotless - a 56.4% true shooting mark across four seasons leaves plenty to be desired - but the 3-point line has become his calling card. Keels has hit 38.1% from deep in the G League, and the trend has pointed upward every year. Last season, his first with the Heat’s system, he drilled 40% of his 3s while taking more than nine attempts per game.
That kind of shotmaking is the hook here, especially for a Wizards roster that can always use another guard who can stretch the floor. Keels’ NBA résumé is still tiny - 23 minutes across 11 games - and he hasn’t made much of a dent at that level yet. Still, Washington has a reason to take a closer look at a scorer who has kept grinding his way through different stops.
If he does somehow crack the NBA side of the roster, the climb will be steep. The Wizards already have plenty of ball-handling and creation ahead of him, with clear starting point guard Trae Young and a cluster of names behind him including Tre Johnson, Bub Carrington and Tre Mann. The wing group is crowded too, with AJ Dybantsa, Will Riley and Bilal Coulibaly adding even more bodies to the mix.
That’s why Keels’ best shot may be the same one he’s been chasing for a while now: keep hitting threes, keep forcing the issue, and hope the opportunity comes around. For the moment, he’s just the latest young guard trying to carve out a place in Washington’s ever-growing pool of hopefuls.
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