After finally blowing up their roster and giving up on the Bradley Beal era, the Washington Wizards enter this upcoming 2023-24 NBA season with zero expectations. The Wizards will simply not be a good team this season. They have no chance of sniffing even the play-in tournament. If the preseason has shown anything, this campaign will just be a whole lot of vibes and a chuckfest for Washington's new dashing duo of Jordan Poole and Kyle Kuzma. Is that a concern for the Wizards at all this season? It may just be.

Washington has gone 2-0 in the preseason. But both of them came from non-NBA teams — the Cairns Taipans of the NBL and the Charlotte Hornets (do we even consider the Hornets an NBA franchise at this point?) Jokes aside, don't expect the Wizards to have a handful of two-game winning streaks throughout the season.

No disrespect intended, but the win over the Taipans — even if it was a 63-point beatdown — doesn't really mean much or gives an indication that Washington could be serious this year. But neither did a six-point win over Charlotte. Nonetheless, the game against the Hornets could be an indication of just how several Wizards outings could look on a nightly basis.

Wizards concern from 2023-24 NBA preseason: Starters could dig them into holes early

The Wizards did come away with the six-point win, but much of the credit deserves to go to the third stringers for putting together a strong fourth quarter to bring them back and earn the come-from-behind victory. If the Hornets game is a telling sign of how majority of the Wizards season will go, there could be a handful of nights when the starters could dig themselves in a huge deficit early that they cannot overcome.

The Wizards fell behind 18-4 to open the game as a result of poor execution on both ends of the floor. They had poor shot selection and careless turnovers early on as well as multiple defensive lapses that generated several open shots for Charlotte.

Washington did claw its way back into the game, closing the opening quarter on a 19-12 run after Kuzma got aggressive and the second unit came in. The Hornets ended up trailing by just seven points heading into half time, but fell again by double-digits at multiple points during the third quarter.

But the end-of-bench guys led by Ryan Rollins, Jared Butler, and even veteran Mike Muscala came in the final period and orchestrated a 35-18 fourth quarter run that kept the Wizards undefeated in preseason so far.

Kyle Kuzma led the way and scored 15 of his 19 points in the first quarter. He did make just 1-of-6 from beyond the arc, but he ended up shooting 50 percent from the field (8-of-16), with most of the damage coming from layups and strong drives to the basket.

His partner-in-crime Jordan Poole (and yes, a lot of basketball crimes will be committed by this duo this season), had a rather forgettable night after dropping 18 points in his Wizards debut versus Cairns last week. Against Charlotte, Poole went just 2-of-13 from the field, with both makes coming from beyond the arc (on eight attempts). He did wind up with 11 points as he converted 5-of-6 from the freethrow line.

No doubt, Poole and Kuzma will still have several massive offensive nights throughout the season where both of them will drop 30 points apiece while giving up 35 on the other end.