Kyshawn George went from a Swiss junior side to a Washington Wizards starting five in about three years. His second NBA season is the one that changed how people talk about him, and it ended in March with an elbow injury. Below is the whole picture: the background, the draft, the numbers through 2025-26, and what year three should look like.
Short version. He is a 6-foot-8 wing for the Washington Wizards, born in Switzerland on December 12, 2003. New York took him 24th in the 2024 NBA Draft after a single season at Miami. In 2025-26, he started all 48 games he played and averaged 14.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.5 assists a night.
| Details about Kyshawn George | Fact |
| Full name | Kyshawn Shanty Alonzo George |
| Born | December 12, 2003, in Aigle, Switzerland |
| Hometown | Monthey, Switzerland |
| Height and weight | 6-foot-8 inch |
| Position | Wing (guard and forward) |
| Team and number | Washington Wizards, No. 18 |
| College | Miami (FL), one season, 2023-24 |
| Drafted | 2024, first round, 24th overall, by the New York Knicks |
| 2025-26 averages | 14.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 29.0 minutes |
| Career averages | 11.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists in 116 games |
| Status | Season ended March 2026, elbow |
Key takeaways
- Swiss-born wing, 6-foot-8, No. 18 for the Washington Wizards.
- Drafted with the 24th pick in 2024 by the New York Knicks after one year at Miami.
- Year two was a genuine leap: 14.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.5 assists across 48 starts.
- His 3-point stroke climbed from 32.2 percent as a rookie to 38.1 percent.
- An elbow injury closed his season in March 2026. He turns 23 in December.
Who is Kyshawn George?
Kyshawn George‘s story begins in Switzerland. He was born in Aigle on December 12, 2003, and grew up in Monthey, a small town in the French-speaking region of the country. Basketball was part of his family from the beginning, as his father, Deon George, played college basketball at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania before enjoying a professional career overseas.
On the floor, he is a connector. He handles, he passes, and he shoots off the catch from the wing, and at that size he can defend three or four positions in stretches. Washington liked the package enough to start him from early in his rookie year. Readers who enjoy tracking young players before the league catches on will find the same arc across our other athlete profiles.
From Monthey to Elan Chalon
Switzerland has never been an NBA pipeline. He left home as a teenager for France and spent four years inside the Elan Chalon system. The club’s youth and reserve sides gave him minutes while he studied at Lycée Emiland Gauthey in Chalon-sur-Saône.
The numbers from that stretch are what scouts kept quoting. Miami’s own bio lists 17.6 points and 6.5 rebounds a game for his under-21 team in 2022-23. A wing of that height putting up those numbers against older French competition gets American colleges on the phone in a hurry.
One season at Miami changed everything
He committed to Miami and turned up in the fall of 2023 as a freshman almost nobody outside recruiting circles could name. Twelve months later, he was a first-round pick. He played 30 games, started 16, and averaged 7.8 points and 3.0 rebounds for the Hurricanes, leading all Miami freshmen in both.
- 21 points against Wake Forest on January 7, 2024
- 9 rebounds against Pittsburgh on January 27, 2024
- Four 3-pointers against North Carolina on February 26, 2024
- Double figures in 12 of his 30 appearances
Those are not superstar numbers, and no one pretended otherwise. NBA teams were buying the frame, the touch and the birth year.
Draft night 2024: New York picked, Washington started him
The Knicks used the 24th selection of the 2024 NBA Draft on him. He never played a minute in New York. His rights moved to Washington in a draft-night deal, and he made his NBA debut for the Wizards on October 24, 2024.
For a rebuilding team that had just taken Alex Sarr at No. 2, the fit was obvious. Washington needed length on the wing and a passer who did not need the ball in his hands. He started 38 games as a rookie, which rarely happens to a pick in the twenties.
The stats: rookie year against year two
Kyshawn George’s stats through 2025-26 read like two different players. The table below sets the two seasons side by side.
| Category | 2024-25 (rookie) | 2025-26 |
| Games (starts) | 68 (38) | 48 (48) |
| Minutes | 26.5 | 29.0 |
| Points | 8.7 | 14.8 |
| Rebounds | 4.2 | 5.1 |
| Assists | 2.5 | 4.5 |
| Steals/blocks | 1.0 / 0.7 | 1.0 / 0.9 |
| Field goal percentage | 37.2 | 43.8 |
| 3-point percentage | 32.2 | 38.1 |
| Free throw percentage | 75.3 | 80.2 |
Every line moved. Scoring rose by more than six points a game, assists nearly doubled, and the shooting turned from a problem into a weapon. Hold on to the 3-point figure: 99 makes on 260 attempts, or 38.1 percent, after a rookie year at 32.2 percent.
Free throws climbed too, which usually says the confidence is real rather than lucky. His best night came early. On October 24, 2025 at Dallas, he put up 34 points on 11-of-15 shooting and went 7-of-9 from deep.
To that he added 11 rebounds, four assists, two steals and three blocks. He followed it with 29 against Brooklyn in November and 29 against Denver in January. Every figure here comes from league and team records, checked against the Gamerlume editorial standards.
The elbow injury that ended his 2025-26 season
His last game came on March 2, 2026. Washington listed him out for the season with an elbow problem the next day, and the year closed at 48 games.
Elbow trouble is the rarer of the two upper-body injuries NBA wings run into. A 2023 study in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine tracked 192 shoulder and elbow injuries across 126 NBA players. Elbow injuries turned up at a rate of 0.30 per 1,000 game exposures, against 1.11 for the shoulder, with sprains, strains and soreness the most common types.
The same research carries the reassuring part. True shooting accuracy held steady from before the injury to a year afterward, and younger players returned to their baseline production faster than older ones. He will still be 22 when camp opens. Wings coming back from elbow trouble often play in a sleeve for a while, and our equipment guides go into that kind of gear.
His role in a rebuild that keeps changing
Washington finished 17-65 in 2025-26, last in the East, with the poorest net rating in the league. That is bleak reading. It also explains why a 22-year-old logged 29.0 minutes a night and started every game he was fit for.
The roster around him kept moving. Dallas sent Anthony Davis to Washington in February 2026, and he never suited up for the Wizards because a finger injury had already closed his season. Trae Young landed in Washington during the same stretch, then lost the rest of his year to a quad problem.
So the minutes question for next season is a real one. This is the group he now shares a floor with:
- Alex Sarr, the No. 2 pick in 2024, at center
- AJ Dybantsa, the No. 1 pick of the 2026 draft, on the forward line
- Trae Young and Bub Carrington in the backcourt
- Bilal Coulibaly, Tre Johnson and Cam Whitmore on the wing
- Anthony Davis, if his finger holds up
That is a crowd, and it is the deepest young group he has played alongside. Our wider sport coverage follows how these rebuilds usually resolve, and they rarely resolve gently for everyone involved.
Outlook for 2026-27
Two things decide his third season. The elbow has to be genuinely behind him, and he has to keep the shooting gains with a real point guard beside him. Davis and Young, healthy, take shots and touches off his plate. That can trim his usage and lift his efficiency at once.
The bet Washington is making seems simple enough. A 6-foot-8 wing who passes at 4.5 assists a game and shoots 38 percent from three fits next to almost anybody, on almost any roster. Watch the opening month closely.
If the 3-point rate holds and the elbow stays quiet, he is a starter on a much better team than the one that went 17-65. That is the moment his name stops being a curiosity.
Conclusion
Kyshawn George has quickly developed from a late first-round pick into an important starter for the Washington Wizards. His jump in scoring, playmaking, and three-point shooting during the 2025-26 season showed why the franchise views him as a key part of its future, despite his season-ending elbow injury.
If George returns healthy and maintains his improved shooting, the 2026-27 season could become his true breakout year. With a talented young core around him, he has the tools to establish himself as one of the NBA’s most promising two-way wings and a cornerstone of Washington’s rebuild.
Kyshawn George FAQ
He stands 6-foot-8 and weighs 200 lbs. Basketball Reference lists him as a guard and forward; Washington uses him as a wing who can slide up to the four in smaller lineups.
He was born in Aigle, Switzerland, and his hometown is Monthey. He played four years of club basketball in France with Elan Chalon before college.
New York took him with the 24th pick of the 2024 NBA Draft, then his rights went to Washington on draft night. He has spent his entire NBA career in a Wizards uniform.
Through two seasons, he has played 116 games and averaged 11.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 3.3 assists. He shoots 40.6 percent from the floor and 34.7 percent from three.
Yes. He started 38 of his 68 rookie games, then started all 48 games he appeared in during 2025-26. Nothing about the summer suggests that changes.
Washington shut him down in March 2026 and has not announced a setback since, so a normal training camp in the fall of 2026 is the reasonable expectation. Check the team’s first injury report of the season before you commit to him in a fantasy league.
