Tyus Jones was mid-sentence in front of a group of reporters on a recent afternoon when the music soundtracking Washington Wizards practice lurched from a respectable volume to earsplitting. Jones paused, tilted his chin to look for the perpetrator and smiled as his eyes slid to the left, landing on a shooting guard wearing an impish grin.
“C’mon, man,” Jones said patiently, like a father warning his children.
“Speak up, point guard!” Jordan Poole yelled back.
“C’mon, man,” Jones repeated, and the music quieted before he turned back to the reporters. “Trying to keep my guys in line.”
Keeping the Wizards in line is as much a part of Jones’s job description this season as running the offense. The Wizards are at a tender time — much of the roster is new and still learning to play together, the organization’s focus is on developing good foundational habits, and Kyle Kuzma and Poole are settling into their roles atop the locker room food chain. During training camp and the preseason, there has been a natural opening for a leader to step up.
Jones, who spent the past four of his eight years in the NBA backing up superstar point guard Ja Morant in Memphis and is poised to enter the season as a starter for the first time, filled the slot immediately. The 27-year-old was thought to be the Wizards’ jewel in the three-team trade that sent Kristaps Porzingis to the Boston Celtics this offseason, prized for his ball control, steady nature and the fact that Washington got him on an attractive deal for an organization in flux. Jones is in the final season of a two-year, $29 million contract.
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But with just one preseason game remaining Friday at the Toronto Raptors — the Wizards beat the host Knicks, 131-106, on Wednesday night behind 41 points from Poole — Jones has already proved valuable far beyond his contract and his basketball talent. His biggest asset at this point might be his voice.
At practice this week, Jones said he has learned in his relatively short time with his new team that it needs him first and foremost to be a leader. After that?
“Talking. Talking, talking, talking,” Jones said. “Telling guys what I want. I think if you ask [Coach Wes Unseld Jr.] or any of the coaches, they would want the same out of me. Putting guys in the right spots, telling guys what I need from them.”
The ability to speak authoritatively comes easily at this point in Jones’s career — that occasional fatherly tone gets a lot of run at home thanks to his two toddlers. He was a first-round draft pick in 2015 who ended up in his native Minnesota as a backup to either Ricky Rubio or Jeff Teague before filling in behind Morant beginning in 2019. In both places, he had extended stints as the starter — last season, he shot 37.1 percent from the three-point line and 43.8 percent from the field and averaged a career-high 5.2 assists while starting 22 games.
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Every time he went back and forth from the starting lineup to the bench, he gained trust in the foundations of his game. It mattered less and less which teammates surrounded him on the floor or at what point in the game he checked in. With Memphis, he went to the playoffs three out of four seasons, learning each campaign what it takes to build a lasting contender.
“More poise, picking my spots better,” Jones said when asked how his starting stints in Memphis helped him flourish. “Just being a little more aggressive but at the same time still being who I am in terms of valuing the ball, valuing possessions, settling my teammates. ... Just having better command of the team as a leader. In Minnesota, I was young. I was still just trying to figure it out. In Memphis, I grew a lot.”
Jones is confident in his identity as a pass-first point guard now. His teammates describe him as calm and steadying; Unseld has extensively praised his composure and vision.
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“He’s a step ahead of the play often. When he’s delivering the ball, it’s right on time, right on target. That makes for great shooters, but it puts the defense in a bind,” Unseld said. “If you miss that window, you miss that second, the moment’s probably lost. He seems to always make that right play, right read, at the right time.”
Jones had his most productive game of the preseason against the Knicks, scoring 13 points on 6-for-12 shooting and adding four rebounds and seven assists in 26 minutes.
Ahead of training camp, Kuzma said Jones’s professionalism struck him most. Jones is trying to approach this season with patience, understanding that Unseld is doing a significant amount of teaching with a new roster and several key young players.
Kuzma said Jones is doing plenty of teaching, too — in a different way.
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“Us having a lot of young guys, guys who haven’t figured it out, it’s great for people to see teammates like him,” Kuzma said. “He’s focused, he’s locked in, he’s very focused on the team aspect of the game, and that’s kind of rare. Not rare, but he doesn’t care about his numbers. He doesn’t care about, like, ‘I need 10 assists.’ He’s going to make the right play.”
Jones credits his mother, Debbie, for that innate basketball IQ. Though his father was the more natural athlete, she was Jones’s coach for much of his youth and spent his adolescence trekking to AAU tournaments and travel club games.
Jones said the biggest lesson she taught him was self-belief, but he clearly absorbed other lessons as well. Debbie still checks in on her son after games these days, deep into his NBA career and on the precipice of his first season as a starter. She offers pointers and texts on days off, asking if he made it into the gym anyway, communicating — talking — to show she cares. Jones can relate to that.
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“I’m one of the older guys now, so it’s more on my plate from a teaching perspective. So it’s just trying to understand that, understanding that with the younger team, younger guys, there’s going to be days where certain things that you take for granted, they might not know yet or get or really realize that there’s a different way to do it,” Jones said. “. . . You know, you can’t talk too much in my shoes. The more I talk, the better. The more I’m communicating, the more I’m pulling the young guys aside and telling them what I see or what I want, the better.”
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