Washington plays a game before this one: the Wizards host the Detroit Pistons on Saturday in their unofficial home opener, then turn around 2 days later for Brooklyn. That Pistons game settles a lot for Monday. It will show who's healthy, how minutes are being split, and whether the veterans play at all on a 2-games-in-3-days turnaround. Brooklyn has no game in between, which makes its availability report the more predictable of the 2.
The Wizards' frontcourt is the other thing to watch. Alex Sarr has been dealing with a foot issue on the injury report since late August and sat Thursday's opener at Madison Square Garden. Tristan Vukcevic is out with a hip injury and will be re-evaluated in 4 weeks, so a big-man rotation that was already thin could be down to whoever is left. Khris Middleton got Thursday off for rest, which is the expected handling for a veteran on a young team in October.
Jamir Watkins is the long-term loss: the Wizards announced in July that the guard had surgery for a torn ACL, so the backcourt minutes he would have taken go to someone else all year. If Sarr can't play, Washington may lean even harder on Dybantsa and the young wings, and in a preseason game that's a feature, not a problem.
Tipoff is 7:00 PM ET, and it streams on Monumental Sports Network in the DMV. The score won't matter by November. What will matter is how Dybantsa looks against NBA bodies and whether Brooklyn's 4 sidelined regulars are back in time to give the Nets a real rotation before the games count.