NBA: Ranking all 30 starting centers for 2019-20

Thomas Bryant wasn’t supposed to be the starting center for the Washington Wizards last season, but when Dwight Howard went down early with a back injury, it was the 21-year-old Bryant who wound up making 53 starts in the middle for the Wiz.

Bryant, a former second-round pick who began last offseason being waived by the Los Angeles Lakers as part of their space-clearing maneuvers to sign LeBron James, acquitted himself well for a kid who entered the season with 72 NBA minutes — minutes, not games — under his belt.

He did the required work on the defensive glass, getting 25.1 percent of the available boards there, and averaged 10.5 points and 6.3 rebounds in 20.8 minutes per game while shooting 61.6 percent overall and hitting 33.3 percent on 1.4 3-point attempts per game.

That earned him a three-year, $25 million deal to remain in Washington as a free agent in July.

Bryant was all but unstoppable around the rim, shooting 82.0 percent in the restricted area and leading the NBA in efficiency from 2-point range at 68.5 percent as he hammered down 117 dunks.

His mid-range game is evolving, as he shot less than 50 percent from every other zone of the floor. His 3-point shooting has a natural area for improvement, as he shot only 2-for-10 from the corners.

In nearly 1,500 minutes, Bryant was as close to a net-neutral as a player could be, with an on/off rating of plus-0.1 points per 100 possessions. For a team that won only 32 games amid a flurry of injuries, that placed him right in the middle — 13th — among the 25 different guys who sported Wizards jerseys in 2018-19.

Bryant is young and was once a top-25 prep prospect before spending two seasons at Indiana University, but he has areas where he can improve, notably on the offensive glass.

But he positioned himself as a vital rotation piece for the Wizards a year after being a waiver claim, so he’s trending in the right direction.