It's Tuesday!

United Airlines today announced its biggest-ever expansion of international flights.

• Starting in the spring, you can take a nonstop flight to Toulouse, France, out of Dulles.

📺 What's on the tube:

• ⚾️ Rockies at Nationals, 6:45pm, Nationals.TV — CJ Abrams returned to the lineup last night, smacking an RBI-double in a win.
• ⛹️‍♀️ Mystics at Mercury, 10pm, Monumental Sports — Shakira Austin had a career-high 31 points to help Washington clinch the playoffs with a win Sunday.

This newsletter is 707 words, a 3-minute read.

You can text the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, and someone on his team will see it. He might even text back.

Why it matters: Wizards rookie AJ Dybantsa has a rare opportunity to capitalize on a new level of fame.

• He's exploring new ways to give fans the access they crave.

Zoom out: Dybantsa may be an NBA rookie, but he's hardly new to building his brand.

• In the name, image and likeness era, the 19-year-old has been flexing his marketing savvy for years.
• His YouTube channel publishes documentary-style vlogs from his workouts and travels. His LinkedIn posts read like diary entries.
• Last year at Brigham Young University, he added a more direct line to fans: texting.

State of play: Dybantsa has 1.2 million Instagram followers and more than 500,000 on TikTok.

• But Community, an SMS marketing platform, offers something social media doesn't: a way to reach fans without relying on an algorithm.
• It lets his team build a database of phone numbers and demographic information from fans who opt in.

How it works: I texted Dybantsa's number and immediately heard back.

• "What's up, it's AJ," the message began. "Make sure you click the link to add yourself to my Community so I can respond to you!"
• Another message teased a Nike shoe giveaway and instructed me to save Dybantsa as a contact.

😭 Yes, but: I texted AJ's Community line a couple of times. He never responded.

• Axios' attempts to reach Dybantsa for comment weren't returned.

Matthew Perl, the head of sports, media and entertainment for Community, tells Axios that fan messages land in an inbox that Dybantsa and his team can monitor and respond to.

By the numbers: As of this summer, Dybantsa had more than 17,000 members in his channel, according to a case study from Community.

• Nearly a third responded when he invited them to text Q&A, and more than 40% clicked links to giveaways.
• His hurricane relief campaign for Jamaica raised more than $30,000.

Between the lines: Michael Lewis, a professor at Emory who specializes in sports marketing, tells Axios that athletes increasingly need to "own your own brand" and "own your own media."

Yes, but: The access only works if it tells a success story.

🏀 The bottom line: Dybantsa's marketing game is strong. Now he has to prove himself on the court.

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Three National Guard members spoke to NPR about what it has been like to be stationed in D.C.

• One said the lack of clear goals makes the deployment feel like it will never end.
• One said he was used to sleeping on the floor and eating processed meals, but here they've had "very good" food and nice hotels.
• The shooting of two Guard members from West Virginia last November has made them question the purpose of the deployment.

🌲 The Interior Department has reassigned dozens of senior staffers to areas outside their expertise, NOTUS reports.

• Employees were given two weeks to accept the changes or resign, current and former staffers told NOTUS.
• One of the people reassigned described the move as "punitive."
• The Interior Department called the reassignments "routine."

🐸 A rare blue tree frog — normally green — is attracting nature lovers at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria. One man waited four hours to get a glimpse. (WaPo)

Ⓜ️ Monumental Sports Network has partnered with DAZN to make live Wizards, Capitals and Mystics games available through the global streamer. (Monumental)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida gave cities on the East Coast an early-morning light show with a "jellyfish" effect.

• Capital Weather collected some nice pics.

🐶 I'm going to hang out with dogs tonight — at the Nationals game.

This newsletter was edited by Alexa Mencia Orozco.