WASHINGTON — A new NBA season has started, and the Washington Wizards once again find themselves far off the national radar. Even in an age of increasing parity, you would be hard-pressed to find any reliable forecast, computer simulation or hot take that expects the Wizards to challenge even for the Eastern Conference Play-In, let alone qualify outright for the East playoffs. This is what irrelevance looks like.
But there’s reason for hope.
For one of the few times since 1979, when the Washington Bullets repeated as Eastern Conference champs, the organization has a clear plan to become relevant again and also has the infrastructure to avoid the crippling self-inflicted mistakes that have made the franchise the butt of jokes for many of the last 45 years.
There’s a beefed-up front office, with executives who helped construct winning teams. There’s a modern player-development program that incorporates every subdepartment within the Wizards’ basketball operation. They’re “leveling up” everywhere, hiring a chef to go on road trips, building a makeshift practice facility during the Las Vegas Summer League and will soon move forward to identify a site for a brand-new training center in the District.
“When I first came here, there really wasn’t infrastructure,” said forward Kyle Kuzma, who joined the Wizards via a trade in mid-2021. “Everything was on the fly, you know? (Now, there’s) much more of a sense of purpose in that department.”
Build through the draft. Develop all the players on the roster, and provide the resources they need to improve. Stockpile as many future draft picks as possible. Create a professional atmosphere in which everyone is accountable. And, as important as anything else, though never explicitly stated, maximize the odds for the NBA Draft Lottery.
That’s the plan.
And that will provide the backdrop when the Wizards open their regular season Thursday night at Capital One Arena, hosting the defending champion Boston Celtics, as well as for the months ahead.
While teams like the Bucks, Celtics, Cavaliers, Knicks and Magic will measure their success this season on where they are in the top of the standings, the Wizards will measure their success in large part by the growth of 19-year-olds Bub Carrington and Alex Sarr and 20-year-olds Bilal Coulibaly and Kyshawn George. Everyone acknowledges rookies such as Carrington, George and Sarr and second-year players like Coulibaly will encounter growing pains, that they will endure difficult stretches. But if they finish the season better than they are now, that would be a win for the franchise. If they learn how to be solid pros — what their coach and veteran teammates refer to as “building habits” — that would be a win.
Rookie Alex Sarr, the second pick in this year’s draft, will be one of the Wizards’ most important development stories in the season ahead. (Geoff Burke / USA Today)
All the players have to make individual gains and the team needs to begin developing some identity (apart from playing at a breakneck offensive pace) that they can build on in the years ahead.
So what’s at stake in a season with such low outside expectations?
Coach Brian Keefe’s answer was telling.
“We’re establishing habits on how we want to be acting professionally in our training, in all of our day-to-day stuff,” Keefe said. “I think those things for our organization are going to lead to sustainable winning. Those are the things that we can only tackle one day at a time, and we have to be really intentional about doing that.
“That’s the biggest thing for me: At the end of the year, are we much more established on how we do things here and what we stand for here? I think we’re doing a pretty good job of that. But we have to go through the season and through the fire to keep working on that when it’s not going as well because every team goes through that. The best teams have hard times during the year.”
If that sounds like basic goals — well, they are.
“Some of it is tangible to the outside eye, and some of it is intangible,” swingman Corey Kispert said. “We’ve got to see players make improvements on the floor with their game. We’ve got to see us play with an edge and play with a competitiveness that doesn’t waver by score. But there’s a culture thing, too, that you can sense when you walk in the building or you spend time in the locker room. That needs to continue to improve as well.
“That gets tested in good moments and bad moments, in big wins and big losses. That kind of culture gets tested, and when you can lean on that and rely on that throughout the course of a season, that’s where the good teams kind of separate from the not-so-good teams, and we need to start working on building that culture now. We have been, and I’m happy with how (far) we’ve come. But we’ve got a lot of work left to do in that regard.”
Jordan Poole knows what it takes to win an NBA title. He was an important complementary piece alongside stars Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green when the Golden State Warriors captured the 2021-22 championship.
So what, in his opinion, would make this season a success for the Wizards? What would help the franchise move in the right direction?
“I think just coming in and just showing up every day is the first thing, first and foremost,” Poole answered. “Guys coming in and getting their work in. Find a way to get better, whether it’s on the court, whether it’s in the treatment room, whether it’s lifting. The games are, obviously, going to be real-life experience for us to get better. But just taking advantage of every opportunity and every moment that we have, good or bad, of just being in the gym, just being together as a team (is critical), because it goes such a long way.”
Poole emphasized the need for patience. He’s right. Carrington, George and Sarr will soak up lots of minutes, but they have a grand total of zero NBA regular-season games of experience on their résumés. Even free-agent signee Jonas Valančiūnas, the team’s oldest player at 32, will need time to adjust to new teammates and to Washington’s frenetic style of play on offense.
By conventional measurements at least, it’s going to be a long, tough season.
For Wizards fans, it’s probably not the losses that hurt the most. It’s the perceived derision, disrespect and indifference they see from every corner of the basketball universe, as if to ask, “Why would you care about that team?”
There will be more of that heartache in the months ahead, or maybe even years ahead unless the franchise lucks out in the next draft lottery and wins the opportunity to draft either Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey.
The truth is, no matter how thorough the front office, coaching staff and players are during the early stages of a rebuild, almost every rebuilding franchise needs some degree of luck along the way.
Even if Washington finishes this season with the league’s worst record, it will enter the lottery with a 48 percent chance of winning the fifth pick in the 2025 draft. The lottery really does come down to dumb luck, and that’s the primary reason why any rebuild is not certain to work.
Rebuilds are filled with risk but also hope. The Wizards’ front office and the team’s principal owner, Ted Leonsis, are willing to endure several years of pain in a quest for a long-term payoff.
(Top photo of Jordan Poole and Dennis Schröder: Gregory Fisher / Imagn Images)
