A week ago, when we explained the historical badness of the Washington Wizards, we were on solid mathematical and historical ground. The team was on pace to become one of the very worst teams ever; if you squinted into the police cruiser spotlight, as you no doubt have done at least once in the last year, they had an outside chance at being the very worst. If you watched them play, the case only became more convincing.
But because these are the Wizards, they couldn't even get the stink right. And because we want to be fair (this is a lie; we never want to be fair), we must now note that the Wiz are on a rare-for-them three-game winning streak during which they have lowered their margin of defeat to a terrible but not hideous 13.8 points per game, and now cannot finish with the worst record in NBA history. In fact, their 119-102 win over Brooklyn Wednesday night was their second-most decisive victory of the season, a celebration of sorts after the already completely forgotten deal that sent Kyle Kuzma to Milwaukee for Khris Middleton, an athletic rookie, and a pick swap.
Of course the Wizards could suddenly remember who they are supposed to be and have mostly been to this point, and instantly revert to their previous lack of form, but there’s no reason to care any more. People remember the worst thing ever in any category, but the third worst? Seventh-worst? Feh. People remember Sixers GM San Hinkie for creating the lose-on-purpose management tactic that tried to ennoble turbo-losing, and to a lesser extent for writing obnoxious memos about it. People remember the 1973 76ers for going 9-73. People remember the most shameless and futile examples of shameless futility. But this? Did we say feh already? Is there a mega-feh level?
The Wizards as we knew them had a real chance at immortality, at least if you define immortality as being the answer to the question, "Which basketball team sucked the most?" Now, they're as faceless and non-memorable as the '98 Nuggets or '05 Hawks. Even the Pistons of last season, who won a remarkable 14 games, had the grace to sneak in a 28-game losing streak to spark memories. What do the Wizards have? An outside chance to catch Charlotte for 14th place and scotch their lottery odds. To answer the question asked above, there is a mega-feh level, and this is it.
We'd like to show the energy required to pretend that our Wizards breakdown of 10 days ago inspired them, but Michael Winger, Washington’s basketball ops head, isn't on our subscription list. We know that our previous analysis of them provided no visible inspiration. If the team trading four second-rounders and a bench player to the Sixers for Reggie Jackson and a 2026 draft pick earlier today is a coded message to us from Washington’s front office, we can’t crack it.
Either way, those three victories over the wobbly Timberwolves and traditionally intolerable Hornets and Nets had no business happening. They were a dusting of success on a bed of failure, and the only thing the Wiz have actually done with those wins is risk diminishing their chances at securing the first pick in the draft. Not even Wizards fans, who are so used to their news being bad, want that kind of good news.
But they did it anyway, and since we gleefully kneed them netherward after each of their 16-game losing streaks, it is only right to take note of it when they do something even less likely, like win three straight. Not happily, mind you; they'd still be more fun as a landmark of futility than as just another crummy team in an era of crummy teams. We wanted more than this for the Wizards. And when we say more, we obviously mean less.
But they are who they are, though, and their decades of anonymity happened for a reason. This is just the latest manifestation of that reason.
