Washington Wizards

The Washington Wizards are in the wreckage phase of a rebuild, and there is no polishing this particular stone. Founded in 1961 as the Chicago Packers — they have had more name changes than a witness protection participant — the franchise won its sole championship in 1978 as the Washington Bullets and has been searching for relevance ever since. Capital One Arena, a 20,356-seat venue in downtown D.C.’s Chinatown, hosts a team that finished 18-64 in 2024-25, the worst record in the Eastern Conference and a result that would have been embarrassing if anyone had been paying attention.

Under Brian Keefe, the Wizards have stripped the roster down to its studs, trading away veterans in favour of draft picks and young talent. This is the unsexy, unglamorous, thoroughly necessary work of a franchise that spent too long in mediocrity — not bad enough to get elite draft picks, not good enough to compete — and finally decided to commit to a proper rebuild. The results will be painful in the short term. The alternative was worse.

Washington’s location in the nation’s capital gives the franchise cultural significance that its basketball has not matched for decades. The history includes genuine stars — Unseld, Hayes, Wall, Beal — and the current rebuild aims to produce the next one through the draft rather than through the free-agent lottery that has repeatedly failed them.

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The Wizards enter 2025-26 as the political capital’s sporting embarrassment, and the only honest thing to say is that this is exactly where they need to be. Rebuilds are not glamorous, and Washington’s will be particularly ugly before it produces anything worth watching. The franchise’s location guarantees it will never be truly irrelevant — too many power brokers need courtside seats for networking — but relevance through real estate is not the same as relevance through basketball. Australian fans tracking the NBA’s broader landscape should file the Wizards under “check back in three years.” The raw materials are being gathered. The finished product remains a long way off.

VS — Chief sports columnist, australiafootball.com