Wizards won NBA’s unprecedented tank war, but will the embarrassment pay off?

The NBA playoffs are underway, but the Washington Wizards have already won the race to the bottom. They finished 17-65 in the regular season, good for the worst record and highest draft lottery floor. Several teams aimed for that spot, so much so that NBA commissioner Adam Silver vowed to fix the sport’s tanking issue during a March press conference, per ESPN.

Getting the best possible lottery odds was the Wizards’ primary mission for the 2025-26 campaign, and they accomplished it. They’re the only team guaranteed a top-five pick in the upcoming draft, which will feature star prospects like BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, Kansas’ Darryn Peterson, Duke’s Cameron Boozer, and UNC’s Caleb Wilson. They’re also tied with the Indiana Pacers (19-63) and Brooklyn Nets (20-62) for the highest odds of getting the No. 1 pick (14%) and top-four (52.1%). The difference is that Washington has a 47.9% chance of getting No. 5, while Indiana and Brooklyn could go as low as Nos. 6 and 7, respectively.

Regardless, the Wizards will receive a higher pick than they did last year, when they got the No. 6 selection after finishing second-worst at 18-64. The Utah Jazz, who were the worst at 17-65, got No. 5.

Washington landed on its feet despite the rotten lottery luck, as it drafted Texas sharpshooter Tre Johnson, who finished third among rookies (min. 50 games played) with a 35.8% three-point clip in 2025-26. That was a year after taking big man Alex Sarr No. 2 overall out of the Australian National Basketball League (NBL), who earned first-team All-Rookie honors in 2025 and led NBA sophomores with two blocks per game this past season. He was also tied for second with 16.3 points.

Landing Sarr was the Wizards’ reward for finishing 15-67 in 2023-24, good for second-worst. They were one game ahead of the Detroit Pistons (14-68), who topped the Eastern Conference at 60-22 in 2025-26. Washington dreams of a similar ascension.

Wizards aim to imitate Pistons’ rise

After going 20-46 in the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season, Detroit installed Troy Weaver as general manager. The Washington, D.C. native revamped the roster over his tenure after inheriting a squad led by fading veterans like Derrick Rose and Blake Griffin.

The Pistons retained Dwane Casey as head coach, who took over in 2018. From there, they went 20-52 in 2020-21 and landed superstar guard Cade Cunningham No. 1 overall out of Oklahoma State in the following draft. Then, they got Purdue guard Jaden Ivey No. 5 after going 23-59 in 2021-22, Overtime Elite guard Ausar Thompson No. 5 after going 17-65 in 2022-23, and NBA G League Ignite forward Ron Holland II No. 5 in 2024. They also traded for Memphis center Jalen Duren draft day after the Charlotte Hornets took him No. 13 overall in 2022.

Ivey didn’t pan out, but Cunningham earned All-NBA status in 2025 and finished second in the NBA with 9.9 assists per game in 2025-26. Meanwhile, Duren finished second on the team with a career-high 19.5 points this past season while finishing fourth in the NBA with a 65% field goal clip and 10.5 rebounds, and Thompson topped the NBA with two steals. Finally, Holland averaged 8.2 points on 43.2% shooting (25.3% 3-point) with four rebounds, 1.2 assists, and 1.2 steals over 19.9 minutes.

Casey transitioned to the front office in 2023, and Monty Williams replaced him as head coach for 2023-24 before he was replaced by J.B. Bickerstaff the following offseason. The latter coach led the squad to a 44-38 finish in 2024-25, earning the sixth seed. After getting bounced by the New York Knicks in the first round of the playoffs, it had its best record since 2005-06 this past season.

Weaver stepped down in 2024 before becoming a senior adviser for the Wizards that June, a position he held until he became the New Orleans Pelicans’ general manager in April 2025. Weaver helped his hometown squad during the 2024-25 campaign, the second year of its current regime.

That regime is led by team president Michael Winger and general manager Will Dawkins, who have followed the Pistons’ blueprint of tearing down the inherited roster and building it back up through the draft. Through a series of trades, they upgraded from Bradley Beal and Kyle Kuzma to Trae Young and Anthony Davis while assembling a young core of Sarr (20), Johnson (19), forward Kyshawn George (22), guard Bilal Coulibaly (21), forward Will Riley (20), forward Justin Champagnie (24), guard Bub Carrington (20), and guard Jamir Watkins (24). The 2026 lottery pick will add to that group.

Washington acquired Coulibaly from the Pacers on draft night in 2023, Carrington from the Portland Trail Blazers on draft night in 2024, George from the Knicks on the same night, and Riley from the Jazz on draft night in 2025. It also used Utah’s second-round pick from the Riley trade on Watkins the following night. Additionally, the Wizards signed Champagnie to a 10-day contract in February 2024, a two-way deal in March, and a standard deal in March 2025.

All of those players have clear strengths in their games. Coulibaly, who led Washington with 1.3 steals (min. 40 games played) and was second with one block in 2025-26, had a mixed team defense rating of 40%, per 3StepsBasket. That stat combines the player’s effectiveness at preventing opponents from scoring as a team and individually, and the native Frenchman’s rating was higher than 40% of NBA players.

Carrington hasn’t missed a game through two seasons and tied for sixth among NBA sophomores with a 40.8% three-point clip (min. 40 games) in 2025-26. George is the most versatile of the bunch, as he finished second on the team with 14.8 points on 43.8% shooting (38.1% 3-point), third with 5.1 rebounds, second with 4.5 assists, third with one steal, and third with 0.9 blocks over 29 minutes. Riley blossomed as a scorer from February to April, and he became the first Wizards rookie with back-to-back 30-point games since Calbert Cheaney in 1994.

Furthermore, Champagnie led all NBA players under 6-foot-7 with a 13.3 rebound percentage (per NBA Advanced Stats), and Watkins was second on the team with 1.2 steals. Washington gave the latter player a standard deal in February after initially keeping him on a two-way.

Between that young foundation, the star power of Young and Davis, and whoever they draft in the summer, the Wizards are now on track to be at least a play-in team next season. Washington hasn’t gotten that far since Russell Westbrook led it to the playoffs in 2021, when it lost the first round in five games to the Philadelphia 76ers.

However, Wizards head coach Brian Keefe must prove that he’s the right man to guide the squad in the next phase of its rebuild.

Wizards can’t repeat humiliating blowouts

The first time that Washington veered away from Detroit’s blueprint was when it acquired Young from the Atlanta Hawks in January. The Pistons haven’t traded for a star on that level over the last few years, but they haven’t needed to given Cunningham’s ascension. Unlike Detroit, the Wizards haven’t won the draft lottery since 2010, so they utilized the trade market rather than relying on getting lucky on May 10.

Washington then doubled down by acquiring Davis from the Dallas Mavericks in February, who won the 2025 draft lottery and selected Duke superstar Cooper Flagg No. 1 overall. The latter player broke LeBron James’ record for the most 40-point games by a teenager (four) this past season, showing why he’s the right guy for the Mavericks (26-56) to rebuild around.

Conversely, the Hawks (46-36) made the playoffs for the first time since 2023 this season, exemplifying how they don’t need Young anymore. Both Young and Davis are “distressed assets,” talented but expensive players who no longer fit on their teams before the Wizards acquired them. Washington is using them to help advance into its “building up” phase.

Dawkins explained that the four phases of the organization’s rebuild are “deconstruction, laying the foundation, building it up, and fortifying what we’ve built,” per Capital Hoop Caucus’s Troy Haliburton. Winger said less than two weeks after the Young trade that deconstruction is over, via Monumental Sports Network. Washington sent guards CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert to Atlanta in that deal, and the latter player was the lone draftee left from the Tommy Sheppard era. Sheppard was the general manager from 2019 to 2023, and the veteran-led squad had four losing seasons with no clear direction under his leadership. Dawkins and Winger then tore down his roster and methodically built what the Wizards are now.

Washington must evaluate which coaches and players to keep while it finishes laying its foundation and starts building it up. Keefe is at the top of that list, as keeping him into next season is the third way the organization has strayed from the Pistons’ path.

Dawkins said on Thursday that he “anticipates” Keefe being the Wizards’ head coach in 2026-27, via Monumental. This aligns with ClutchPoints’ intel, via Brett Siegel.

“Sources say the Wizards’ leadership has been working with Keefe all season, and there is no reason at this very moment to believe that his job is in jeopardy,” Siegel reported on April 10. “The young players Washington has been developing have close relationships with Keefe and the coaching staff, and the Wizards are said to want to give him a chance with new stars Trae Young and Anthony Davis.”

Casey coached Detroit for the majority of its recent seasons at the bottom, but Bickerstaff has guided the winning campaigns. Keefe will try to be more like Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault, who has held his position since 2020. The Thunder went a combined 46-108 over his first two seasons at the helm before they went 40-42 the following campaign. Daigneault then won Coach of the Year after they topped the Western Conference at 57-25 in 2023-24, bowing out in the second round to the Mavericks. Oklahoma City followed that up by topping the West at 68-14 and winning the 2025 NBA Finals before once again leading the conference at 64-18 this past season.

Next season will be Keefe’s third as Washington’s head coach, and he must have a similar record to Daigneault’s in 2022-23. Keefe, formerly an assistant under Wes Unseld Jr., took over as the interim coach after the Wizards moved Unseld to the front office in January 2024. Since then, the squad has gone 43-160, with the last two seasons being Keefe’s first as the official head coach.

The former Thunder assistant deserves credit for the development of Washington’s young core, but there have been too many embarrassing moments along the way to ignore. The most famous one is Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game in the Wizards’ 150-129 loss on March 10, the second-highest single-game scoring total for a player in NBA history. However, they also lost 12 contests by 30-plus points this past season and fell 162-109 to the Pacers on March 27, 2025, the most lopsided loss in franchise history.

It’s hard for a tanking organization to avoid blowouts, but getting thoroughly outclassed that many times reflects poorly on the operation. There’s a difference between competitive losses that help players develop and demoralizing demolitions.

As the head coach, it’s fair to partially blame Keefe for those lowlights. But the 50-year-old insisted to ClutchPoints on April 13 that young players like George and Coulibaly have still learned winning habits.

I asked Brian Keefe at his exit interview what habits that young guys like Kyshawn George or Bilal Coulibaly learned this season that will help the team win in the future:

“For guys like Kyshawn and Bilal that were entering year 2 and 3, I think they just became more consistent.… pic.twitter.com/X8xdZ2k4Ts

— Joshua Valdez (@joshvaldez100) April 13, 2026

“For guys like Kyshawn and Bilal that were entering years two and three, I think they just became more consistent. Kyshawn became more efficient this year,” he said. “We put the ball in his hands a lot more, and he still became more efficient. Statistically, he improved in almost every category. Field goal percentage went up by almost 7%, and 6% in 3-point field goals. That’s hard to do with having the ball in his hands a lot and having to guard.”

“I think Bilal didn’t ever play the last 25 games of the year in his first two years, and he needed that this year,” he continued. “You saw his development post-All-Star break, his numbers went really high…That time was really important for him. I was really pleased that he got that last part of the year to grow.”

Indeed, George’s field goal clip increased by 6.6% and his three-point clip by 5.9% from his rookie year despite averaging four more shots per game (0.2 more three-pointers). Plus, this past season was the first time that Coulibaly played past March 16, and he responded by averaging 14.8 points on 42.1% shooting (37.9% 3-point) in March and 17 points on 53.1% shooting (40% 3-point) in April. The 6-foot-7, 195-pounder’s career scoring average is 10.8 points on 42.6% shooting (31.3% 3-point).

Efficiency and availability are common traits among title-winning teams, but Washington’s young players must display them in a competitive environment moving forward. That means trying to win every night alongside Young and Davis, who will inevitably take minutes, on-ball reps, and shots from said players.

Dawkins told ClutchPoints on Thursday that the Young and Davis acquisitions are only higher-level versions of what the Wizards have always done in their rebuild, and he expects the star duo to make the young core better.

“We’ve always surrounded our young players with vets, they just probably haven’t been to this level of player. But we’ve had [Jonas] Valanciunas, [Malcolm] Brogdon, Tyus Jones, Kuzma,” he said. “Our guys have always played heavy minutes with veteran players. I think we’re just adding more established, Hall of Fame-level players and All-Stars to our team. I think it’ll actually benefit them, because we’ll be in more competitive games and they can feed off of them and learn and grow. That’s always been the plan: to surround our guys with veteran players. So that doesn’t change for us.”

It’ll be Keefe’s responsibility to make sure that the “competitive games” part happens consistently. Fostering individual growth among young players while losing on purpose is one thing, but now it’s time to win on purpose.

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