The Washington Wizards currently boast the NBA’s worst record at 1-15 after the Toronto Raptors blew them out by 30 points on Friday and they lost a close game to the Chicago Bulls on Saturday. Last Sunday,
they got shellacked by the then-1-11 Brooklyn Nets. This slow start hasn’t been an outlier for them, either.
Last season, the Wizards finished with the NBA’s second-worst record at 18-64, ahead of only the Utah Jazz (17-65). The previous year, they once again had the league’s second-worst record at 15-67, ahead of only the Detroit Pistons (14-68). And as Albert Lee of Bullets Forever noted, they’re now threatening their franchise-record losing streak of 16 games—a mark which they’ve achieved three times in the past two seasons.
Why are you reading about the comically bad Wizards on a Sixers blog, you might wonder? Because, dear reader, I’m wondering when it’s time for them to bring in the Colangelos.
During the three years of the Process, the Sixers went 19-63 the first year, 18-64 the second year and 10-72 the third year. In the midst of stumbling out to a 1-30 start in the 2015-16 campaign, the Sixers hired Jerry Colangelo as their chairman of basketball operations. Five months later, Sam Hinkie resigned as general manager, and Jerry tapped his son, Bryan, as Hinkie’s replacement after an exhaustive* search. (They hired him within days of Hinkie’s departure.)
According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, NBA owners had been “lobbying the league’s front office to step in with regard to the direction” of the Sixers since the summer of 2014, which led to the eventual Colangelo Coup. He added that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver “was instrumental in forming the partnership between Colangelo and 76ers owner Joshua Harris.”
“Owners routinely complained about the economic drag the 76ers were inflicting on the league as the revenues of one of the largest-market teams—a franchise expected to contribute more robustly to league revenue-sharing—sagged,” Windhorst reported. “For many teams, games featuring the starless and woeful 76ers as the visiting team have been the lowest-attended of the season, sources said.”
Meanwhile, basketbloggers were referring to the Sixers as “a godless abomination” and a “complete sham.” Howard Eskin was screaming to anyone who’d listen about “Scam Hinkie” and how the Process was the NBA’s version of a Ponzi scheme. The league office clearly wasn’t a fan of that type of bad PR, and thus, the Colangelo Era was born. At least it didn’t end in complete disgrac… oh.
Which brings us back to the Wizards. They’ve put together a worse record over the past two seasons than the Sixers did over the first two years of the Process. They might not start 1-30 this year, but they’ve also embarked upon a systematic teardown in which they’re entrusting most of their minutes to young players who are prone to making boneheaded mistakes. That comes with the natural benefit of high draft picks, which the Wizards used on Alex Sarr (No. 2 in 2024) and Tre Johnson (No. 6 in 2025).
Surely there’s similar outrage about the Wizards’ rebuild, right? If the Process Sixers were an affront to the game of basketball itself, what does that make the Wizards?
Deadspin, which was one of the premier critics of the Process, has admittedly been reduced to a soulless husk of its former self. Most of the previous staff is now at Defector, where they are far too busy writing blogs of actual substance to worry about the Washington Wizards. However, that type of acerbic commentary about the Wizards is nowhere to be found elsewhere on the internet, either.
The blowout loss to the Nets did seem to set off some alarm bells for the Wizards and their beat writers alike. According to Josh Robbins of The Athletic, the Wizards held a players-only meeting after head coach Brian Keefe ripped their effort in his postgame press conference. Varun Shankar of the Washington Post wrote an article titled, “The Wizards’ tank job is working so well, it’s concerning.” However, neither Shankar nor Robbins called for them to deviate from their current path. In fact, Robbins doubled down on what he wrote heading into the season: The Wizards should not give into public pressure and should “stay the course, however unpleasant it may feel to fans in the short term.”
David Aldridge of The Athletic echoed that heading into the season.
“There’s a lot riding on the Wizards’ being really, really bad, one more time, and hoping, yet again, that doing the same thing will, this time, yield a different result,” Aldridge wrote. “Yes, that’s the definition of insanity. How else, though, could Washington’s time in NBA purgatory end but with a wild act of (finally) good fortune, atop a legitimate foundation, on and off the floor, that’s slowly taking shape?”
So, to be clear: It’s a war crime against basketball when the Sixers rebuild for three years, but it’s OK when the Wizards do it? In fact, since the Wizards owe their 2026 first-round pick to the New York Knicks if it falls outside the top eight, media members are actively encouraging them to lose?
Ironically, the Wizards do appear to be on the right path, just as the Sixers were in 2015-16 if you looked past their dismal record. Sarr and Kyshawn George are both taking big steps forward in their second season. Johnson looks like A Dude, too. They still might not have a franchise-centerpiece type of player, but that’s what they’re hoping the 2026 draft can solve.
It’s just curious to see how differently these Wizards are being received compared to the Process Sixers.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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