So … how’s that Washington Wizards rebuild going?

Losing, in and of itself, isn’t that big a deal for the Washington Wizards.

For one thing, it’s something they’ve done quite a lot of over the past few years. The Wiz haven’t even approached .500 since 2017-18, a span in which they’ve lost a higher percentage of their games than any franchise except the Pistons. While Detroit is now firmly on the upswing, though, Washington remains mired in the mud — which, for another thing, is kind of the plan for an organization that is still climbing out of the smoking crater left in the wake of the John Wall/Bradley Beal era and boasts the NBA’s youngest roster.

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Losing 11 games in a row, though? With the 11th coming in a game where you trailed for virtually the entire final three quarters … going down by as many as 24 points … to the similarly disastrous and previously 1-11 Brooklyn Nets … at home?

Well, that’s a sizable enough deal that, just a baker’s dozen games into the 2025-26 NBA season, the nigh-upon-winless 1-12 Wizards sounded a worrying alarm:

From Josh Robbins of The Athletic:

“We buckled to the adversity,” coach Brian Keefe said. “We fouled when we shouldn’t. We didn’t dig in when they made certain runs. This group has never done that. That was disappointing on all of our end. We have to own that. But that was the thing that was bothering me the most, is that after the initial start of the game, which I thought we came out with a necessary mindset and attitude, once we got hit, we didn’t respond well.”

It was a bad enough performance that, after Keefe spoke to the team following the final buzzer, the Wizards held a players-only meeting in their locker room.

“We needed that talk, I think,” [Wizards forward Bilal] Coulibaly said afterward. “The guys just stepped up, the vets, the guys that have been used to winning. That’s what we’re trying to do here in the next year. So they had to talk to us, and they did a great job about this and everybody was listening.”

That, in part, was the argument for the Wizards trading for the likes of Khris Middleton and C.J. McCollum. Bringing in a pair of respected…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/so–hows-that-washington-wizards-rebuild-going-195850467.html

Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2025-11-17 19:58:00

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