{"id":117731,"date":"2025-06-23T03:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T03:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/117731\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T03:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T03:27:10","slug":"the-thunder-winning-the-nba-championship-ends-the-saddest-wizards-streak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/117731\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thunder winning the NBA Championship ends the saddest Wizards streak"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Wizards<\/a> haven\u2019t made the NBA Playoffs<\/a> in five seasons, but that somehow isn\u2019t the streak that best epitomizes how poorly the team has been run over the last decade-plus. <\/p>\n

That (dis)honor goes to the reality that heading into tonight, the last eight NBA champions<\/a> had a former Wizard on their team, meaning that the Wizards have been more successful at developing talent for eventual title winners (eight times) than making the playoffs themselves in the worst conference (just three times in the last 10 seasons<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But with no former Wizards on the Thunder roster, that weird statistical quirk came to an end when Thomas Bryant and Quinton Jackson\u2019s Indiana Pacers couldn\u2019t pull of a Game 7 miracle to capture the 2025 NBA Finals<\/a> on Sunday night. We\u2019ll never know what would have happened if Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton hadn\u2019t sustained a devastating injury<\/a> in the opening minutes, but the Wizards avoided having that ignominious factoid extended nonetheless. <\/p>\n

Now, is this an extremely random stat? Of course. But it is also indicative of how poorly run the Wizards have been \u2014 and how much roster turnover there has been in the nation\u2019s capital \u2014 that so many of their former players were able to leave and contribute to winning at the highest level elsewhere while their own team was mostly hopeless in the NBA\u2019s JV conference.<\/p>\n

And while Wizards fans likely weren\u2019t waiting with baited breath, hoping and praying for the Thunder to put an end to their sad streak, the even better news for Washington is that if the 2025 Finals proved anything, it\u2019s that under the league\u2019s current collective bargaining agreement, any team can compete for titles if they are run well, no matter their market size. <\/p>\n

But even in this parity era, the Wizards will likely continue to be rebuilding for at least a few more years before they can reach the level of these Pacers and Thunder, if they ever can. However, this streak coming to an end means that they\u2019ve at least stopped hemorrhaging talent out the door quite so frequently, and might be in the early stages of finding players that can help them win, instead of spreading out across the league to help others do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Wizards haven\u2019t made the NBA Playoffs in five seasons, but that somehow isn\u2019t the streak that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,413,416,1684,3065,28,6,1220,11,24145,415,14503,64,312,682,468,3892,6280,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-117731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-championship","10":"tag-com","11":"tag-dot-com-grid-coverage","12":"tag-ends","13":"tag-front-page","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-finals","16":"tag-nba-playoffs","17":"tag-saddest","18":"tag-sbnation","19":"tag-streak","20":"tag-the","21":"tag-thunder","22":"tag-washington","23":"tag-washington-wizards","24":"tag-washingtonwizards","25":"tag-winning","26":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114730555360107038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}