{"id":331194,"date":"2025-10-09T16:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/331194\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T16:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:11:13","slug":"espn-model-projects-wizards-will-be-worst-team-in-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/331194\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN model projects Wizards will be worst team in 2025-26"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The 2025-26 NBA season projections are coming in, and we\u2019re starting to see how good (or not so good) teams will be this fall and winter. For the Washington Wizards, there isn\u2019t much hope that they will win more than 20 games this season. According to an ESPN model released yesterday, they are projected to be the worst NBA team overall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">First, a hat tip to this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bulletsforever.com\/post\/EHGZau6hk6sP\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">feed post by TrillBroDude<\/a> (yes, he is an SB Nation employee) who shared this link. According to Kevin Pelton of ESPN, his statistical based model on regular season projects has the Wizards projected to get just 14.2 wins in 2025-26, worst in the Eastern Conference and worst in the NBA overall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">To be fair, Pelton says that he doesn\u2019t think that the Wizards would only win just 14 or so games this season:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">15. Washington Wizards<br \/>Projected wins: 14.2<br \/>ESPN BET over\/under total: 20.5<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">Why they project to be worse than their total: Given how my model tends to compress the expected standings to avoid bad misses, this is a shockingly low projection for the Wizards. In fact, it\u2019s the worst I\u2019ve calculated for a team since adopting this model in 2010. After trading away veterans at the deadline and again this past summer, Washington doesn\u2019t have a single player who rates in the league\u2019s top 130.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">We are still waiting on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bulletsforever.com\/community-bulletin-board\/65489\/sb-nation-reacts-how-good-do-you-think-the-wizards-will-be-in-the-2025-26-season\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SB Nation Reacts survey results<\/a> to our survey regarding how many wins the Wizards will get this year. But I would think that fans would expect more than 14 wins. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025-26 NBA season projections are coming in, and we\u2019re starting to see how good (or not so&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,3175,6,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-331194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-latest-news","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-washington","12":"tag-washington-wizards","13":"tag-washingtonwizards","14":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115345089254429843","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331194","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=331194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}