Mission accomplished. Sort of.<\/p>\n
The Washington Wizards dropped another one Tuesday \u2014 a 129-98 loss<\/a> to the Chicago Bulls \u2014 and in doing so, officially secured what they were really after.<\/p>\n Namely, their draft pick.<\/p>\n With the loss, Washington falls to 17-62 and is now guaranteed to finish with one of the three worst records in the league. That means its first-round pick, which was top-eight protected, is staying put.<\/p>\n No drama on lottery night. No sweating it out.<\/p>\n The Wizards can\u2019t fall lower than No. 7 overall.<\/p>\n Instead of sending that first-rounder to the New York Knicks, Washington will convey a pair of second-round picks \u2014 one this year, another in 2027.<\/p>\n So yes, the losses mattered.\u00a0And there were plenty of them.<\/p>\n Washington cycled through 26 players this season and never won more than two games in a row. After a brief bump coming out of the All-Star break, the Wizards leaned fully into the rebuild, dropping 23 of their last 24 games.<\/p>\n They even took a couple of swings midseason<\/a>, adding Trae Young<\/a> and Anthony Davis<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Young appeared in just five games, and Davis has yet to suit up.<\/p>\n So here we are. Three games left. One of the league\u2019s worst records. And a top-seven pick locked in.<\/p>\n Not pretty. But for the Wizards, very much part of the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mission accomplished. Sort of. The Washington Wizards dropped another one Tuesday \u2014 a 129-98 loss to the Chicago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,6,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-704596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-washington","11":"tag-washington-wizards","12":"tag-washingtonwizards","13":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116367324833156558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704596","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=704596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}