The Washington Wizards closed the 2025-26 regular season on Sunday with a 130-117 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Arena. The result gave the Wiz kids their 26th loss over the team\u2019s final 27 games \u2014 mission accomplished in their race to the bottom of the standings.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s game was shaping up to be a blowout only minutes past the opening tip, as the Cavs raced out to a 25-point lead in the first quarter. Jamir Watkins and Anthony Gill were the lone bright spots early, with each scoring 7 points as the Wizards trailed 43-21 to end the opening period.<\/p>\n
Bub Carrington started to sizzle late in the first half. The second-year guard scored 12 straight points to end the second quarter, trimming the lead down to 65-55 at the break.<\/p>\n
Washington kept the momentum going after halftime with a shooting clinic in the third quarter. A contested Sharife Cooper three-pointer allowed the road dogs to get within two at the 1:26 mark. The Wizards trailed 99-95 entering the final period of the season.<\/p>\n
The fact that the Wizards made things interesting late was a marvel considering the team was outrebounded 63-37. The second-chance points Washington gave up stymied any momentum to complete a comeback in the fourth quarter, ending the team\u2019s year with a 13-point loss.<\/p>\n
Jamir Watkins had an encouraging final game of his rookie campaign. He shot an efficient 7-of-13 with 5 triples to score a career-high 24 points. Bub Carrington and Sharife Cooper posted 20 points apiece, while Will Riley struggled to score with 6 points on 2-of-11 shooting.<\/p>\n
The Wizards\u2019 attention now shifts to the NBA draft lottery on May 10. Washington has a 52.1 percent chance to nab one of the top-4 spots in the draft and can finish no lower than 5th in the order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Wizards closed the 2025-26 regular season on Sunday with a 130-117 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,6,14947],"class_list":{"0":"post-709345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-washington-wizards-recaps"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116394779250191935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709345","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=709345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}