The Washington Wizards have been one of the least successful franchises in recent NBA history, but you might be surprised by just how bad they have been over the last 30 or so years. Back in 1997, the franchise officially changed its name from the Bullets to the Wizards, and they haven’t even recorded 1,000 wins since.
For some context on just how terrible that is, San Antonio Spurs icon Tim Duncan, who retired in 2016, has more wins than the Wizards since 1997.
Wins Since The 1997-98 Season
Tim Duncan: 1,001
Washington Wizards: 928
The Wizards aren’t even close to catching up to Duncan. They need another 73 wins, and it might be a while before they get there. The Wizards won just 68 games combined in the three seasons prior to this current one. There is reason to believe they might win more consistently from next season onwards due to Trae Young and Anthony Davis, but time will tell. Neither of them could potentially even be there after this season.
If Young and Davis are Wizards next season, they’d give the team a shot to accomplish something they last did in 1978-79: win 50 games in a single campaign. Yes, you read that right. The Wizards have not had a 50-win season in nearly 50 years. Even Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James wasn’t alive when this team last got 50 wins.
The closest that the Wizards came to pulling it off was when they went 49-33 in the 2016-17 season. They actually could have gotten to 50, but chose to rest the likes of John Wall and Bradley Beal for the playoffs. That was the only time they won more than 46 games in a campaign in the Wall and Beal era, which is a bit surprising.
By contrast, Duncan, the first pick of the 1997 NBA Draft, won at least 50 games in all but one of his 19 seasons in the NBA. The only time he didn’t was the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, in which teams only played 50 games. Duncan led the Spurs to a terrific 37-13 record back then, and they’d go on to win the championship. He’d end up winning five titles in his Hall of Fame career.
Getting back to that win tally, there are two teams that have actually won fewer games than the Wizards since 1997: the New Orleans Pelicans/Hornets (870) and the Charlotte Hornets/Bobcats (897). New Orleans only got the franchise in 2002, though, while Charlotte didn’t have one from 2002-03 to 2003-04. They would have passed up the Wizards had they been ever-present, if we go by win rate.
The Pelicans/Hornets have a 45.5% win rate, and the Hornets are at 42.4%. The Wizards, meanwhile, are at 40.6%. With the way they’re going, there is a chance they might drop below 40.0% at some point.
Most recently, the Wizards lost 134-125 to the Toronto Raptors at Capital One Arena on Saturday to drop to 16-43 in this 2025-26 season. They have now lost four in a row, and it’s unlikely they are going to win too many games the rest of the season.
