At long last, the Wizards get the luck of the draw.
The NBA Draft Lottery is a cruel system, and for a long time Washington was its cruelest victim 鈥� always close enough to the odds to believe, never lucky enough to win.
Sunday, that changed when the Wizards won the last draft lottery as we know it, successfully tanking their way to the No. 1 overall pick in a loaded 2026 NBA Draft expected to produce multiple franchise superstars.
For all Washington had to endure to get here 鈥� the NBA鈥檚 first string of three consecutive 64-loss seasons, the inexcusable 83-point outburst from Bam Adebayo, nearly five full decades of toggling between futility and irrelevance 鈥� it appears the third time landing the No. 1 overall pick will truly be the charm.
The first time the Wizards won the lottery, it proved to be no luck at all. As bad as the 2001 Kwame Brown pick looks in hindsight, there wasn鈥檛 a transformational player at the top of that draft (seriously, go back and look 鈥� Pau Gasol was the only top-five choice that would have made a measurable difference).
John Wall (whose presence in Chicago for the lottery draw proved much luckier than聽) was the consensus No. 1 pick in 2010 and the right choice. But for a variety of reasons beyond his singular talent, the Wizards never advanced past the second round of the playoffs.
This time around, I think BYU star AJ Dybantsa is the pick, and there is nothing remotely complicated about it. He is a generational talent, a 6-foot-9 wing who can create his own shot from anywhere, get to the line at will and defend multiple positions 鈥� the kind of player for which franchises wait decades. Plus, his game would be a perfect complement on a roster already loaded with young talent on the perimeter and an ascending big man in Alex Sarr.
What makes this moment even richer is the context surrounding it.
This is the third consecutive year the Wizards have had the highest odds to land a top-four pick 鈥� a run of organizational futility so historically consistent it almost became performance art. Yet the front office, to its credit, never stopped working the margins.
Over the last three years, Washington amassed three top-10 picks and five overall first-rounders, stockpiling the kind of draft capital to build the infrastructure for a franchise cornerstone like Dybantsa to arrive and anchor a young, talented roster, not have to carry it.
D.C. fans have been asked for patience before, of course. They heard it after Wall and his running mate, Bradley Beal. They watched promise dissolve into injury, dysfunction and disappointment so many times that hope started to feel like a form of self harm. It鈥檚 reasonable, maybe even rational, to approach this moment with arms crossed.
But this is different in ways that matter.
The 2026 draft class is deeper than 2001, more certain than 2010. The organizational structure is more stable. The supporting cast of young talent is more developed. And the player at the center of it 鈥� Dybantsa 鈥� is the kind of once-in-a-generation prospect who changes the math on everything.
Of course, tanking to a dynasty is easier said than done 鈥� just ask the Philadelphia 76ers, who bottomed out for years, drafted Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, had the slogans, had the mandate from the fan base to be patient 鈥� and never once sniffed a Finals appearance. 鈥淭rust the Process鈥� became a punchline precisely because the “process” never paid off, dissolving instead into a soap opera of star trades, locker room dysfunction, and an Embiid legacy defined more by what didn鈥檛 happen than what did.
The lesson from Philadelphia isn鈥檛 that tanking doesn鈥檛 work. It鈥檚 that tanking is only the beginning 鈥� and that the real work, the harder work, comes after the ping pong balls fall your way.
But today, it feels like all the years of suffering weren’t in vain. The Wizards 鈥� a team that’s made losing look like a lifestyle 鈥� hoisting a championship trophy in 2030 is no longer a pipe dream but an attainable goal for a team that now has a foundation for relevance, if not a blueprint for a dynasty.
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