For the second year in a row, Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr. will don a suit, climb the stage and hope for the best as he serves as Washington’s representative Tuesday in the NBA draft lottery at Chicago’s McCormick Place. The Wizards are vying for the right to draft French phenom Victor Wembanyama with just the eighth-best odds (6.7 percent) and must be crossing their fingers, hunting for four-leaf clovers, cradling fuzzy dice — whatever it takes to attract a little bit of long-overdue good luck.
Drafting Wembanyama would provide a supersized injection of hope into a forlorn franchise already on the precipice of change. Washington is in the middle of a search for a new general manager and is sending Unseld onstage while assistant general manager Brett Greenberg represents the team behind the scenes in the drawing room. If they move up to win Tuesday, that top job gets a lot more enticing.
First, they’ll need a heap of good karma.
Since the NBA began using a weighted lottery system to award the No. 1 overall pick in 1990, the team with the eighth-best odds or worse has jumped up to claim the top spot just four times. In 1993, the Orlando Magic pulled off a stunner by leaping to the top spot despite having the lowest odds to win (1.5 percent); the team drafted Chris Webber, then dealt him to the Golden State Warriors for Penny Hardaway. In 2008, the Chicago Bulls jumped from ninth (1.7 percent) to draft Derrick Rose with the No. 1 overall pick. In 2011, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the lottery with the eighth-best odds (2.8 percent), and in 2014, they moved up again, from ninth (1.7 percent), to grab the top slot and draft Andrew Wiggins (they then traded Wiggins for Kevin Love).
The Wizards haven’t been as fortunate; they’ve been mired in an unfavorable streak that was extended last month when, after finishing the season 35-47, they slid to eighth place instead of seventh in the lottery when they lost a coin toss tiebreaker with the Indiana Pacers. That’s bad enough that Unseld might want to find former Cavaliers general manager and current New Orleans Pelicans executive vice president David Griffin to rub shoulders with before the drawing Tuesday night and steal some of his mojo.
Washington has either stayed planted at its expected position or moved down in 18 of its 21 trips to the lottery since 1990. The worst-case scenario Tuesday is slipping to 12th, and there is a smidgen of a chance it does so — those odds are listed as just over 0.0 percent. The odds the Wizards fall to 11th are a mere 0.4 percent.
Their last big leap was when they moved up from eighth to third to nab Otto Porter Jr. in 2013.
If you’d rather turn your gaze to something sunnier, there are friendlier odds to focus on: according to Tankathon.com, the Wizards’ odds to jump into the top four are 29 percent. Though Wembanyama is a singular talent, he is one of several exciting players available in this class. Moving into the top four would put the Wizards in range to select G League Ignite point guard Scoot Henderson, Alabama forward Brandon Miller or perhaps either Amen or Ausar Thompson, the pair of identical 6-foot-7 twins who played with Overtime Elite this year.
That would be fortuitous enough. The formidable gifts all of those prospects bring on court pale — at least right now, in this uncertain moment in Wizards-land — next to the hope they symbolize. If that sounds like a corny line from a superhero movie, well, Washington is in need of saving. Its roster needs are up in the air until owner Ted Leonsis hires a general manager. Kyle Kuzma will hit free agency this summer, and Kristaps Porzingis’s future with the team is uncertain because he has a player option for next season. A refreshed front office may take Washington in a new direction, or it may hunker down around Bradley Beal — or Beal could request a trade. The only thing the Wizards know they need for sure heading into Tuesday is luck.