August 25, 2026
August 25, 2026
Washington Wizards 2025-26 Season Recap: A Rebuild Hits Rock Bottom
The Wizards’ 2025-26 season never pretended to be about wins. It was the 65th season of the franchise and the 52nd in the Washington, D.C. area. It arrived as the latest chapter of a teardown that began years earlier. What played out was a 17-65 finish, the second-worst mark in franchise history. Two stunning trade-deadline deals and one of the most lopsided losses the league has ever witnessed punctuated the year. For a fan base conditioned to patience, the Wizards’ 2025-26 season tested even the most forgiving definition of progress.
Washington entered the year with a roster built for development rather than contention. The front office made that priority unmistakable over the summer. General manager Will Dawkins used the sixth overall pick on Texas guard Tre Johnson. He then flipped an additional first-rounder to Utah to add Will Riley and Jamir Watkins to the incoming class, as detailed in the team’s own draft-night recap. A three-team deal brought in CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk, and Cam Whitmore, while Saddiq Bey and Jordan Poole moved on. Marcus Smart was bought out. Malcolm Brogdon left in free agency, and Richaun Holmes departed for an overseas contract. Marvin Bagley III arrived on a modest deal. None of it was designed to chase a playoff spot. It was designed to buy time for Alex Sarr, Bub Carrington, and Kyshawn George to keep developing, with Coach Brian Keefe tasked with finding minutes for a rotation built to shift constantly by design.
The bottom fell out almost immediately. Washington opened October at 1-4, then collapsed to 1-12 in November. It was a stretch so thin on wins that every close finish felt like a moral victory. Kyshawn George and Sarr carried much of the offensive burden in those early weeks. George strung together a run of 20-plus point nights that hinted at the leap he would eventually make. Still, the roster lacked the depth to survive injuries and matchup nights against healthier teams. CJ McCollum provided scoring punch off the bench before his eventual departure at the deadline, and Bagley III gave the frontcourt some needed physicality. Neither could paper over how thin the roster ran beyond its top six or seven players. By Thanksgiving, the Wizards already looked like a lottery lock. The only real questions left were about development, not standings.
December offered a rare taste of stability. The Wizards went 6-8 for the month, their best stretch of the season. Bagley III’s interior scoring and a suddenly confident Carrington running the offense powered the modest turnaround. It amounted to little more than a pause in the freefall. The team still finished the calendar year at 8-24. That modest uptick evaporated almost as quickly as it appeared once January’s brutal road slate arrived.
Everything changed on January 9. Washington sent McCollum and Corey Kispert to Atlanta for four-time All-Star Trae Young, a move confirmed in the team’s official trade announcement. It was a stunning declaration that the rebuild had entered a new stage. The deal paired a proven floor general with Washington’s young core, even as the season’s win total made the timing feel curious. Young did not suit up right away while working back from injury. Carrington kept running point in the interim.
Then came February 5. A three-team trade with Dallas and Charlotte delivered ten-time All-Star Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell to Washington. The return, as the team detailed at the time, sent out Khris Middleton, Malaki Branham, and multiple future draft picks. Davis, like Young, was not immediately healthy enough to play. Both stars spent weeks working toward their Washington debuts rather than reshaping games. The result was a roster stacked with recognizable names that still could not translate star power into victories, a dynamic that ESPN chronicled as the season wound down.
March 10 will be remembered in Washington for reasons no franchise wants attached to its name. Miami’s Bam Adebayo scored 83 points against the Wizards, surpassing Kobe Bryant’s famous 81-point game for the second-most points in a single outing in league history. The Wizards had no answer that night. The box score became a symbol of just how far the roster still had to go defensively. Two days later, on March 12, an overtime loss to Orlando eliminated Washington from playoff contention for the fifth consecutive season, closing the door on any lingering postseason hope. There was one bright spot worth remembering. A November 25 win over Atlanta in NBA Cup play stood as the franchise’s first-ever victory in that competition after two winless appearances, even though it did nothing to change the team’s tournament fate. March itself turned into a nightmare stretch of its own. The team managed just a single win across fifteen games as fatigue and roster turnover took their toll.
Beneath the losses, development remained the season’s actual currency. On that front, there were real signs of life. Sarr and George, both All-Rookie honorees the year before, took clear steps forward. George in particular emerged as a reliable two-way wing capable of leading the team in scoring on a given night. Carrington solidified himself as a floor general who could hold his own even after Young’s arrival complicated the backcourt picture.
Tre Johnson flashed the scoring instincts that made him a top-six pick. Will Riley turned into one of the season’s more encouraging surprises, stringing together big scoring nights once he earned a consistent role in February and March, including a 30-point outburst in April against a Golden State team fighting for playoff seeding. Julian Reese, signed to a two-way deal in March, closed the year with a string of double-doubles that hinted at a future rotation spot. Bilal Coulibaly continued to show flashes of the defensive versatility that made him a lottery pick a year earlier. Coach Brian Keefe cycled through fifty different starting lineups trying to find answers. That number speaks to both the chaos of the roster and the organization’s willingness to keep experimenting rather than lock into a rotation losing games would not have justified anyway.
Seventeen wins will not satisfy anyone in Washington. The Wizards’ 2025-26 season will be remembered first for its record and its historic low point against Miami. But records alone do not capture what the year meant for a franchise mid-rebuild. The additions of Trae Young, Anthony Davis, and D’Angelo Russell reshaped the roster’s ceiling even if neither star played enough to prove it. The continued growth of Sarr, George, Carrington, and the rookie class gave the front office real building blocks heading into the offseason. Keefe’s expected return signals continuity rather than a reset. It is a sign that ownership sees the losing as a step in a longer process rather than a reason to blow it all up again. Whether that patience pays off will define the next chapter. What is certain is that the Wizards’ 2025-26 season will stand as the year the roster’s identity started to change even while the standings stayed as bleak as ever.
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