NBA’s perennial pawns may finally have pieces to run the board

OPINION:

The Washington Wizards chose their previous No. 1 draft choice, John Wall, to represent the team at Sunday’s NBA draft lottery, hoping the connection would produce some top draft magic.

It did.

Washington won the NBA draft lottery, which, for this organization in the past, has been more like the dark short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson than any reward for losing, with dreams crushed multiple times by low finishes with the bouncing balls.

Not this time.

The Wizards were rewarded for losing 65 games this year — the worst record in the league — with the opportunity to pick what they believe is the best player available in this year’s draft.

Supposedly, this is the year to do that in a draft with multiple players at the top who could possibly make an impact — A.J. Dybansta of BYU, Darryn Peterson from Kansas and Cameron Boozer of Duke, among others, close behind.

Whether or not any of those players can change the direction of a franchise is undetermined.

But one thing is certain. The Wizards are suddenly much more interesting, particularly with the veteran pickups the team made this season in trades for Trae Young and Anthony Davis.

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For many, that may be enough — an NBA franchise that is not invisible.

Others who have suffered through 47 years of embarrassment and frustration — failing to win 50 games in a season or reach the Eastern Conference finals since 1979 — may expect more.

They’ve seen this before, after all, with Wall. The 2010 top selection in the draft was a five-time All-Star and led the Wizards to three Eastern Conference semifinals, the most notable being 2017, when Washington won 49 games and lost to the Boston Celtics in seven games in the conference semis.

He was on the verge of taking the franchise someplace it had not been in nearly four decades. But he was betrayed by general manager Ernie Grunfeld and a front office that failed to give him the support he needed.

Wall had double knee surgery in the offseason and was on a minutes restriction when the season began. Yet he wound up fifth in the league that year in minutes played, and by the time he got to Game 7, he was pretty much helpless. Boston knew this and targeted the Wizards’ star guard in their win. Wall went 8 for 23 in that game and missed his last 11 shots.

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Things will be different this time, we are told, because owner Ted Leonsis — who kept Grunfeld on as general manager for two more years — says the new bosses, the president of Monumental Basketball, Michael Winger, and Will Dawkins, his general manager, are not the same as the old bosses.

“They’re playing chess when sometimes it seems I might have been playing checkers,” Leonsis told Sports Business Journal. “Or our organization might have been playing checkers before.”

I give Winger credit in the celebration of the lottery victory to acknowledge how painful this was for a fan base that had already endured years of humiliation before he got here. Too many times, the organization has been arrogant about the tanking process.

“Ultimately, it’s our fans that have endured the most,” Winger told reporters. “To me, this No. 1 pick is for them. It is a reward for hanging in there with us. It’s a reward for continuing to support us despite sometimes really bad basketball. They knew, and they supported, a multiyear teardown and a multiyear reinvention of the franchise. I think it’s a moment to celebrate them.”

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It wasn’t quite an apology for the past, which, granted, I know, he wasn’t here for. But he should understand that when you take over an organization, you inherit all the glory and suffering that came before you. The team didn’t begin to exist upon your arrival.

Still, it was a day to celebrate, when very few such days existed in the three years, and the 43-160 record Winger has presided over.

The celebration was for relevance, which now, with a top draft choice added to a solid core of young players and flawed veterans like Davis (often injured) and Young (named third most overrated player in the league in The Athletic’s anonymous player poll, an improvement over being named most overrated two years ago), certainly will get people’s attention.

That’s not enough, though. It wasn’t enough when there were empty seats at Capital One Arena during Wall’s playoff era, and it will mean even less now. But that was the checkers era. This is the chess era, and as someone once said, “Chess makes men wiser and clear-sighted.”

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Then again, it was Vladimir Putin who said it.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.

• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.