Now they’re one of the very worst teams in the league, and the seats are empty. They even made it to 49 wins once! Back then, the arena was loud and the city was paying attention. (Last season alone, six teams won more than 50 games.) The median age in the United States is about 39 years old, meaning most Americans have never existed at the same time as a relevant Washington basketball team.įor my first five years as a season-ticket owner, the Wizards weren’t great, but they were at least competitive, with some exciting young talent.

Since that season, the team has never made it past the second round of the playoffs and hasn’t even made it to 50 regular-season wins, the longest such streak in the league by two decades. The following year they went back to the finals but lost. The then–Washington Bullets won the franchise’s only NBA title in 1978. I follow the Wizards religiously, by which I mean: regular attendance, tithing, and a vague promise of salvation through suffering. I’ve had Wizards season tickets for the past 10 years, a fact that tends to be met with the sort of pitying curiosity that I assume is familiar to Civil War reenactors and ferret owners. In many cities, having NBA season tickets is a status symbol. What’s so sad about my terrible team leaving the emptiest arena in the NBA for a gleaming palace across the Potomac? Sit down and let me explain-right here, in row G, seat 11, because I couldn’t find anyone else to go to the game with me. home to a new, $2.2 billion “world-class Entertainment District” in the Virginia suburb of Alexandria.

But I experienced a fresh sort of pain at the recent announcement that the team would be moving from its convenient downtown-D.C. As a Wizards diehard, I’m used to following their annual descent in the NBA standings. Washington Wizards fans didn’t need a new reason to be miserable.

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