Washington Wizards: All to play for when they get to the bubble

The Washington Wizards are not going to Florida to make up the numbers and will look to take advantage of the changing situations of others in the NBA.

It would be fair to say Washington Wizards fans haven’t had a lot to cheer for in recent years. The days of playoff series wins, led by franchise cornerstone John Wall, seem a long time ago at this point. The franchise is heading to Florida to compete in the original bubble at the end of the month, but they may be starting to believe they’re not just present to make up the numbers.

Their own roster isn’t exactly the reason for this, although Bradley Beal appears to be at the peak of his powers at the moment, but rather the changing situations of the teams closest to them, and who they are going to have to overtake to try and make it back to the postseason. It’s a goal that seemed a step too far at the turn of the year.

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The Wizards are 5.5 games back on the Orlando Magic, and 6.0 behind the Brooklyn Nets. With eight seeding games before the playoffs start, this would seem a huge task to expect the Wizards to overhaul one, or both, of these organizations to steal their spot. But there are plenty of factors at play here, which help the Wizards.

The most important one being that, if the team in the ninth spot (currently the Wizards), is four games or less back of the eighth spot (currently the Magic), they will have a mini play-in tournament to decide the seed. Eighth needs to beat ninth once, and ninth needs to beat eighth twice in a row to get in. Got it?

Keeping pace with the Magic isn’t the most difficult task in the world, they have been a wildly inconsistent roster for years now. As likely to beat the Los Angeles Lakers as they are to lose to the New York Knicks, you never know what you are going to get with them. The Magic will likely be without potential franchise player Jonathan Isaac, and Al-Farouq Aminu won’t be around either.

This doesn’t help their cause, and it is the Wizards who could really profit off of this. Ironically the Nets may be able to help as well, as the Magic will play the Nets twice during the eight seeding games. No matter who wins these contests, and it would be better for the Wizards if the Nets won both of them to push the Magic closer towards them, any time two teams above you play each other a couple of times you have the potential to profit.

Even if the Magic end up winning both of those games, this could still work in the favor of the Wizards. The Nets are limping into the Florida bubble, seemingly losing players by the day. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving won’t be there through injury, and neither will DeAndre Jordan after testing positive for Covid-19. Wilson Chandler has chosen to stay away, and Spencer Dinwiddie, who hasn’t decided what he is doing yet, also tested positive recently.

That’s a sizeable chunk of the team’s top eight or so players who will be missing. The kind of hole in a roster that could see a franchise fall down the standings, and in this case right past the Wizards who will be looking to capitalize. Looking at which free agents are being picked up to play right now as well, the Nets clearly won’t be able to adequately replace the guys they’ve lost.

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The Wizards can’t solely rely on others slipping up to make the playoffs, however, and you could argue that they shouldn’t even have this as their main priority. All that will be waiting for them if they manage to nab the eighth seed is a sound beating by the Milwaukee Bucks in round one. But with Wall expected back for next season, it would show Beal that the organization is at least trying to move in the right direction.

If that doesn’t work then seeing Beal lead this group into the playoffs and perform well personally will only increase his trade value if this is an avenue the franchise wants to go down. He’ll be doing so without Davis Bertans, but Rui Hachimura had a nice rookie campaign and Thomas Bryant (now healthy) brings the kind of energy that you want from your bigs today.

The seeding games for the Wizards are tough, but they will get a crack at the Nets themselves in their second game back. That will be huge for not only themselves but for the Magic who will be looking on to see if the Wizards can do them a favor. This is a winnable game for the Wizards, and so too is their opening contest against the Phoenix Suns.

It gets trickier from there and they will have to grab a couple more wins to stay in the mix, but the Magic and Nets aren’t going to be posting anything close to 8-0 records either. So what looked like a lost cause a number of weeks ago for the Wizards continues to move in their favor, and having the best player out of anybody who will be playing on the Nets, Magic or Wizards roster helps too. They won’t be making up the numbers in Florida.