Losing, in and of itself, isn’t that big a deal for the Washington Wizards.

For one thing, it’s something they’ve done quite a lot of over the past few years. The Wiz haven’t even approached .500 since 2017-18, a span in which they’ve lost a higher percentage of their games than any franchise except the Pistons. While Detroit is now firmly on the upswing, though, Washington remains mired in the mud — which, for another thing, is kind of the plan for an organization that is still climbing out of the smoking crater left in the wake of the John Wall/Bradley Beal era and boasts the NBA’s youngest roster.

Losing 11 games in a row, though? With the 11th coming in a game where you trailed for virtually the entire final three quarters … going down by as many as 24 points … to the similarly disastrous and previously 1-11 Brooklyn Nets … at home?

Well, that’s a sizable enough deal that, just a baker’s dozen games into the 2025-26 NBA season, the nigh-upon-winless 1-12 Wizards sounded a worrying alarm:

From Josh Robbins of The Athletic:

“We buckled to the adversity,” coach Brian Keefe said. “We fouled when we shouldn’t. We didn’t dig in when they made certain runs. This group has never done that. That was disappointing on all of our end. We have to own that. But that was the thing that was bothering me the most, is that after the initial start of the game, which I thought we came out with a necessary mindset and attitude, once we got hit, we didn’t respond well.”

It was a bad enough performance that, after Keefe spoke to the team following the final buzzer, the Wizards held a players-only meeting in their locker room.

“We needed that talk, I think,” [Wizards forward Bilal] Coulibaly said afterward. “The guys just stepped up, the vets, the guys that have been used to winning. That’s what we’re trying to do here in the next year. So they had to talk to us, and they did a great job about this and everybody was listening.”

That, in part, was the argument for the Wizards trading for the likes of Khris Middleton and C.J. McCollum. Bringing in a pair of respected 10-plus-year veterans who have been on teams of consequence — in Middleton, a three-time All-Star who played a key role on the Bucks’ 2021 NBA championship team; in McCollum, someone who’d averaged 20 points per game for 10 straight seasons and went to the 2019 Western Conference finals with Portland — would help Keefe and his coaching staff show the ropes to Washington’s 10 players aged 22 and under. Under their guidance, hoped-for cornerstones like Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, Kyshawn George, Bub Carrington and Tre Johnson would come to understand what it takes to travel the road to NBA relevance: to transform from the team every opponent can’t wait to face to one worthy of respect.

In the third season after dealing Beal, though … it’s proving to be an awfully long road.

After the embarrassing loss to Brooklyn, the Wizards enter Monday’s action ranked 28th in offensive efficiency, 29th in defensive efficiency and 30th — dead last — in net rating, according to Cleaning the Glass. They are woeful in the half-court, whether scoring or defending. They are even worse in transition, ranking 28th in points per 100 possessions added on offensive fast breaks and 30th — again, dead last — in points-per-100 added by opponents on their transition chances. They’ve been able to limit 3-point attempts, ranking sixth in the share of opponents’ shots that come from long distance … but have been unable to prevent the most efficient shots in the game, with opponents taking nearly 34% of their attempts directly at the rim, fifth highest in the NBA.

In an era when it seems like every head coach in the league is harping on the importance of winning the possession battle, the Wizards are losing it, night in and night out, to an almost unfathomable degree. They give up more offensive rebounds than they snag themselves; they allow more free throws than they generate for themselves; they turn the ball over way more often than they take it from the other team. Add it all up, as Jared Dubin does at Last Night in Basketball, and Washington is averaging 11.4 fewer possessions per game than its opponents — a deficit nearly twice as large as that of the team with the second-largest disparity (Milwaukee, -6.1).

Scott Taetsch via Getty Images

As it turns out, giving opposing teams way more scoring chances than you get, struggling to convert on yours and not being very good at preventing them from scoring on theirs is a one-way ticket to Yikesville. According to Dubin’s adjusted efficiency metrics, the Wizards’ offense has scored about six fewer points per 100 possessions than a league-average unit this season, and their defense has allowed about seven more points-per-100 than a league-average outfit. That adds up to an adjusted net rating of -13.4 points-per-100 — which would be the third-worst season of any team since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976, ahead of only the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks, who finished 11-71, and the 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats, who finished 7-59 in a lockout-shortened campaign.

Those teams finished with two of the five worst winning percentages in NBA history. That’s the deep water in which the Wizards have plunged — and, just a month into the season, it sure looks like they’re on the verge of staying sunk.

For now, at least. There have been silver linings: George’s growth as a playmaker and shooter; Sarr’s improving finishing on the interior and rising rebounding, block and assist rates; lottery pick Johnson’s instant-impact bucket-getting and high-volume 3-point shooting. Those players continuing their development into better, more well-rounded players is of incalculably greater importance to the Wizards’ future than an extra win or two here or there this season — especially considering Washington owes its 2026 first-round draft pick to the Knicks, but only if it falls outside the top eight after the draft lottery.

(That pick, originally dealt to Houston in the 2020 trade that shipped out Wall and imported Russell Westbrook, wound up going to Oklahoma City in the 2021 swap that made Alperen Şengün a Rocket. It then landed in New York via the 2022 draft-night deal that allowed the Thunder to draft Ousmane Dieng … and helped the Knicks clear the salary-cap space to sign Jalen Brunson away from Dallas in free agency. Trades involving future draft picks: They really turn you into Charlie trying to track down Pepe Silvia.)

The way to ensure there’s no chance of handing Leon Rose a late lottery pick is to finish with one of the four worst records in the NBA. (If it doesn’t land in the top eight, the Wiz only owe New York two future second-rounders. Much better.) If the Wizards do that and wind up drafting a prospect like Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer or AJ Dybantsa to join Sarr, George, Johnson and Co. — and if Wizards brass is able to turn the expiring contracts of Middleton and McCollum into future talent, either before February’s trade deadline or this summer, when Washington could be looking at more than $100 million in salary-cap space — then someday all the sturm und drang of this dismal “early phase of the rebuild” will dissipate and feel like little more than a bad dream.

Living through it in the moment, though, must feel like a nightmare — for Keefe, who waited the better part of two decades for his shot at a head coaching gig, only to lose 80% of his first 134 games; for the vets, stuck doing a bid on a going-nowhere team and waiting for some interested suitor to swoop them up and return them to meaningful basketball; and especially for the young guys, watching the L’s pile up and wondering if they’re ever going to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.

“It’s tough,” George told reporters. “You’ve got to switch your mindset and focus on the process. I think it eventually is going to affect you, but you’ve got to make sure that you keep your mindset focused on the right thing. We’ve just got to be able to go on to the next game and be able to just make sure the process is right, even though the results are not there.”