Want to go to the NBA Finals? Add a former Washington Wizard to your team

With the New York Knicks sweeping their Eastern Conference finals series with the Cleveland Cavaliers, one of the NBA’s most incredible postseason streaks of recent vintage will continue. For the 18th straight season, a former Washington Wizards player will appear in the NBA finals.

You heard me.

Starting with the 2009 finals between Kobe Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers and Dwight Howard’s Orlando Magic, a former Wizard has played for an NBA title every year. It’s ironic, considering Washington has been one of the league’s least competitive franchises for generations. The Wizards haven’t reached the finals since 1979. Since 1980 — that’s 46 years, by my American University math — the Wizards have made the postseason just 16 times and have never reached a conference final.

Sure, there’s some luck involved. But the streak exemplifies a maddening bent toward mediocrity that had been — until the last few years, when the Wizards finally undertook a down-to-the-studs rebuild under president of Monumental Basketball Michael Winger and general manager Will Dawkins — the franchise’s calling card.

For many years, with ownership content to settle for teams just talented enough to potentially sneak into the playoffs, Washington would churn its roster, never building around top prospects for long. Even when the Wizards drafted or acquired promising young talents such as Chris Webber, Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace or Richard Hamilton, they’d give up on the players much too soon, dealing them for veterans with just enough tread left to keep the Wizards semi-interesting. The Wizards were cutting-edge practitioners of this for decades.

Then, when those vets were inarguably on the wrong side of their primes, off they’d go — often to better teams, where they could play smaller, more tenable roles, rather than being asked to carry the load like they were in D.C.

This year’s ex-Wizard escapee is Knicks guard Landry Shamet, who appeared in 46 games for Washington during the 2023-24 season, the first of three horrendous Wizards campaigns as the franchise began its long-overdue multiyear tank to rebuild through the draft. The Wizards waived Shamet the following summer, and he signed with the Knicks in September 2024. This postseason, Shamet has rediscovered his mojo and is shooting the lights out off the bench — he’s 21 of 35 on 3s (60 percent) going into the finals. (Shamet shot 33.8 percent from behind the arc in his season with the Wizards. Figures.)

(One could argue that the San Antonio Spurs also have a former Wizard on their finals roster in veteran forward Kelly Olynyk. But Olynyk, who was traded last summer by the New Orleans Pelicans to Washington along with C.J. McCollum, never played a game for the Wizards. It was, uh, understood that Olynyk would rather play for a contending team this season, so three days after the trade to D.C., the Wizards sent Olynyk to San Antonio in a multiplayer deal.)

Shamet joins an eclectic list.

There’s veteran center Thomas Bryant, who played 56 games for an Indiana Pacers team that made the finals last year before falling to the Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games. Bryant was also on the Denver Nuggets’ 2023 championship team. Before finding greener pastures, Bryant played in Washington for parts of four seasons, appearing in 155 games from 2018 to 2022.

Center Kristaps Porziņģis, who was a key part of the Boston Celtics’ title team in 2023-24, and center Daniel Gafford, who started for the Dallas Mavericks during their 2024 finals run, are both ex-Wizards bigs who frequently squared off in practice while playing together in D.C., with KP starting and Gafford his backup.

“I mean, going into a season, you always think we have enough talent to make the playoffs,” Porziņģis said in 2024. “So, that was the goal. It wasn’t, realistically thinking, of course, that we were a championship-caliber team (in Washington).

“But making the playoffs, maybe making a push, it gives you motivation, you know? I think that was the mindset there.”

There’s guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who started on Denver’s 2023 title team after an offseason trade from Washington in 2022; guard Ish Smith, who finally got a ring with the Nuggets in his 13th NBA season, after playing for 13 teams — including the Wizards (140 games over parts of three seasons), and forward Jeff Green, who played the “Unc” role in Denver at age 36 after playing 77 games for the Wizards four years earlier. Caldwell-Pope was also on the Lakers’ 2019-20 championship team before joining the Wizards.

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Forward Otto Porter Jr., a reserve on the Golden State Warriors’ 2022 championship team, played his first five-plus pro seasons for the Wizards, who picked him third in the 2013 draft. Golden State guard Gary Payton II, also on the team, had two cups of coffee in Washington between 2018 and 2020. Dubs backup guard Chris Chiozza played 10 games for the Wizards in 2019-20.

Forward Bobby Portis, a key reserve for the Milwaukee Bucks’ 2021 title team, played 28 games for Washington during the 2018-19 season.

The bubble Lakers, who won the 2020 title, had multiple ex-Wizards. Howard was a key reserve for L.A. after barely registering a pulse in D.C. (nine games) the previous year. Forward Jared Dudley played 45 games in L.A.; he’d played 81 games in D.C. in 2015-16. Center JaVale McGee was en route to a third ring, after winning two in Golden State (2017 and 2018) — years after a four-season stint early in his career in Washington. There was also forward Markieff Morris, who didn’t play much in L.A. after being a starter on playoff teams for the Wizards between 2015 and 2017.

Guard Jodie Meeks was a bit player (eight games) on the Toronto Raptors’ championship team in 2018-19, after playing 77 games the year before in D.C.

Along with McGee, guard Shaun Livingston (Wizards, 2009-10 and 2012-13) played on the Warriors’ 2017 and 2018 title teams. Livingston was also a member of the Warriors’ 2015 title squad, as well as the two Warriors teams that lost in the finals: The 2019 team that fell to Toronto and the 2016 Dubs — the 73-9 regular-season Dubs — that lost to Cleveland.

Also on that 2017-18 Warriors’ championship team? The one and only Nick Young!

Yes, Nick Young, a master of unserious basketball during 335 games in D.C. between 2007 and 2012, has a ring.

Forward Rashard Lewis was a member of the Miami Heat’s 2013 and 2014 finals teams (one win, ’13; one loss, ’14), after playing two years in Washington for the perpetually rebuilding Wizards. Overlapping with Lewis during the Heat’s 2013 title run was Juwan Howard, who had, oh-so-briefly, looked like a foundational player with the Wizards, who took him fifth in the 1994 draft. After contentious negotiations on a contract extension failed, Howard bolted for the Heat in 1996 as a free agent, only to have his $101 million contract with Miami voided by NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Stern allowed Howard to return to Washington and re-sign with the Wizards for a similar amount — not that it did him much good, as Washington fans blamed him for not, somehow, lifting the Wizards to relevance by himself.

After being traded to Dallas in 2001, Howard eventually wound up in Miami, where he played on Heat finals teams in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Forward Mike Miller was with Howard on those same three Heat finals teams. (Miller also was on the Cavs’ 2014-15 team that lost to Golden State in the finals.) Miller was a Wizard in the 2009-10 season, having arrived from Minnesota along with guard Randy Foye via an offseason trade in which the Wizards sent their 2009 first-round pick to the Timberwolves. With that pick, the Wolves took guard Ricky Rubio. Two picks later, the Warriors took Stephen Curry.

(Whisper that last part very softly around Wizards fans.)

Technically, another ex-Wizard on that 2010-11 Heat team was guard Mike Bibby, nearing the end of a strong, 14-year career. Bibby started 20 postseason games for Miami that season.

But Bibby’s stay in Washington was … brief.

He’d played in exactly two games for the Wizards earlier that season, after the Atlanta Hawks traded him to D.C. in a multiplayer deal that brought the Wizards a 2011 first-round pick, before being waived. The Heat signed him two days later. (Bibby recalled this pit stop years later, on “All The Smoke.” His comments are NSFW, a recurring theme among players who passed through Washington in those years.)

On the other side in the 2011 finals, the Mavericks, who beat Miami in six games, had several former Wizards. Guard DeShawn “I can’t feel my face” Stevenson, who logged 236 games in D.C. between 2006 and 2010 and hilariously tried to beef with LeBron James, started 54 games that season for Dallas. Center Brendan Haywood, a Wizard from 2001 to 2010, and swingman Caron Butler (in D.C. from 2005 to 2010) played reserve roles for the Mavs.

Rasheed Wallace, the crafty veteran big, played on the Celtics’ 2010 finals team many years after the then-Bullets took him with the fourth pick in the 1995 draft. Wallace won a ring in 2004 as a key member of the Detroit Pistons team that upset the heavily favored Lakers in five games — but then lost the belt the following year in seven games to the Spurs.

Guard Tyronn Lue — the future head coach of the Cavs and the LA Clippers — had a solid playing career that went beyond getting stepped over by Allen Iverson. By the time of the 2009 finals, though, he was a little-used reserve for the Magic, who lost to the Lakers in five games. Lue, though, played more prominent roles on the Lakers’ championship teams of 2000 and 2002.

And T-Lue had another claim to fame: He played in D.C. with Michael Jordan during the last two seasons of Jordan’s career, between 2001 and 2003.

The streak ends there. Ex-Wizards Kwame Brown and Javaris Crittenton played for the 2007-08 Lakers team that eventually lost in the finals to Boston, but neither made the postseason roster, and Boston had no former Wiz kids on its squad.

But here’s the crazy part: If you pick things up from there, another ex-Wizard-in-the-finals streak runs back seven more years!

Guard Larry Hughes, who was a key free-agent signee by Cleveland in 2005 — after playing well for the Wizards alongside Gilbert Arenas for three seasons — started on the LeBron-led Cavs’ 2007 NBA Finals team that got swept by the Spurs.

Guard Jerry Stackhouse made the 2006 finals with the Mavericks after playing 96 games over parts of two seasons in D.C. in 2002 and 2003.

Wallace, as noted above, played on the 2003-04 and 2004-05 Pistons finals teams. So, too, did Ben Wallace, a Bullets alum from 1996 to 1999, backup forward Darvin Ham (71 Wizards appearances in 1997-98), and Hamilton, an ex-Washington first-round pick in 1999 who played there through 2002 — when he was traded to the Pistons for Stackhouse. Stackhouse was 27. Hamilton was 24.

See?

Center Aaron Williams was an iron man for four seasons with the then-New Jersey Nets, including playing 81 games for the group that lost 4-2 to the Spurs in the 2003 finals — after playing 81 games in Washington in 1999-2000.

Guard Mitch Richmond played 11 minutes per game for the 2001-02 Lakers, who destroyed the Nets in a finals sweep. The Rock had come to L.A. after three forgettable seasons in D.C., when he’d been the lynchpin of a trade between the Wizards and Sacramento. The Kings sent Richmond, who was 32 at the time, to Washington for Webber, the budding superstar who’d fallen out of favor with Wizards owner Abe Pollin. Webber was 25. Webber became the centerpiece of a franchise revival in Sacramento. Richmond and the Wizards went 66-148 in his three seasons in D.C.

(Whisper that one really quietly to Wizards fans.)

And Lue, as noted above, played on the 2000-01 Lakers team that dominated the Philadelphia 76ers in five games to win the 2001 championship — as did backup center Greg Foster, who appeared in 68 games that season for the Lakers. Foster, of course, was an ex-Wizard, a second-round pick in 1990 who played parts of three seasons in Washington.

Which means that, so far this century, including this year’s finals, an ex-Wizards player has taken the floor in 25 of the NBA’s last 26 championship series — a success rate of 96.2 percent.

It will be a while before an actual current Wizards player takes the floor in a finals — for the Wizards. But with the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft later this month and a chance to select a budding star — whom the new braintrust plans to retain and build around, this time — this ignominious streak might finally become a relic of the franchise’s long, bad history.