Season Wrap: The 2024-25 Washington Wizards

  • By Keston Paul

    Last Updated on May 25, 2025 2:59 pm by Mike Passador | Published: May 25, 2025

    The Wizards finished with the second-worst record in the 2024-25 season at 18-64. They largely cannot be accused of heavy tanking outside of the final three or four weeks as the team naturally struggled throughout most of the season. Unfortunately for the Wizards, the flattened lottery odds struck in possibly the most controversial way yet after the Mavs got the No. 1 pick with the 11th-best odds, so the Wizards have to settle for the No. 6 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

    Aside from that, there are positives to be drawn as their young players produced some good moments. They have a group of useful young NBA contributors with the potential for growth, and perhaps the only thing missing is the true upper-echelon star player to lead them into their next era.

    How’d It Go?

    Finishing near the bottom of the standings always seemed destined for this team. The goal would have mainly been development for the young players and from a broad perspective, that could possibly be viewed as a success. Bilal Coulibaly showed flashes of growth on offense despite a lot of shooting inconsistency still limiting his game. Their rookies Alex Sarr, Bub Carrington and Kyshawn George were all successes in their inaugural campaign. George immediately becoming a rotation player as the No. 24 pick is especially noteworthy, while Sarr showed his defensive potential and Carrington had stints of positive offensive output. The soon-to-be 24-year-old Justin Champagnie also earned a standard contract and established himself as a consistent part of the rotation with multiple stints as a starter. Tristan Vukcevic even showed some potential down the stretch to be in the discussion for rotational minutes next season.

    Most importantly, Jordan Poole gave us a bounce-back season showing what he can do. Whether his future lies with the organization or not is a different question, but the on-court production ensures that Poole either maintains value as a trade asset or could viably continue contributing to this group. Poole actually did fit in well with the young players for the most part as he gave a bit more defensive effort by being active in passing lanes off-ball and despite being the lead offensive initiator, other players had the opportunity to get touches and produce as well.

    The Wizards were the worst team in the league throughout most of the season but the Utah Jazz tanked their way into touching distance and then the Wizards had to truly lean into a tank themselves around early-to-mid March. The Jazz “won” the tanking sweepstakes and the Wizards may regret that as the team with the worst record could not fall below No. 5 in the lottery. The Jazz and Wizards both had to settle for their worst possible result in the lottery but on the bright side, Bub Carrington did hit a buzzer-beating game winner in the Wizards’ regular-season finale vs. the Heat, so I guess that is something to be happy about? The Wizards and Jazz did split the season series so if the Wizards had lost that game, there was likely an extra tiebreaker needed to decide who would have the “top odds” and safer floor in regards to falling to No. 5 or No. 6, so, maybe it wasn’t something to be happy about.

    Coaching

    After earning the trust of the players as the interim head coach throughout the second half of the 2023-24 season, Brian Keefe was quickly made the full-time head coach before the 2024 offseason began in full earnest. That gave the Wizards some steady leadership and direction headed into 2024-25 but even with that taken into account, it was expected that the Wizards would be a lottery team.

    They finished with an 18-64 record with an offensive rating of 105.8 (30th), a defensive rating of 118.0 (28th) and an overall net rating of -12.2 (30th). They were near the top of pace in the league once again at 101.82 (4th). One of the most positive team stats is an assist percentage of 63.7% which ranked 12th overall, meaning the Wizards were one of the better teams at sharing the ball. On the other hand, you could look at that as proof that this team lacks a go-to star outlet to create his own offense regularly. There are good teams near the bottom of assist percentage and good teams near the top of it as well, so it likely isn’t actually much of a factor.

    Keefe is doing what he can though and the team did go into a hard tank over the final few weeks, but on the other hand, the Wizards held the worst record in the league throughout most of the season anyway. The test for Keefe will come whenever they experience a higher influx of talent, growth and expectations.

    The Players

    Jordan Poole
    PG, Washington Wizards
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 WAS 68 68 29.4 6.7 15.5 43.2 3.6 4.0 88.3 3.5 9.1 37.8 20.5 3.0 4.5 1.3 0.4 3.0
    23-24 WAS 78 66 30.1 6.3 15.2 41.3 2.5 2.8 87.7 2.4 7.2 32.6 17.4 2.7 4.4 1.1 0.3 2.4
    22-23 GS 82 42 30.0 6.7 15.6 43.0 4.4 5.1 87.0 2.6 7.8 33.6 20.4 2.7 4.5 0.8 0.3 3.1

    ADP: 85.9/ 115.6 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 45/64 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 52/72 (8/9-cat)

    Poole admittedly had an awful 2023-24 season as he pretty much wasn’t 12-team relevant until a relatively strong finish from around March onward as then-interim and now head coach Brian Keefe got the ball in his hands more. Poole slipping in drafts this season was understandable but the risk was much lower after pick 80 on Yahoo while on ESPN, their rankings took out 99 percent of the risk. As someone who actually uses both platforms, I was gleeful targeting Poole around 80 to 100 on ESPN regularly.

    Poole’s usage rose from 25.6 last season to 30.0 in 2024-25 and we got bumps of 17.4 points to 20.5 points, 2.4 triples to 3.5 triples, .413 FG% to .432 FG%, and .877 FT% on just 2.8 attempts per game to .883 FT% on 4.0 attempts per game. Add improvements from 2.7 rebounds to 3.0 rebounds, 4.4 assists to 4.5 assists (hey, we’ll take anything), 0.8 steals to 1.3 steals and 0.3 blocks to 0.4 blocks and Poole practically improved across the board. His points, threes and steals represent career-best averages while his assists per game were also tied for a personal best.

    This is a light spoiler, but I chose Poole as the Wizards’ fantasy star this season so you’ll get an even deeper look at some of his stats later.

    Justin Champagnie
    SG, Washington Wizards
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 WAS 62 31 21.6 3.4 6.6 51.1 0.8 1.2 68.5 1.2 3.1 38.3 8.8 5.7 1.0 1.0 0.6 0.9
    23-24 WAS 15 1 15.7 2.1 5.2 41.0 0.8 1.0 80.0 0.9 3.0 28.9 5.9 3.5 1.3 0.7 0.6 0.7
    22-23 BOS 5 0 6.8 1.0 3.0 33.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 1.0 20.0 2.2 1.6 0.8 0.2 0.0 0.0

    ADP: N/A / N/A (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 158/143 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 164/139(8/9-cat)

    Champagnie should not be a new name for anyone deep in the fantasy trenches but he finally had his full breakout this season after only flashing upside in silly season before. You can see the value as Champagnie produced around top-140 to top-160 fantasy value depending on what metric you want to measure his impact by, playing 62 games for the Wizards this season. Kyle Kuzma got injured on November 27 and did not return until December 30, while Champagnie finally cracked the rotation on December 5 and started 13 consecutive games from December 7 until January 5. In the 14 games during that period, Champagnie posted top-75 9-cat value with 11.9 points, 1.6 triples, 7.4 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1.4 steals, 0.9 blocks, .540 FG% and .588 FT% on only 1.2 attempts per game so it did not hurt you too much.

    The minutes dried up a little until the All-Star Break (ASB), with only a couple of spike games. The post-ASB minutes were still sometimes spotty until the tank-off began on March 10, and Champagnie started 16 of his 19 games from that date onward, averaging 11.6 points, 1.5 triples, 8.2 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.5 blocks, .521 FG% and .621 FT% on 1.3 attempts per game for top-65 9-cat value in 29.4 MPG. Essentially, if Champagnie gets starter-level minutes, you can expect double-digit points, positive rebounds and FG%, strong defensive stats and a passable amount of threes. He likely projects as more of a useful bench piece but if opportunities to start do arise, keep these stats in mind. It is worth noting that Champagnie is boosted a little by his low turnovers but his balanced stat set outside of assists and FT% is still pretty useful for 9-cat.

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    May 25, 2025, 2:59 pm