Ohm YoungmisukMay 12, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseOhm Youngmisuk has covered the Giants, Jets and the NFL since 2006. Prior to that, he covered the Nets, Knicks and the NBA for nearly a decade. He joined ESPNNewYork.com after working at the New York Daily News for almost 12 years and is a graduate of Michigan State University. Follow him on Twitter »Follow on XMultiple Authors
play0:34John Wall’s epic pregame danceWizards guard John Wall shows off some moves during pregame introductions back in 2010.
The moment the Wizards won the NBA draft lottery (0:44)Take a look at the moment the Wizards claimed the top pick in the NBA draft lottery. (0:44)
John Wall’s epic pregame danceWizards guard John Wall shows off some moves during pregame introductions back in 2010.
JOHN WALL WAS sitting at the Adorn Bar in the Four Seasons. It was Sunday morning, and the No. 1 selection in the 2010 draft was picking at the bacon on his plate and explaining his superstitions:
“I’ve always had to play in a pair of Hanes crew socks from Walmart, under my NBA socks,” Wall told ESPN. “And they got to be ultra cushioned. I need them.”
Wall was at the restaurant in downtown Chicago representing his former team, the Washington Wizards, at perhaps the most pivotal point they’ve had in a generation — since he arrived as a prized prospect 16 years ago.
In between bites, Wall described his beloved good luck charm: a necklace his late mother wore. He last had it on Jan. 29, the night the Wizards celebrated his career. The clamp broke, however. Fortunately, he has a backup: a tattoo on his neck of his mother wearing the necklace.
Just as he pointed to his neck tattoo, a server dropped a metal tray of greens right in front of him, a thunderous clang echoing above the chatter of the patrons.
There is, of course, a reason for “The Curse O’ Les Boulez,” as former Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser coined it to aptly describe years of calamity and foul luck. Washington hasn’t advanced to the conference finals since 1979, when the then-Bullets lost in the NBA Finals one year after winning the franchise’s only championship. And the Wizards, in a complete teardown, have lost a total of 196 games over the past three seasons.
A year ago, the Wizards shared the best odds to land Cooper Flagg with the top pick but slipped all the way to the sixth slot.
The Wizards had been meticulous for years — losing and planning and losing some more, all for this moment.
ESPN was granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the Wizards throughout the draft lottery weekend, from Wall to their front office, seeking to capture a full view of an organization at its most tenuous time.
Either they’d fall, yet again, delaying once more the NBA’s most arduous rebuild, or they’d strike lottery gold and break in an instant a spell of misfortune that had lasted for decades.
“This one feels like it’s a lot more like, ‘We need to do this!'” said Wall, who wanted a better result than when he was previously the team representative in 2011, when Washington got the sixth pick used on Jan Vesely. “I need it. That’s what everybody keeps telling me. You better get it. I hope I bring the good luck. It ain’t like I can hit a button and we get it.”
Four hours later, they got it. Washington became the first team to win the lottery after finishing with the league’s worst record (17-65) since the NBA revamped the lottery format in 2019. It was the franchise’s first lottery win since Wall Dougie’d his way into the hearts of D.C. fans in 2010. And it represents the next step in a franchise transformation that saw the Wizards trade for All-Stars Trae Young and Anthony Davis earlier this year.
Wizards guard John Wall shows off some moves during pregame introductions back in 2010.
When Michael Winger, the president of Monumental Basketball and the Wizards’ lone representative inside the lottery’s drawing room, realized the franchise had won the coveted No. 1 pick, he did not dance or emote, largely because there was no one for him to celebrate with.
Instead, Winger quietly gave a thumbs-up and opened his journal, which includes a photo of his wife and four kids, and wrote the winning sequence of ping-pong balls — 4, 2, 1, 13 — along with the combinations of the other three lottery picks.
“I have a terrible memory, and I write down as much as I can because I know that tomorrow I will not remember what happened today,” Winger said. “Not quite like the movie ‘Memento.’ But not too far removed.”
To burn off his nervous energy, Leonsis decided to go for a morning run, choosing to jog up and down a nearby drawbridge instead of his usual route along the beach.
As Leonsis cooled down — ping-pong-ball combinations bouncing around his brain — he saw what he thought was a needlelike bug flying toward him. He instinctively raised his right arm when he noticed a black cord wrapped around his forearm with a hook attached to the end.
A fisherman had cast his line and caught Leonsis’ forearm instead. Luckily, it didn’t leave a scratch.
“I’m staring down at this 5-inch hook that honestly would’ve taken my eye out, would’ve done real damage,” he told ESPN. “It shakes me up a little bit.”
When Leonsis reached the bottom of the bridge, a man was on the phone asking someone for money to go see his mom on Mother’s Day. Leonsis reached into his pocket and gave the man the cash he needed. The man couldn’t believe his good fortune. Leonsis was happy to pay forward the good luck he felt he had just experienced on the bridge.
“Well, I’ve either used up all the luck I could ever have in the last half hour,” Leonsis replied, “or luck runs in threes and this is what’s going to happen.”
Ted and Lynn watched the lottery unfold while on FaceTime with their son, Zach, Monumental Sports’ president of media and new enterprises. Once the Wizards got past the fourth pick and their envelope had yet to be revealed, Leonsis turned to his wife.
Having that kind of confidence has been rare for a franchise that has felt cursed at times. Washington has dealt with injuries to stars from Bernard King to Bradley Beal to Wall, failed trades such as the one that sent 25-year-old Chris Webber to the Sacramento Kings for 33-year-old Mitch Richmond, and self-inflicted wounds such as the Gilbert Arenas locker room gun scandal.
Not even Michael Jordan was immune. Jordan played two seasons with the Wizards, failing to reach the playoffs both times. However, his worst move with the franchise came off the court: drafting Kwame Brown with the No. 1 pick in 2001 as the team’s lead executive, before unretiring later that summer. Jordan would later be shocked when team owner Abe Pollin unceremoniously fired the legend in 2003.
Leonsis, who has been the Wizards’ majority owner for 16 years, has won a Stanley Cup as owner of the Capitals and a WNBA championship as owner of the Mystics. The Wizards, however, have not been to the playoffs since a first-round exit in 2021. They haven’t won 50 games in a season since 1978-79, before the advent of the 3-point line, when Wes Unseld roamed the paint.
Since their most recent playoff appearance, the Wizards have gone 120-290 (.293) — the worst record in the NBA during that span. They have lost at least 16 straight games four separate times since 2023-24, as many as the rest of the league combined over that stretch, according to ESPN Research. And in March, they allowed Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo to score 83 points, the second most in a single game in NBA history.
Winger and Will Dawkins, the Wizards’ general manager, put together a four-phase plan to revitalize and reshape the Wizards.
“Deconstruct, lay the foundation, then you build it,” Dawkins said of the phases. “And then eventually fortify it.”
The trades for Young and Davis, combined with landing this draft pick, have the Wizards working on Phases 2 and 3 simultaneously. Once the team starts having success on the court, that’s when Phase 4 will begin.
“That’s when you know what your house looks like and you know you’ve got to add the fine detail,” Dawkins said. “Like, ‘Oh, we built this house, but it really needs a balcony’ or ‘it really needs solar panels instead of electric.’ [Right now, it’s] a lot of wood.”
Sunday’s lottery luck provides the potential for a new, foundational pillar for a franchise used to disaster always being around the corner.
“[Sunday,] I feel, was an incredible day of luck,” Leonsis said. “If you watch ‘Final Destination,’ that’s all I could think of was, ‘Here I am. I’m going to end up in the hospital. I will have lost an eye and we’ll pick fifth.”
Instead, he has both of his eyes — and the top pick in a draft most experts predict to be generational.
“I told Michael after the [lottery],” Leonsis cracked, “‘I fell for your plan — hook, line and sinker.”
The Wizards needed some divine intervention. They had won the lottery twice in history, coming away with Brown and Wall. But the franchise is much more accustomed to stinging disappointment. Since 1992, the Bullets/Wizards have fallen in the lottery 11 times and had to settle for a pick lower than where they finished in the regular season.
Last year’s drop — from as high as No. 1 to No. 6 — was the largest in franchise history. The team ended up selecting Texas guard Tre Johnson, who averaged 12.2 points in 60 games as a rookie.
As the lottery unfolded, the Wizards GM and seven members of his evaluation team played pickup basketball. Dawkins had instructed his staff to mute their phones and smartwatches. No lottery updates. Just hoops with a view and plenty of trash talk.
Former NBA player Ish Smith, now a pro evaluation scout with the team, arrived late with Marshall Forney, assistant GM of the Wizards’ G League Capital City Go-Go team. Smith had to run to Niketown to pick up a pair of the pink and green A’ja Wilson A’Two sneakers. Perhaps it was fortuitous — Wilson had been the No. 1 pick in the 2018 WNBA draft.
Minutes before the start of the lottery, Dawkins went to work on the court. He was focused on bounce passes to teammate Amber Nichols, director of amateur evaluation, rather than the ping-pong balls bouncing 3 miles away.