Wizards’ Wheel of Mediocrity Spins On, With Bradley Beal’s Status TBD

Not even Michael Jordan, Gilbert Arenas or the son of the late, great Wes Unseld have been able to save the Wizards from their spinning hamster wheel of mediocrity over the past 25 years — and it seems as if they may be headed there again.

As Josh Robbins of The Athletic wrote, the Wizards are now at a crucial point in their season, and they may have to try to get through it without star shooting guard Bradley Beal, their top scoring option.

Beal was forced to exit Sunday’s home loss to the Lakers with a hamstring injury, suffered early in the first quarter. His status moving forward is to be determined.

But coach Wes Unseld Jr. and the rest of the team are trying to keep the faith.

“We’re not going to let go of the season right now,” forward Kyle Kuzma said, via Robbins. “We’ve still got a chance. We’ve just got to figure it out collectively.”

Through Sunday, the Wizards (11-13) sat in third place in the Southeast Division and 11th in the Eastern Conference. Not far removed from a top-eight playoffs spot … but removed nonetheless.

Minus Beal, things will only get more difficult for a team that has been just so-so, at best, with him.

“Obviously, it would be nice to get healthy, but we’ll have to deal with it and figure it out,” Unseld said, via Robbins. “But it’s not like the cavalry is coming over the hill. We have to figure it out and pull together, and we’ve seen opportunities for us to do that. We’ve done that in the past.”

And to think 10 of the Wizards’ next opponents have winning records — something the Wizards long to finally have themselves.

“The most important thing is not to break apart,” guard/forward Corey Kispert said, via Robbins. “We’ve got to come together. There can’t be any ‘us versus them’ or cliques or teams (within the team). We’re all one unit, and we’ve got to figure this out together. We’re going to. It’s part of the NBA season. There’s long stretches and there’s bad stretches, and we’re in one of those. We’re not denying that.”

If they don’t snap out soon, perhaps it’s time to make a trade. At some point, you just can’t help but get tired of being average. For too long, that’s been the Wizards.