The Basketball Fans

Washington Wizards

Published April 18, 2026 · Updated April 23, 2026 · By The Basketball Fans Editors

Editorial tile: Washington Wizards
Photo via Unsplash. Unsplash License.

The Washington Wizards won the 1978 NBA championship under Wes Unseld, Elvin Hayes, and head coach Dick Motta. That is the franchise’s only NBA championship. The Wizards have reached four NBA Finals total (1971, 1975, 1978, 1979), all under the “Bullets” franchise name. The team has had six names in its history: Chicago Packers (1961–63), Chicago Zephyrs (1963–64), Baltimore Bullets (1964–73), Capital Bullets (1973–74), Washington Bullets (1974–97), and Washington Wizards (1997–present). The 1997 rebrand from Bullets to Wizards was ordered by owner Abe Pollin in response to Washington, D.C.’s 1990s-era gun-violence epidemic. Ownership transferred from Pollin (who owned the team from 1964 or 1968 depending on whether one counts the partial-stake period) to Ted Leonsis’s Monumental Sports & Entertainment in 2010.

Capital One Arena in Washington DC
Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, D.C., the Wizards' home since December 1997. The building opened as the MCI Center. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1961 Chicago founding, and the multiple relocations

The Chicago Packers were founded in 1961 as an NBA expansion franchise, the league’s first expansion team since the BAA-NBL merger. Walter Kennedy, later NBA commissioner, was the founding general manager. The Packers drafted Walt Bellamy first overall in 1961 out of Indiana. Bellamy was Rookie of the Year with 31.6 points and 19.0 rebounds.

The franchise rebranded as the Chicago Zephyrs for the 1962–63 season. The name lasted one year before the relocation to Baltimore in 1963. The Baltimore Bullets (1964–73) made the playoffs nine times in nine seasons, reaching the Eastern Conference Finals three times (1965, 1969, 1971) and the NBA Finals once (1971, a 4–0 sweep by the Milwaukee Bucks). Earl Monroe, Wes Unseld, and Gus Johnson were the era’s core. Unseld was the 1969 Rookie of the Year and MVP (one of only two players to win both in the same season, along with Wilt Chamberlain in 1960).

The franchise moved to Washington for the 1973–74 season as the Capital Bullets (using the Baltimore-adjacent arena) and adopted the Washington Bullets name in the fall of 1974.

The 1978 championship

The 1974–75 Washington Bullets reached the NBA Finals and were swept 4–0 by the Golden State Warriors. The 1977–78 team, coached by Dick Motta, had Wes Unseld at center, Elvin Hayes at forward, Bob Dandridge (acquired via free agency in 1977), and Kevin Grevey. They finished 44–38 and entered the playoffs as the three seed.

The 1978 playoff run went through Atlanta (2–0), San Antonio (4–2), Philadelphia (4–2), and Seattle in the NBA Finals. Seattle, the top Western Conference seed, took a 3–2 series lead. The Bullets won Game 6 at home and Game 7 at the Seattle Coliseum, 105–99, on the road. Unseld was Finals MVP with 9.0 points and 11.7 rebounds per game. The 1978 championship is the only major professional-team championship won by any Washington-based franchise in basketball history.

The 1978–79 Bullets reached the Finals as the rematch and lost to Seattle 4–1. The Unseld-Hayes Bullets faded by the early 1980s.

The post-championship decline, and the 1997 rebrand

The 1980s and 1990s Bullets made the playoffs occasionally but never advanced past the first round after 1982. On May 14, 1997, Abe Pollin announced the rebrand from Bullets to Wizards. Pollin’s stated reason was civic: he did not want the franchise to evoke the gun-violence crisis in Washington, where Pollin’s close friend Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated in 1995. The rebrand was announced alongside the opening of the MCI Center, the new downtown arena.

The early Wizards seasons (1997–2001) produced multiple playoff misses. The team relocated its home games from the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland (the Bullets’ home from 1973) to MCI Center in Washington, D.C.

The Michael Jordan comeback (2001–2003)

Michael Jordan joined the Wizards as president of basketball operations in January 2000. He came out of retirement for the 2001–02 and 2002–03 seasons to play for the Wizards. He averaged 22.9 points in 2001–02 and 20.0 in 2002–03. The Wizards did not make the playoffs in either season. Pollin fired Jordan from his front-office position on May 7, 2003, two weeks after Jordan’s final game. The dispute is covered in Jordan’s biography.

The John Wall and Bradley Beal era

The 2010 NBA Draft produced John Wall with the first overall pick. The 2012 NBA Draft produced Bradley Beal with the third overall pick. The 2013–14 through 2017–18 Wizards made the playoffs four times, reaching the second round in 2014, 2015, and 2017 (losing each time). Wall was an All-Star five times. Beal made three All-Star teams in Washington.

Wall was traded to Houston in December 2020 for Russell Westbrook. Westbrook spent one season in Washington before being traded to the Lakers in August 2021. Beal was traded to Phoenix in June 2023 for Chris Paul, Landry Shamet, and six second-round picks, ending the Wall-Beal era. Head coach Scott Brooks was fired in June 2021.

The current rebuild (2023–present)

The 2023–24 Wizards went 15–67, the worst record in franchise history since the 1999–2000 season. The 2024 NBA Draft produced Alex Sarr (2nd overall) and Bub Carrington (14th overall via trade). The 2024–25 Wizards went 18–64. The team acquired Anthony Davis in a February 2026 trade with Dallas for Kyle Kuzma and a first-round pick. The Davis acquisition shifted the franchise’s rebuild pace.

Ownership

Abe Pollin was part of a Baltimore-based ownership group that purchased the Bullets in 1964 and acquired sole majority ownership in 1968. He owned the franchise for forty-one years until his death on November 24, 2009. Ted Leonsis had been a minority owner since 1999. On June 10, 2010, the NBA approved the transfer of majority ownership to Leonsis’s Monumental Sports & Entertainment group for $551 million.

Monumental Sports owns the Wizards, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, and Capital One Arena. Leonsis is the managing partner. Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’s widow, who acquired a stake in 2017), Raul Fernandez, and Dick Patrick are minority owners. The franchise’s 2025 Forbes valuation was approximately $2.4 billion.

Retired numbers

Six jersey numbers have been retired:

Additionally a coaching-banner tribute exists for Wes Unseld Jr. Michael Jordan’s 23 has not been retired by Washington.

Get Tickets

Watch the Washington Wizards live at Capital One Arena. Find tickets, schedule, and seating charts at eTickets.com.

Find Washington Wizards tickets on eTickets.com →

Sources

Shop on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Advertisement

Sources