The Washington Wizards have been at the forefront of the NBA’s tanking crisis all season. The product the Wizards are putting out this year is so bad that they let Bam Adebayo of all players score 83 points on them in a single game. Washington spent part of the year limiting minutes for its best players in an attempt to increase its ping-pong balls, and not even trading for Trae Young and Anthony Davis has changed the losing culture this season.
The Wizards should be celebrating any fan who wants to attend a game at the end of another tanking season, but instead they played a cruel April Fools’ prank on one of them during a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.
The Wizards brought a fan out for a blindfolded halfcourt shot with the promises of $10K if he made it. The fan badly missed the shot, but because he was blindfolded, the Wizards pretended he made it and had the announcers and various mascots celebrate with him.
When the Wizards finally let the fan watch his shot on the jumbotron, he saw he missed, and the team revealed that it was an April Fools’ Day prank. Watch the video here:
“Somebody’s rich,” the in-game host explained after the fan took the shot. A minute later, she changed her tune.
“I really, really hate April Fools’ Day.”
The team did give the fan an autographed jersey and some courtside seats for next season. I guess that’s cool, but $10K is a lot cooler.
It feels like the Wizards just can’t help it from giving themselves and the league a black eye this season. Washington will enter the lottery hoping for some luck to find a new franchise star, but do they deserve it? In our new NBA mock draft, the Wizards fell to fifth while three non-tankers moved up into the top four. That feels appropriate.
Going to a Wizards game is a bad enough way to spend a Wednesday night. Getting turned into the butt of a viral joke for thinking you just won $10K by making an impossible shot is even worse. Shame on the Wizards.
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