Sacramento East: The Wizards are a laughingstock

If this isn't rock bottom for Washington Wizards fans, then may the basketball gods have mercy on their tortured souls.

The Wizards fell to 7-13 on Tuesday by dropping a home game to the Orlando Magic in front of an audience of 12,116, with their putrid defense on full display for those unfortunate few who showed up.

Related: Wall rips Wizards' effort after wasting his 52-point game

Orlando came into Tuesday's Southeast matchup with an offensive rating of 96.8, which ranked 355th out of 360 teams over the last 12 years. That same Magic offense managed 124 points in D.C., scoring more efficiently on Tuesday than the historically potent Warriors usually do.

Sacramento East

The Kings' perennial dysfunction, a decade spent below .500, a revolving door of head coaches, and a quirky owner have led to the franchise becoming the league's comedic punching bag in ways even the Philadelphia 76ers never have, in large part because Sacramento has actually been trying to win for the better part of that decade.

But if the Kings take their lumps for their unintentional comedy of errors, then so should the Wizards, who have only been slightly less embarrassing for a longer period of time.

Since making the NBA Finals for the fourth time in nine years in 1979, the Wizards have failed to win more than 46 games in a season, have made the playoffs only 14 times in 37 years, have won only four postseason series, and have yet to reach the conference finals.

Heck, the franchise's most memorable moment of the last four decades, at least to the casual fan, revolved around players bringing guns into the locker room.

Most concerning for Wizards fans should be the lack of accountability for president and general manager, Ernie Grunfeld.

Grun-Fail

The 2016-17 campaign marks Grunfeld's 14th at the helm, and figuring out how he's managed to survive becomes mind numbing the longer you stare at his record.

The Wizards have gone 451-619 under Grunfeld - a .421 winning percentage that ranks 24th during his tenure, and pales in comparison to the only active executives who have lasted as long.

The asterisk attached to the other five executives on that list denotes at least one championship won during their regime, because lasting that long in one job in professional sports often means either winning a title, or at least enjoying the type of expected success those five names are synonymous with.

Case in point, the other 24 active NBA executives often credited with making team decisions (whether they hold the GM title or not), have been on the job for an average of five years. Grunfeld has almost tripled that without the success that's supposed to accompany such shelf life, having nearly matched his playoff appearances (six) with the amount of coaches he's hired and fired (five).

The latest vote of confidence from owner Ted Leonsis came in the form of allowing Grunfeld to hire Scott Brooks and sign the former Thunder head coach to a reported five-year, $35-million contract.

Brooks' lone claim to coaching fame was landing in the right spot at the right time - inheriting a once-in-a-generation collection of young talent in Oklahoma City - but his offensive creativity, rotation management, and overall coaching performance left much to be desired in OKC.

And if the Wizards broke the bank for Brooks because they genuinely believed he could help lure Kevin Durant home, then what does it say about the organization's grasp of reality that Durant never even granted them a meeting?

Same old Wiz

Between John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, Marcin Gortat, and Markieff Morris - plus Ian Mahinmi, if they can ever get him healthy - this season's Wizards should be more competitive than they've showed. As the team learned last year, however, time runs out quickly in a disappointing campaign (hence the Wizards calling game 3 of 82 a "must win"), and it's not like Washington has a clear path to an overhaul.

Wall, Beal, Mahinmi, Gortat, Morris, Andrew Nicholson, Tomas Satoransky, Kelly Oubre, and Jason Smith are all under contract for at least two more years, while Porter could become a restricted free agent come July. Barring the team bottoming out enough to draft a franchise-changer, Grunfeld swinging a deal he doesn't seem capable of making, or management letting Porter walk, the Wizards appear tied to a Wall-Beal-Porter core.

That's fine on paper.

Wall's an elite, two-way point guard at his best (and just dropped 52 points last night). Beal's one of the game's top young shooters, and Porter is a versatile, high-upside forward who's getting better every year. Plus, the Wizards have a +5.4 net rating in the 432 minutes that the trio has shared the court this season.

Paper and lineup data aside, however, Wall's defensive impact comes and goes, Beal can't stay healthy, he and Wall have reported chemistry issues, and Porter would have to make a significant leap for the Wizards to get the kind of internal growth needed to return to relevance.

Toilet bowl

For now, at least, the Wizards remain a mediocre (if that), capped out team, featuring a superstar on an island, managed and led by an entrenched executive and an uninspiring head coach, in a market that's growing apathetic to the organization's familiar futility.

"It’s just like the swirling water in the toilet bowl. It’s just going ’round and ’round and headed down," one Wizards fan told The Washington Post last month. "We need a miracle."

On second thought, perhaps referring to Washington as "Sacramento East" is unfair to the Kings. After all, basketball hell doesn't sound so bad compared to a swirling toilet bowl.