An ominous cloud will loom throughout the Washington Wizards’ upcoming season. The question is this: Will that storm hit the team’s rebuilding effort head-on, or will the storm deliver merely a glancing blow?

Stemming from a trade made almost five years ago, the Wizards owe the New York Knicks either a protected 2026 first-round pick or a pair of second-round picks. For Washington, losing that first-round pick could be disastrous. Parting ways with second-round picks in 2026 and 2027 would hurt, but would be a less painful outcome.

And this is where the weather metaphor doesn’t apply to the debt the Wizards owe the Knicks. When forecasters talk about a hurricane or a blizzard, it’s with the knowledge there’s nothing that can be done to prevent the storm’s path. But as the Wizards prepare for, and go through, the season ahead, the team’s front office can do something to mitigate the storm’s impact.

Washington will keep its 2026 first-round pick if it falls within the draft’s first eight selections. Because of how the annual draft lottery works, the Wizards would guarantee a top-eight pick for themselves — and, therefore, keep the pick — if they finish the regular season with one of the league’s four worst records. If the team ends the season with the fifth-worst record, then it would begin to risk losing the pick in the lottery.

To sum up the situation bluntly, if the team tanks hard enough, it will retain that first-round pick. This partly explains why the Wizards’ roster skews so young and with minimal defensive-rebounding depth right now; allotting minutes to inexperienced players could help the youngsters develop, while it also aligns the team to lose lots of games.

This, no doubt, sounds like a morbid way to frame the Wizards’ 2025-26 season long before the opening tipoff. As soul-crushing as it might be, even though team officials would love to see their young players flourish in the season ahead, the franchise nonetheless has an unquestionable incentive to rank among the league’s worst teams.

All of this brings up a pertinent question that, in theory, could resolve the Wizards’ dilemma: Why not proactively approach the Knicks’ decision-makers and attempt to make a trade to regain that 2026 first-rounder in its entirety?

The answer: Such an effort would be nowhere near as straightforward, or as sensible, as it might seem.

This gets complicated. First, the backstory. In 2020, the Wizards traded John Wall and the conditional first-round pick to the Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook. In the intervening years, that conditional first-round pick was rerouted to the Knicks.

In 2023, the Wizards made a trade with the Phoenix Suns that sent Bradley Beal, Jordan Goodwin and Isaiah Todd to Phoenix for Chris Paul and Landry Shamet; first-round pick swaps in 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030; and six future second-round draft picks. (The trade also involved the Indiana Pacers, but that aspect is not pertinent to this discussion.)

The Suns agreed to those terms knowing the Wizards already owed to another team a first-round pick that was top-12-protected in 2024, top-10-protected in 2025 and top-eight protected in 2026.

Those existing protections — even though they applied to a prior trade the Wizards had already made with another team — figured into the Suns’ decision-making when they agreed to the Beal trade. Phoenix’s front office figured a potential pick swap with Washington in 2026 was worth the risk, partly because a swap in that year seemed unlikely.

One month after the Suns agreed to the trade with the Wizards, the Suns made another deal. The Suns traded unprotected swap rights to a 2026 first-round pick — the less favorable pick that year among the Suns’ first-round pick and the Wizards’ first-round pick — to the Orlando Magic for three future second-round picks. (In June, the Magic rerouted that pick swap to the Memphis Grizzlies in a trade for Desmond Bane.)

See how complicated this is?

Long story short: If the Wizards reacquire their 2026 conditional first-round pick from the Knicks, the Wizards would upset the original terms of their pick swap with the Suns. Therefore, to strike a deal with the Knicks, league sources said the Wizards first would have to proactively decline their 2026 first-round pick swap with the Suns.

The Wizards value that potential pick swap too highly to consider giving it up, a team source said.

Right now, as long as the Wizards pick in the top eight in 2026, they will retain the right to swap 2026 first-round picks with the Suns. For a swap to be made, Phoenix would have to miss the playoffs during the 2025-26 season, which is not out of the question given how competitive the Western Conference likely will be, and the lottery would have to give Phoenix a better draft pick than Washington has.

All of that happening is unlikely, but much stranger things have occurred. Remember, the Suns ended last season 11th in the West standings, and that was with Kevin Durant and Beal on their roster; this offseason, Phoenix traded Durant and bought out Beal’s contract. So it’s not unreasonable to conclude the Suns will miss the playoffs.

If the Suns enter the 2026 lottery, they could defy the odds and win an early pick. This spring, the Dallas Mavericks won the lottery even though they entered the event with a 1.8 percent chance of winning the top pick.

So, this explains why Washington has no intention of engaging in trade talks to recoup its conditional first-rounder from New York. The possibility of swapping picks with Phoenix, though remote, is too valuable to give up.

(Photo of Wizards general manager Will Dawkins: Kenny Giarla / NBAE via Getty Images)