Lowe's 2023-24 NBA League Pass Rankings -- Teams 30-11 in watchability and fun - ESPN

It's time for our 12th annual NBA League Pass Rankings — a tradition that started at a now-defunct website mostly because my old boss enjoyed making fun of the early-2010s Washington Wizards.

These are NOT power rankings! They are watchability ratings derived from a secret algorithm Bill Simmons found scrawled on beer-soaked parchment paper under his seat at the old Boston Garden.

We score teams 1-10 in five categories:

Zeitgeist: Do normal people care about this team?

Highlight potential: Should you linger in case some passing savant or outrageous leaper uncorks something you might never see again?

Strategy/style: Are they fun to watch? This is where coaching factors in.

League Pass minutia: Announcers, uniforms, courts.

Unintentional comedy: Blame Simmons.

Let's face it: The past 40 years have been leading to this moment, the Wiz — so relentlessly middling their fans quiet quit on them — slinking, unseen and unheard, to the basement.

The John Wall-Bradley Beal Wizards achieved more than their reputation. They were never contenders, but nor were they some going-nowhere #SoWizards mediocrity until Wall began breaking down. They wallopped the Tom Thibodeau Chicago Bulls in the playoffs when Wall was 23 and Beal just 20. They may well have upended the 60-win Atlanta Hawks in the second round in 2015 if not for Wall's midseries wrist injury, then came within a game of the conference finals in 2017.

They were silly, sure — dousing each other with water after clinching a division title, dressing in all black for a «funeral» before a regular-season game against the Boston Celtics. They tried to manifest a rivalry with LeBron James, insisting James' Cavaliers feared them.

I'm not sure those Cavaliers could even name the other