LOVERRO: Move over, Waldo, it’s time to play ‘Where are the Wizards?’

OPINION:

Shssh. The Washington Wizards open the NBA season Wednesday night in Milwaukee, a place where they know what the Larry O’ Brien Championship Trophy looks like.

It’s sort of a secret. Consider this a public service.

Like a draft lottery, the television ball has not bounced the Wizards way of late — ironic, since their owner, Ted Leonsis, is in the television business.

Monumental Sports Network. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

You might have a hard time finding it.

You won’t find it on YouTube TV or Hulu anymore — MSN has been dropped by both streaming services.

The Leonsis network posted a statement on its website on Oct. 2 saying it’s not their fault. “Monumental Sports Network has negotiated in good faith, including making significant economic concessions, to keep the channel on air,” the statement read.

It’s still on your Xfinity cable system, but that, too, may be hard to find. In September they moved the Monumental Sports Network from its basic plan to the “Ultimate” tier — about a $20 price per month price increase.

There, is, of course, subscribing to the Monumental Network streaming service. All the cool kids are doing it. But watching the Wizards on the major streaming services is out, at least for now, and on cable it will be a little more expensive and harder to find.

I’m not sure many will notice. A Sports Business Journal story reported that the Wizards had just a 16% regional sports network market share in D.C., compared to 51% for the Capitals and 34% for the bottom-feeding Nationals on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network.

When you’re down to 16%, that’s a friends and family plan

You could always opt to see them play live at Leonsis’ Capital One Arena. That will cost you more, too. The owner hiked up ticket prices despite being at the bottom of the league in attendance last season, averaging just 16,084 fans.

Like I said — they are sort of a secret.

All this while those buying tickets can watch Leonsis spend $500 million in District money on the place where the home fans saw their team win all of eight games last season.

Say hello to your 2025-2026 Wizards — Bub Carrington, Tre Johnson, C.J. McCollum, Kris Middleton, Alex Sarr, Cam Whitmore, Kyshawn George, Corey Kispert, Tristan Vukcevic, plus some others. There may be promise there, but not much.

Most of those names were on the roster that won 18 games last season, coming off a 15-win season the year before — the worst two-season stretch in the sad history of a franchise that hasn’t won 50 games in a season in 45 years.

Don’t expect much this year.

“Roster wise, we’re still in the early phase of the rebuild,” general manager Will Dawkins told reporters before training camp.

“We will not skip steps,” Dawkins said. “We will not take shortcuts.”

How’s that for a sales pitch? “The Washington Wizards: We’ll be as bad as we have to be.”

This is all part of the plan, you know — keep getting draft picks and prospects. They’ve got a boatload of them until 2030. They may have enough to fill the empty seats at Capital One Arena with them.

Invisible players for an invisible team.

They don’t even blink now about using the dreaded “rebuild” word, which seemed forbidden in the early, early phase.

“I avoided saying (rebuild) because it sort of does have this noncompetitive ring to it,” said Michael Winger, Dawkins’ boss and the president of Monumental Basketball, two years ago. “It’s become that way over the course of time.”

The course of time, though, stands still for the Wizards. Magic and Larry came and went. Michael came and went, though he came to Washington briefly and saved the new downtown arena nearly 30 years ago. Shaq and Kobe came and went. LeBron is nearly gone. Yet the Wizards remained stuck in limbo — 32 losing seasons since 1979.

It is a history lesson in how an NBA team has become unwatchable, both technically and aesthetically.

“A lot of the growth happens behind closed doors,” Dawkins said.

Sort of out of view, I guess.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.