The Washington Wizards are a National Basketball Association team based in Washington , D.C. The Wizards are of seven teams in the Atlantic Division of the eastern Confere nce of the National Basketball Association. The team was founded as the Chicago Packers, and also played as Chicago Zephyrs Baltimore Bullets and Washington Bullets before adopted its current name. The franchise plays in the MCI Center in Washington , D.C. , and wears jerseys of red, white and blue. The team entered the NBA in the 1961-62 season as the Chicago Packers, winning only 18 games in its first season. The Wizard briefly changed its name to the Zephyrs for the 1962-63 season, but in March of they year the team moved to Baltimore and became the Bullets in honor of the area's ammunition factories, which had produced bullets during World War II. The Washington Wizards had won one NBA championship, four Conference titles and seven Division titles. In the 1978 playoffs the Bullets defeated the Atlanta Hawks, the San Antonio Spurs and the Philadelphia 76ers to advance to the Finals. In the Finals they played the Seattle SuperSonics, falling behind three games to two and then coming back to win the seven-game series and capture the NBA title.
In the mid-1990s the Bullets acquired two talented young forwards, Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, who as teammates at the U niversity of Michigan had twice led the school to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship game. On May 15 1997, the Bullets officially changed their name and logo. In 1999, Michael Jordan became the Washington Wizards' president of basketball operations as well as a minority owner in 2000. In September 2001, Chicago Jordan came out of retirement at age 38 to play basketball for the Washington Wizards. Jordan was only one of two players to average more than 25 points, 5 assists and 5 rebounds as he led the Wizards to a 26-21 record. Jordan returned in the 2002-2003 season, by the end of the season, the Wizard finished with a 37-45 record once again. Jordan ended the season as the only Wizard to play in all 82 games, as he averaged 20.0 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.5 steals in an astounding 37.0 minutes per game. The 2004-2005 season saw the team post its finest regular season record in 26 years (45-37) and marked the first time the franchise had ever made the playoffs as the Wizards.
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