Then you take it away, sending everyone spiraling back down into the quagmire. That muck smells even worse when you were promised fresh ocean air.

I’ve heard from multiple Wizards fans in recent days who think this season felt as frustrating as those laugh-track Wizards campaigns of five or six years ago. Those teams were a joke, but they were never supposed to be more than that. With new ownership and high draft picks, the future was going to be different.

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These Wizards? They were coming off two straight second-round playoff appearances. They had a pair of potential young stars in John Wall and Bradley Beal, plus last spring’s hint that Otto Porter might be next. Their preseason Vegas over/under was in the neighborhood of 46 wins — about the same as Miami and Toronto — meaning the playoffs felt like a formality. And they had that unspoken dream scenario: maybe a run to the Eastern Conference finals would be enough to lure Kevin Durant home.

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Instead, fans have spent months trapped in #SoWizards resignation. Sunday’s loss to the Clippers ensured that the Wizards will finish in their historical homeland: bad enough to remain irrelevant, but good enough to avoid any immediate help. This will be the 15th time in 37 seasons Washington finishes with between 37 and 42 wins. No NBA team has spent more time in that flabby midsection of mediocrity. At least they’re first in something.

They’re last in something, too. Toronto this season hit 50 wins for the first time in franchise history. That means over those past 37 seasons, only one NBA franchise hasn’t reached the 50-win milestone. Maybe that explains G-Wiz’s perpetual blank stare.

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The Capitals, Nationals and Redskins all won division titles within the past 18 months. The Wizards last won a division title during the Carter administration. Sports fandom is about patience, but there are 36-year old adults who have never seen the Wizards finish first in a five-team division. Patience shouldn’t last longer than a mortgage.

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That’s why Washington fans have been so turned off by these months of infighting and missed opportunities, even as their team remained mathematically alive into April. In a season when they likely will miss the playoffs by just a game or two, the Wizards have logged seven losses against the league’s worst nine teams. In a year when the Wizards must decide whether to hand Beal a max contract, their second-best player has missed a third of the season because of injury. (Beal has started at least 75 percent of Washington’s games just once in four seasons.) In a spring when Wizards fans are desperate for hope, the team’s two best traditional big men are 32 and 33, and the long-term core sometimes feels like a club with one member.

Most troubling, one team mainstay after another has suggested that the problems are at least partially self-inflicted, from Wall citing “a lack of focus” to Nene saying players have “to take it more seriously” to Beal saying “it felt like we gave up” after a recent loss. Losing is one thing, but what do you call a would-be playoff team giving up during a late March push?

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That’s why this season has felt less joyful — and less interesting — than previous years that ended with uglier records. Maybe you roll your eyes and laugh when your toddler makes a mess at the dinner table (or when your teenager tries the cinnamon challenge). But your grown children are supposed to know better. This team wasn’t supposed to make a mess.

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The bright side? At least there won’t be a letdown in June’s draft. Barring a trade, the Wizards likely will have no picks.

This couldn’t be said out loud, but to some extent, the franchise asked us all to take a leap of faith this season: that configuring a roster around an offseason bid for Durant was worth the risk. Well, we all leaped. Now we’re suspended mid-air somewhere over the Potomac, staring down at a pile of rocks and litter. How’s your faith doing? Mine’s wavering a bit.

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They have the pedigree: The Wizards are the only team in the league with three starters who were top-three picks over the past decade. They’ve shown signs of life: The Wizards went .500 against the Spurs and Cavaliers, two of the league’s three most dominant teams, and recently walloped the Detroit team they’ve been chasing in the standings. But which young prospect outperformed his expectations this season? Which player, other than Wall, was a delight to watch?

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Sure, Beal and Alan Anderson were injured, and the Eastern Conference was increasingly competitive. Still, the forward progress of this franchise was not supposed to rest entirely on the health of Anderson, or on the Hornets never getting better.

“This team will continue to improve,” owner Ted Leonsis predicted last year, after the heartbreaking playoff loss to the Hawks. “We will learn from this playoff experience; being inches away from taking out the top seed in the conference … shows how close we are. Now we will take the summer to fine-tune and make adjustments to get us there. We are disappointed, but optimistic. The best is yet to come.”