In late September of last year, just before the 2013-14 regular season, Emeka Okafor sat in a fold-out chair and looked across the practice arena floor with a neutral expression, waiting for an interview to begin at the Washington Wizards’ media day.

The excitement that normally greets a new season had been dulled just days earlier by the news of Okafor’s disconsolate diagnosis: a herniated disc in the neck. Okafor told the Washington Post: “It’s awkward. I was looking forward to starting this year and getting things kicked off right. Sometimes, you have plans and it doesn’t work out, man, so you have to make other ones and just roll with it.”

It turned out that the team, harried by years of inadequacy and premature announcements of arrival, wasn’t willing to wait.

Less than a month later, and mere days before the start of the season, team president Ernie Grunfeld took Okafor’s advice and traded his starting center and a 2014 first-round pick to the Phoenix Suns for Marcin Gortat. The trade was rightly described as desperate (more a statement of fact than a value judgment), and many worried that Grunfeld, who has shown little ability to mine Round 1 for NBA talent outside of no-brainers such as Wall and Bradley Beal, had made a mistake common among executives fighting for their jobs: trading potentially franchise-altering assets for rented improvement.

But Gortat’s addition did more than save Washington’s season. It liberated the Wizards. With the playoffs in sight, the youthful rebuild -- the mythical adherence to an ambitious model popularized by Oklahoma City -- was abandoned. Former lottery pick Jan Vesely and offseason acquisition Eric Maynor were eagerly traded for the relatively ancient “Professor” Andre Miller. Again, it reeked of desperation, and again, the realness of that desperation did not necessarily invalidate the risk.

Days later, team owner Ted Leonsis and Grunfeld welcomed another veteran, Drew Gooden, to the team, first on a series of 10-day contracts and later for the rest of the season. In a way, it was brilliant electioneering; the public faces of the franchise (Wall and Beal) remained precariously young, while the rest of the team quickly transformed from a mixture of unrealized potential, youth in regress and abandoned project players to a smattering of seasoned veterans ready to prop up the product, if only for a limited time.

For the most part, the behind-the-scenes vintage went unnoticed. Although Wall and Beal were the only two young, inexperienced players in Washington’s rotation (Trevor Ariza and Gortat were even on opposite sides of the 2009 NBA Finals), the team seemed to project that mirage of youth and inexperience during and after their emphatic first-round playoff series win against the Chicago Bulls.

Now, entering the 2014-15 season, Washington inconspicuously carries the league’s oldest roster.

As a result of the team’s paradigm shift towards veteran, rather than peer, support for its young stars and subsequent postseason success, a discussion of Washington’s notable draft and development failures is no longer at the forefront of the conversation about the Wizards, even if some are still anxious to see Otto Porter Jr. show the “NBA-readiness” attributed to him before he was drafted third overall in 2013.

Fortunately for Porter Jr., and the Wizards, the former Georgetown star won’t be rushed into the starting lineup following an offseason back surgery for forward Martell Webster. The Truth is in town.

Paul Pierce’s signing was, at the very least, tentative validation of the philosophy behind the Gortat trade -- a trade that catalyzed this era of D.C. basketball. Pierce, both advocate and proof, told the media in late September that Washington was “becoming a destination.”

Although Pierce told David Aldridge that he feels familiar enough with what Ariza -- who left this offseason for a big payday in Houston -- provided to replicate it, he also touted an added versatility that could help unclog Washington’s inflexible and underdeveloped half-court offense. John Wall will keep his shooters well fed in transition, but he desperately needs a player like Pierce, who can create something out of the final five seconds of a shot clock after a broken play.

Still, it wouldn’t be a Wizards offseason without a setback. Injuries to Webster and Beal -- who will miss at least the first month of the season -- aren’t catastrophic because of the projected brevity of each player’s absence. But combined with Ariza’s departure, what was a strength (Washington was the fourth-best 3-point shooting team in the NBA last season) becomes a massive uncertainty: The team will start the season without a proven ace.

Trading for Marcin Gortat was a risk, but he and Nene have given the Wizards some needed muscle. Chris Covatta/Getty Images

At full strength with the additions of Pierce, Kris Humphries and DeJuan Blair, these Wizards still aren’t quite stacked enough to challenge Cleveland for the Eastern Conference crown, are older than you might think and remain helmed by a limited coach who --- outside of the Chicago series -- didn’t show the ability to turn what was one of the best starting lineups in the NBA into a consistent winner.

But what separates this team from the fun but deficient Wizards of the mid- to late aughts is that, if they aren’t up to the task, there is an escape route that doesn’t involve starting from scratch.

Instead of re-signing Ariza long-term and committing to a good, but not great, roster, Washington structured each of its offseason contracts to terminate neatly before the summer of 2016. In 2016, with Wall and Beal coming into their prime, the Wizards will have money for a franchise-altering talent (or two, considering the NBA’s prodigious new TV deal). It’s been suggested, with no semblance of subtlety (even in self-conscious satire), that D.C. native Kevin Durant might be that talent.

For once, the Wizards are both good and not hamstrung indefinitely. That flexibility will allow Grunfeld to pivot when an opportunity emerges from the fog. That flexibility allows for joy, rather than obligation, in chasing increasing expectations.

The since-abandoned Oklahoma City model was never much of a “model” at all. Mimics in the method, such as Washington, Charlotte and Orlando, have discovered that Sam Presti’s rebuild of the former Seattle Supersonics was a process to pull ideas out of rather than trace from a template.

Having top-six lottery picks in four consecutive drafts was not enough. Youth, with all of its compelling vibrancy, was not enough. Especially when the losses piled up and fans became aware that the overused “rebuild” term was more of a branding effort than prima facie evidence of smart management.

After losing in overtime to Charlotte in the last week of the 2013-14 regular season, the Wizards, inconsistent as ever, seemed destined to be surpassed by a surging then-Bobcats team, fall prey to Miami in the first round of the playoffs and cease mattering long before anyone outside of D.C. started paying attention.

A loss from Charlotte to the struggling Celtics, stars resting in Brooklyn and four straight Washington wins to end the season changed this team’s trajectory, setting the stage for a playoff series win that gave the Wizards something they’ve sorely lacked since Wall arrived: relevance.

Conor Dirks writes for the TrueHoop Network. Follow him @ConorDDirks.