The Washington Wizards are an NBA team with enough talent to be formidable — maybe not championship-contender formidable, but a good team that makes the playoffs and wins a series or two. They have enough good players to do that, and in past years, they have done so.

The Wizards were 10-18 entering this past Sunday, though, and have had enough discontent bubbling up — and out — from within that many fans (myself included) expected to see a star player traded or a coach fired any day back in November.

It never happened.

The Wizards kept their dysfunctional and underachieving team in tact, probably more due to lack of desirable trade offers than a desire to ride out this storm of poor performance. This past Sunday, the Wiz played host to the Los Angeles Lakers, a team with a nearly opposite record of 18-11, and a star player by the name of LeBron.

This game seemed easy to predict: even on the road, a winning team led by a veteran like LeBron would go into the home gym of a losing team — like Washington — and take care of business; i.e. win the game handily.

But the Wizards apparently didn’t get the memo.

Washington beat the Lakers soundly, behind a great game from star player John Wall. LeBron himself had a very un-LeBron night, scoring less than half his average output.

My prediction: The Wizards will lose their next game versus a team worse than the Lakers, and the Lakers will win their next game versus a team that’s much better than Washington.

How does this happen?