By now, if you’re even remotely a sports fan in the D.C. area, you’ve caught wind of the Washington Wizards’ dramatic rise to the playoffs. Per ESPN, the team had a 0.6% chance of making it into the playoffs and ended up being the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference. After overcoming injuries and a serious COVID-19 outbreak, they’re now facing off against the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round.

The Sixers are up 2-0 in the series — which has been somewhat marred by a Philly fan tossing popcorn on an injured Russell Westbrook in Wednesday’s ugly loss — but Washington fans are undeterred. They’ve already been through so much. And, based on their fan pages, they are tired of excuses (and really, really tired of head coach Scott Brooks).

On Saturday, the series comes to D.C., where the capacity has just increased to 10,000 at Capitol One Arena. And you’re likely to find the city’s most die-hard Wizards fans in attendance. D.C. fans haven’t seen a championship in over four decades but care deeply about the team; a team with young talent in Rui Hachimura, the first Japanese player in the NBA playoffs, and Robin Lopez, who’s just downright silly. For better or worse, these fans care a lot.

Take Ali Alwazir, for example. The 35-year-old public relations manager from Tyson’s Corner says he moved to the Middle East to go to university and lived there for 10 years, but didn’t let the distance get in the way of his fandom.

“I had to stay up until 2 o’clock in the morning just to watch the games because of the time difference. So with the Wizards playing every other day, you could imagine my schedule; going to work or university, watching the games from 2 to 5 o’clock in the morning every other day. It was a struggle, but I did it,” Alwazir says. “What’s funny is that most of these games weren’t televised, so I had to get on ESPN and watch the game tracker. Imagine me for three hours, from 2 to 5 in the morning, just watching the game tracker — seeing the little ball thing move.”

Alwazir believes the team’s reputation earlier this season as a long-shot for the playoffs was unfair: Those early bleak statistics, he says, didn’t account for the injured players, the COVID-19 situation, and trades. After the All-Star break, when Bradley Beal and Westbrook finally got time to gel and play together, things started looking up.

Jacob Roz, though a decade younger than Alwazir, says he’s been a fan since 2014, when he was a high school freshman. The 22-year-old Reston native thinks back to Game 6 against the Hawks in 2015, back when Paul Pierce played for Washington. Atlanta was up 94-91, and Pierce hit a step-back circus shot from the wing, tying the game and keeping the Wizards’ season alive.

“Everyone just went crazy,” Roz recalls. “That was probably the highest high of being a Wizards fan.”

For about 10 seconds, the whole crowd thought their season was saved. The three-pointer ended up being ruled as late, and with a dagger to the heart, the Wizards lost the game and their season was over.

Jordan Wigdor, 40, who’s been following the team since he was 10, describes following season after season as: “I don’t know … hell?”

Laughing, he says that his favorite stat is that Washington hasn’t had a 50-win season in 42 years, while the San Antonio Spurs had, at one point, 18 consecutive 50-win seasons.

Similarly, Peter Williams, a 49-year-old sales rep from Takoma Park, describes his long tenure as a fan with a few words: “Despair … horrific.”

Williams says that while Philly is a better team, he has cautious optimism about the rest of the series. “We’ve got a puncher’s chance,” he adds.

Fear mixed with hope seems to be a common thread — especially for Hope Georgantis. It’s in her name, after all.

“I had hope going into this season, even though it’s hard to be a Washington fan sometimes,” says the 29-year-old government employee, whose earliest memories include watching the Wizards with her dad in D.C. “I’m always rooting for the team and think we can do better.”

Georgantis set an alarm for 10 a.m. Wednesday, when tickets for Saturday and Monday’s games were made available to the public. She scored tickets for Monday. “I’m super psyched,” she says.

“I still remember Michael Jordan’s last game in Philadelphia, so it’s been a long, long time for me,” says Philip Choi, who recently moved to New York from Northern Virginia. He says it can be traumatic following the team for years, never knowing what to expect. “Like, if you had told me maybe back in November of 2020 that the Wizards were going to go on basically a 17-game tear, I would not have believed you,” he says. “But, you know, with every high comes a low — and I’m sure somewhere along next season that low is going to come.”

Emani Walks, an attorney from D.C., attributes the late-season success to the players synching up and enjoying their time together. Her family has held season tickets since 2001, so she’s seen what leads to winning and losing teams.

“We started seeing videos from behind the scenes of the guys really getting to know each other,” she says. “Team chemistry is just as important off the court as it is on the court. Once they got that, I thought we could actually have a chance.”

But, multiple people described a split fanbase. As the team started playing well together, some fans wanted the team to tank the season, get a good draft pick, and rebuild. Adam Spencer, a content developer in Northern Virginia, had a different mindset.

“If you have Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook, the expectation is to make the playoffs,” he says.

And make the playoffs they did.

The fanbase has exploded in the weeks since the team started competing with historically better teams, according to Adam Chandler, a 33-year-old consultant who says he founded the Washington Wizards Reddit page 9 years ago.

“Before the season started we had around 20,000 unique visitors in an entire month. The day after the Lakers game win, we had almost 24,000 unique visitors and 100,000 page views,” Chandler says. “For April, we had over 2 million pageviews including mobile and app users. We have people tuning in from around the world late at night, to the early morning, and have some homegrown memes.”

Hype aside, most fans and analysts agree: the team needs to make major changes if it wants to even compete with the Sixers the rest of this series. But that’s to be expected.

“Like all D.C. teams, it’s been painful sometimes,” says Adam Spencer. “But sometimes glorious, too.”

“This season was tough because we got off to a terrible start, as we always do. Me and my friends were looking at each other like, ‘Here we go again,” adds Jordan Wigdor. “At the end of it, I’m excited we made the playoffs. I think the best thing we can hope for is to turn this into a six-game series. If we can steal a couple of games, I’d be happy with that.”

Put another way, Jacob Roz, of Reston, says he has big plans if the team makes it into the second round — or, by some miracle, makes it into the finals.

“I mean, if they beat the Sixers, I know I’m watching with a few friends,” he says, before pausing. “We’re definitely getting blacked out that night.”