Summer Of '18

On the last day of May of this year, I promised I would take the summer off from writing about my beloved Washington Wizards on account of their good-for-nothing, underachieving, casual, completely overconfident, waste of money 2017-2018 campaign. After a 43 win season where they lost to just about every terrible team in the NBA right on the heels of their first division title in like forever I had had it with this team. I got out of D.C. for the draft, didn't watch a single minute of Summer League and tried to resist looking at Twitter during free agency (yeah, that didn't work out so well). Now it's September, the summer is over and I've been off this blog for more than three months. Mission accomplished! I'm back! The cheesesteak thing still doesn't count.

So what the heck happened around here this summer? Anything notable sports-wise over at 601 F Street NW? Umm...yeah, maybe just a little.

June

OK so first of all, the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup. Yep, seriously. Perhaps you might have noticed that a little in mid-June, either through Alex Ovechkin and Co. going on the most extreme multi-day bender in Washington sports history all over the District and Virginia and maybe Maryland (and fully documented on Instagram) along with a parade downtown that drew an estimated half a million fans. That's half a million!!!

I'm super happy for the Caps and their fans here. It's been 44 years since the Caps started playing hockey and this is their first one. Ovi finally gets the non-championship winner monkey off his back (actually the non-advancing past the second round monkey) and Washington has its first big four sports title since the 1990s. Caps fans that have been suffering (and I use that term lightly here because it's not suffering like Wiz fans suffer) including my friend Mike who's been heading to games since he was a teenager finally got some relief.

Oddly enough, I'm happiest for guys like Jay Beagle and Tom Wilson who have stuck with the Caps all these years. I have a soft spot for those two guys because they shoveled mulch with me and a few others in the summer of 2013 building a playground at an elementary school in D.C. Always appreciated them doing rather than showing up for a photo opp, doing very little and splitting like Glen Rice, Jr. and Bradley Beal did that day.

So did I celebrate like it was a team I absolutely loved that had won it all? I did not. I didn't feel I deserved it. I've been at Caps games throughout the years and I still have a Matthew Perrault shirt but I don't feel like I earned the right. That's me in the top left of the photo on the Cup clinching night with a bunch of crazed (trust me, there was some crazed) Caps fans. I swear I'm not asleep.

The bad side about all this? Ted Leonsis can now say he knows how to run a sports team and just wait like six years or so and the Wiz will be NBA Champs. Hockey ain't basketball.

On the basketball side of things, the Golden State Warriors put the rest of the league out of its misery and won their third championship in three years by easily rolling over the Cleveland Cavaliers and squashing the hopes of any fan who longs for competitive balance in the NBA. Finally, we can get on to the offseason.

First up, the NBA Draft, which I exclaimed on Twitter to be a "complete waste of hope and time" after the Wizards selected Troy Brown, Jr. with the 15th overall pick. To say this pick was a surprise to about everyone might be an understatement. I'm not saying Brown was a poor pick; time will be the only judge of that. I'm just saying that the Wizards might have been able to trade back a couple of spots for Brown and maybe a second rounder (or about $500K in cash in Wizards speak). With the second round selection of Issuf Sanon, Ernie Grunfeld officially broke Wizards Twitter.

Sanon is from the Ukraine, the same country that produced one of the most memorable Wizards draft picks ever in Oleksiy Pecherov. Memorable from a character, not basketball, standpoint. I got buckets, son!

Brown played collegiately at the University of Oregon, where I happened to be three nights after the Draft on my way from the Napa Valley to Portland. In a moment of desperation longing for some hope that the Wiz got the steal of the draft, I quizzed our bartender Cam at Trev's Sports Bar and Grill right on the edge of the U of O campus about our young Mr. Brown. His thought: "got taken way to early." Like I said, time will tell.

Then just when it seemed that the Wizards were just going to start play in the fall with the exact same core of the team that finished last year in the eight spot, they went and traded Marcin Gortat to the Los Angeles Clippers for Austin Rivers. Marcin leaves Washington with five solid consistent game-in, game-out years of service as one of the franchise all-time leaders in rebounding. He also gets ushered out with a reputation as a little bit of a locker room malcontent, especially when he's feeling neglected or blamed for the Wizards woes in some way. I'll say no more on this subject for now except that as of late June the Wizards needed a center and they didn't need anyone with locker room chemistry issues. I know you know what's coming.

Rivers, by the way, definitely upgrades the guard spot on our bench.

Also in June...Jodie Meeks picked up his player option for this coming season. Because of course he did. Who else but the Wizards is going to pay Meeks $3.4 million this year?

July

First day of July means free agency. So much intrigue. Will the Wizards get LeBron? Will they trade Otto? Who are they going to use the stretch provision on? They gotta use that thing, right? What about Mike Scott? What kind of deal are the Wiz putting in front of that guy? Who is out there that's a hidden gem that the Wizards can pluck from the trash pile? Jamal Crawford, maybe? Heard he wasn't that happy in Minny...

The answers to all that? In sequence: no, no, yeah...nobody, umm...no, he's gone with Gortat, apparently not a good enough one, nobody? and no. But they did pick up a guy named Bryant who was recently released by the Lakers to make room for LeBron. And no, not THAT Bryant.

I'm actually OK with what the Wizards did in free agency. I know, I'm only OK with it because of the situation they had to deal with, namely Ian Mahinmi, Jason Smith and Meeks being paid so much damn money and taking up so much damn cap space and that's absolutely nobody's fault but this front office's. It's difficult to give someone credit for making the best of a super bad situation that they themselves created. I'm glad the Wizards picked up an athletic big man in Thomas Bryant and I like Jeff Green on a one year deal.

And this whole Dwight Howard thing? Yeah...I don't know. Dwight is one of my least favorite NBA players because he's got too much whining and not enough dog in him. He's a diva and he's not worth it. Think you got problems with a slightly upset Marcin Gortat? Wait 'til D12 (or is it D21 here?) starts to feel unappreciated. The last guy I'd get to solve a locker room issue is Dwight Howard. I mean like the LAST guy. Having said that, why not? It's not like the Wizards are making the NBA Finals with Ian Mahinmi starting at center. Let's see if this can work. Fourth team in four years for Dwight? I'm willing to give it a chance. You can tell I'm a Wizards fan, right?

I still want them to use the stretch provision on someone but I'm not sure I'd let Mahinmi go that way. I'd go with Smith or Meeks. Or both. I see Ian making way more of a contribution than Jodie or Jason.

Summer League after all that? Yeah, didn't watch. The Wiz went 1-5 and finished 29th out of 30 teams. Apparently Troy Brown, Jr. impressed. I hope so. The Wiz need someone good on a rookie deal. Not saying Kelly Oubre, Jr. isn't good. Just that a year from now he won't be on a rookie deal. God, the Wizards really need draft picks to pan out when they only make one like every three years.

Anything else going on D.C. sports-wise in July? Well, yeah. 

At the end the month the Washington Valor won Arena Bowl 31. Yep, that's right, two Ted Leonsis-owned teams won their league championship since the last time I blogged. Before you get too high here (and excuse the extreme cynicism that's about to follow because I feel this is rare for me) the Valor won two games in the regular season and lost 10. They made the playoffs because there are only four teams in the whole league and everybody makes the playoffs. They then managed to win both playoff games which, hey! gets them a championship.

Congrats to the Valor players. Sincerely. This has to be one of the least thankful jobs in sports playing in that league. Think anyone's paying attention to this sport? The championship celebration was held at the Greene Turtle at Capital One Arena which can't hold much more than like 250 people. By the way, I was offered four free tickets to the Arena Bowl by Monumental Sports. I turned down the tickets.

The bad side about all this? Ted Leonsis can now say he knows how to run a sports team and just wait like six years or so and the Wiz will be NBA Champs. Arena football ain't basketball. Plus you went 2-10 in the regular season.

August

So this was a legitimately busy summer for me. I moved, dealt with the aftermath of moving and got out of town for a bit to celebrate a milestone birthday. I feel bad but I had no time to get to a Mystics game. That had to change in August so we decided to pick up some tickets to see the home game on August 3 vs. the Las Vegas Aces. Washington's team was making a run at the playoffs and the Aces weren't far behind. Seemed like a great time to get back to Capital One Arena and watch some hoops again.

The Las Vegas Aces apparently didn't think so. Weather and connection and the WNBA's prohibition on charter flights got the last parts of the Aces' team to Washington at about 4 p.m. or so on game day. The WNBA moved the game back an hour to accommodate them but ultimately they decided to not show up. Like legitimately. The Aces decided just to not show up. Game cancelled. Of course we found this out after we paid for parking downtown. No Mystics regular season game for me.

In the end, the WNBA awarded the game via forfeit to the Mystics. Monumental Sports apologized to us fans and promised a refund (which we received) and free tickets to a future Mystics game (which never got actually offered; sort of like SummerFest that's in the Wizards list of benefits but which never actually happens). Great that the Mystics won without playing. By the middle of August they had the three seed locked up and were poised for a playoff run.

By the way, the fact that the WNBA prohibits charter flights by teams is insane. I get that not every WNBA team owner doesn't also have an NBA team in their portfolio but come on...the league has to find a way to make this happen. This is some awesome kind of stupid.

September

The beginning of September found yours truly out of town again and the Mystics rolling to the WNBA Finals. Yep, that's right. Monumental was three for three (actually four for four since the Baltimore Brigade who the Valor beat in the Arena Bowl are also owned by Monumental) this summer in finals appearances. Unfortunately for me, my being out of town meant that the Mystics played both their home semi-finals games while I was away so I STILL hadn't been to a Mystics game this summer. Hey...why not spend $20 and get to a Finals game?

I get that it's great that Capital One Arena has been renovated this summer, although I'll reserve final judgement on all that when I actually take in an event there. I also get that it's awesome that the Mystics will be playing next year in the brand new and right now super blandly named Entertainment and Sports Arena in Congress Heights. But what that situation did to the Mystics playoff run this year sort of sucked. They played their first three games at George Washington University's Smith Center but by the time they made the Finals, that spot was booked for the two nights needed to face the Seattle Storm. They would have to move again.

Fortunately, for the Mystics, the renovations at Cap One were complete by that time. Unfortunately, they were complete to host Drake and Paul Simon (separately) on the two nights needed. So it was off to George Mason in Fairfax for the Mystics. But only one game. The team got swept by the Seattle Storm 3-0 and ended up runners-up.

The Mystics run was awesome this year and if Elena Delle Donne hadn't gotten injured in Atlanta things might have been a bit more competitive in the Finals. Hopefully they can add a piece or two in the offseason and come back stronger next year and take another shot. But from my spot in the cheap seats of Eagle Bank Arena on the GMU campus in Fairfax, the Seattle Storm were no way going to lose that title. Natasha Howard absolutely killed it for Seattle. Despite the Mystics making a run at the beginning of the fourth, they had no real shot. I feel lucky to have made it to my first finals game in American sports and was proud to represent Washington. I promise I'll try to do better next year.

The bad side about all this? Well, honestly there is no bad side about the Mystics. Maybe Ted Leonsis will get Mike Thibault to run the Wizards as well as the WNBA franchise.

So that's my summer. It's now almost time for Wizards season again and the joy and inevitable agony that comes with that proposition. I'm ready to get back to it. I think this summer off has been good for me. And, yes, I'm saying that like I'm a true Wizards fan. Let's get back to it.

GMU's campus is not built to accommodate 10,000 (or maybe fewer) fans from off-campus.