The Patch

Let's face it. So far this season, the Wizards stink. It's either poor coaching, poor roster assembly, lack of effort, lack of caring or all of the above which has gotten the team off to a 3-9 start through last night's victory agains the Miami Heat in southern Florida. Tied with the Atlanta Hawks was not where I thought we'd be 12 games in. 

By the way, it's definitely at least poor roster assembly.

From the opening tip against Miami in the season opener at Capital One Arena on October 18 to the final buzzer last night at American Airlines Arena, the mood of Wizards fans and Wizards Twitter has been like a pendulum the last month. Calls of "Fire Ernie!" (they should, and I mean now) and "Fire Scotty!" (they should soon unless...) and critiques like "John Wall looks out of shape" (he does) and "the Wizards don't like each other and that's why they look like they don't care" have turned to guarded optimism after just one road win against a maybe playoff hopeful. I actually saw one tweet this morning proclaiming the Wizards as a title contender. Not sure how beating the 2018 version of the Miami Heat gets you to championship hopeful but that's where some Wizards fans are right now. I feel their pain. Truly.

And don't worry, that situation will likely correct itself this week.

About a week and a half ago, the Wizards released some news about their jerseys for the young season and it was about as good and bad as the team has been so far this year. Just hours apart the team revealed this year's fourth jersey (dubbed by Nike as the City Edition just like last year) and then announced they would be joining 27 of the other 29 teams (Indiana and Oklahoma City are the lone holdouts) in the NBA in slapping advertisements on their threads for this season and presumably forever.

A close up look at this year's Wizards City Edition jersey.

Let's cover the good really quickly then move on to the point of this post. This year's City Edition uniforms are exactly the same as last year's but instead of being mostly white, they are mostly black. I think Wizards Twitter about exploded when these things were revealed. In the midst of pretty much the maximum level of angst experienced by Wizards fans (the team was 1-6 at the time) this year's fourth uni got almost universal praise. I'm not as psyched about black uniforms as just about everyone else in the D.C. area I guess. I think they are OK. If nothing else, the Washington Monument shows up way better on the sides of the jerseys than it did on the whites last year. It's also going to be really difficult for me to not buy the truly excellent City Edition black with red D.C. flag t-shirt that Nike brought out to accompany these things though.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about jersey sponsorships. I knew this day would one day come when the Wizards would cave and let some company pay some money to slap their advertisement on the Wizards jerseys but it doesn't mean I have to like it. This stinks. It's purely a money grab because the league can. The press release announced this news as "more than a patch" and they are absolutely correct. It's a violation, it's unnecessary, it's ugly and it just plain sucks. I thought when the Wizards finally did this that I would roll over, having been desensitized to this stuff by 27 prior franchises. I didn't. It's truly terrible. I hate it. The only thing worse about the jersey patch is I know there's no going back.

And yes, this is all about the principle of the thing. It's not at all about GEICO, the company who the Wizards are allowing to befoul their jerseys. I actually love GEICO. When I was first trying to get car insurance for myself they were the only insurance company willing to let me buy insurance despite a flawless driving record and I've been with them ever since. But their name does not belong on my basketball team's jersey any more than GE belongs on the Boston Celtics jerseys or Zatarain's belongs on the New Orleans Pelicans jerseys or Bumble belongs on the Los Angeles Clippers jerseys. 

OK, the Bumble thing is pretty appropriate.

The Wizards aren't the only team afflicted with the GEICO ad on their jersey. The brand new Capital City Go-Go also get an extra large sponsorship from my favorite insurance company on their kit every game this season. I'm not so upset about this branding. There's no way the G-League makes money for the NBA owners and ads have been rampant in the NBA's development system for years. I actually find the GEICO wording less objectionable than the "Capital City" wording on the team's blue jerseys. Could they have found a worse font for these things? I'm not sure they could.

But the team that really got screwed by this partnership (remember...it's more than a patch) are the Washington Mystics. Sure, advertisements looks awful on NBA jerseys but if we had to have them, they couldn't really have made them any smaller and the GEICO fits in pretty well into the space on the left shoulder. Ditto for the Go-Go branding but at least they put the GEICO at the bottom of the jersey which allowed the name of the city (sort of...I still don't like the Capital City name) and the team nickname to be where it belongs on the shirt. But the Mystics jerseys look like they are playing on the GEICO company basketball team.

Look, I get the WNBA takes a back seat to the NBA and apparently also the G-League. But unless you have some kind of great seats or some kind of great eyes, it's going to be difficult to tell that you are rooting for the Mystics or the city of Washington when you are at a game. Sure the name (in logo form) is still on the jersey, but it's about as big as the GEICO logo on the NBA version although the font size is way smaller. 

I know the Mystics are not the only WNBA team to have this happen to them. In fact most of the teams are using this same strategy of having the sponsorship across the top of the uniform and the team logo on the shoulder. Notable exceptions include the Chicago Sky who have sold advertising space both across the top of the jersey AND on the shoulder (and so have no team identification at all) and the Las Vegas Aces who are using the NBA model with the team name where it belongs and a small advertisement on the shoulder.

The reason the Mystics can't use the Go-Go style of design is that the bottom of all the WNBA jerseys features the Verizon logo. But I don't see why the Mystics can't force the GEICO logo into the same spot that the NBA places it just like the Aces have done. How much is GEICO really paying for the WNBA sponsorship anyway?

Call me old-fashioned. Call me resistant to change. Call me just plain old and stuck in the past. But I don't like these things one bit. I've been watching teams playing European soccer with very large advertisements across their chests for as long as I can remember and I guess I accept that. But there's no good reason for the NBA to do this except to generate slightly more (and I do mean slightly more) revenue. I hate this. Thank God they are still selling jerseys without the ads. Although considering the Wizards performance the last couple of years, I'm sticking with my old Adidas John Wall jersey for as long as I can I'm thinking.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Fire Ernie!

The Capital City Go-Go

Between the first and second quarters of last night's win over the Detroit Pistons, the Washington Wizards made an important announcement, revealing the name and logo of their minor league or G League affiliate which will begin play in the fall of 2018. The name? The (drumroll please...) Capital City Go-Go!!! The logo? Well, that's the picture at the top of this post.

How good are the name and logo? I'll get to my thoughts on that in just a minute. Let's talk about some more practical considerations before we get to the fan stuff.

From a basketball standpoint, yesterday's announcement is a next step forward in what is an important process and one which frankly the Wizards have been trailing most of the rest of the NBA on for a significant period of time. For sure, rolling out a name and a logo doesn't make a minor league franchise any more real but this process has steps and this is one of them. It now allows fans to believe that we are on schedule with having a support franchise of our very own.

Why is this so important? Well, in addition to bringing pro basketball to more people in this country at a more affordable price point, having a dedicated farm team allows concentrated player development and rehabilitation assignments. This year, 26 of the 30 NBA teams have G League franchises that are singly affiliated, meaning either that the two franchises are owned by the same organization or that the operations of the minor league team are run by the parent franchise. That means that the coaching system is identical between the two teams, allowing faster development of young talent or rehabilitation assignments for players coming off injuries in a basketball playbook environment exactly the same as they will find when they get to or back to the NBA.

The Wizards ain't one of those 26 teams with a dedicated G League affiliate. That means the League has way less value for the Wizards than about 26 other teams. In fact, this year the Wizards have used the G League only because they pretty much have to. Devin Robinson and Mike Young were signed to two-way contracts which allow them to play in both leagues under specific guidelines and salary structures. So far, the Wizards have confined both to the G League and left it at that. The only way they could have had less involvement so far is if they just opted to not sign any two-way contracts at all.

So how are Robinson and Young developing? Right now, no clue. Devin is playing the Philadelphia 76ers way on assignment to their Delaware G League franchise. Mike is learning how the Phoenix Suns do things down in Arizona. Earlier this week they actually played each other in a game. Assuming the G League franchise is actually interested in developing another team's players, does this setup sound ideal in any way? Not to me it doesn't.

So how else might not having a G League franchise hurt a team? Well, earlier this week, the Chicago Bulls announced they would be sending Nicola Mirotic and Zach LaVine to their nearby G League team for a rehab assignment. They are not the only team to have done this in the past. There's no way the Wizards are going to send some of their NBA players to another team's minor league affiliate so they just simply don't have that luxury available to them. The Wizards are a step behind here.

Capital City Go-Go shirts were mandatory shirt wear during second half warmups last night. 

So about that name and logo.

Really? The Capital City Go-Go???

OK, first, let me say I appreciate the effort to do something different. Of the 26 teams currently in the G League, 11 of them have nicknames that match their parent franchise (I'm counting the Iowa Wolves in this number) which is both unimaginative and sad. The best names in the G League are the ones that existed before single affiliation was a concept. The Maine Red Claws, Rio Grande Valley Vipers, Fort Wayne Mad Ants and Reno Bighorns are all awesome names. The Capital City Go-Go certainly matches the spirit of these names, just like the Memphis Hustle did when that franchise began playing this year.

I also appreciate the effort to create a name that's place specific instead of generic. Warriors can come from anywhere, as can Wolves, Raptors and Stars. There's no place else that Go-Go (named after D.C.'s own go-go style of music) can come from.

So what's my problem, you might ask? Well, there are a few issues. First, I object to the Capital City moniker. I am going to think of The Simpsons every time I read or hear that. In case you are not a Simpsons fanatic, in one episode Homer self-appointed himself the mascot of the local minor league baseball team the Springfield Isotopes and was so successful that he got sent to Capital City to pinch-mascot for the world-famous Capital City Goofball. Of course, he failed. I like Capital. Just not Capital City. I've had Tony Bennett in my head all day singing the Capital City song from The Simpsons. Hate that!

Second of all, it's not really very sports-y. It used to be mascots were concrete things like Orioles or Cowboys or Jets or Hawks or something like that. I get that some teams have appropriated more abstract concepts like weather (Heat or Lightning) but now we are dealing with sounds? I guess the Jazz is the same way. And how is the name going to roll off the tongue when the team's on the court? Are we going to chant "Let's go Go-Go!"???

Finally, and the biggest reason really, is that nobody outside of D.C. is going to get it. On one level, I love that. It's like an inside joke that everyone is in on except people not from the District. On the other hand, nobody really cares about the G League nationally and it's going to be ultra-confusing to explain to other people what my Capital City Go-Go shirt means. It's just going to bring up endless questions. 

Some nicknames have hidden meanings: I love how the Charlotte Hornets name references a quote from Lord Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War. But the great thing about the hornets name is it works whether or not you understand the hidden meaning. The Memphis Hustle is another name with multiple levels of meaning. The Go-Go name is just confusing and there's no hidden meaning although until it's explained, nobody's going to get it on any level.

And then there are the logos. We got three last night. The (what I assume will be) primary logo at the top of this post, a partial version of that same logo with just the bongo drum with basketball patterned drum head and then the alternate logo which features a note with three stars over a silhouette of the District of Columbia.

I think the primary logo is fine. I'm not crazy about the "Capital City" font but other than that I am pretty ambivalent about the whole design. My biggest objection is the name itself. Because the name makes up most of this logo, I can't imagine I'm ever going to be purchasing any apparel with this logo on it.

I actually like the secondary logo a lot. I don't like the red background but if the team sells shirts with this logo on it that are not red, I could see myself owning one or two of these things. It represents the District way more than the name itself. I'm surprised, and actually refreshingly so, that the team didn't make basketballs out of the circles on the note. Basketball logo designers have a way of turning every circle on a design into a basketball. Not doing that here was a good move.

I'm not sure I have the answer to what I wanted here. I wrote a post last year on this blog where I wondered what the name of the team would be. My answer was Capital Bullets, although I really liked my Ward 8 Wizards suggestion better over time. My answer was non-creative. The Capital City Go-Go is way more creative. But I just don't like it. Maybe I'll warm to it over time. I expected today that I'd be hunting around on the internet to see where I could find a t-shirt with the new team's logo on it. I haven't done that and I don't think I'm going to do it any time soon. I'm disappointed here. I get it. But I don't get it. Oh well.