Where The Wizards Played: Chicago

In a normal year, I'd be just getting back from Las Vegas at this point in July, having spent a few days in the desert watching Washington Wizards Summer League hoops. I made my first Summer League trip in 2008 and was hooked immediately. Here was a new, more intimate way to see the NBA at work and I loved it instantly. Since that first trip, I've been every year except for 2011, when the lockout wiped out Summer League entirely.

But this is not a normal year as it turns out. After seven consecutive Summer Leagues I decided last year I'd give it a break for at least one year. Over the almost decade I'd been faithfully returning to Sin City, I'd seen the weeklong series of games get transformed from a hidden gem that not even the taxi drivers in Vegas knew about to a marquee destination for fans all over the southwest and beyond. In 2015, there were lines at the doors, packed seating areas and less of an ability to connect and chat with players, coaches and GMs. I'd had enough at least for one year. 

But I couldn't just bail on Summer League without getting out of the Washington, D.C. area. So this past weekend, I hopped a flight to Chicago for a couple of days out in the Windy City. And as a testament or a sinister indication of how completely the Wizards have permeated my life, I of course tracked down some sites which long ago meant something to this Wizards team.

The Wizards have changed their name as a franchise five times, more times than any other NBA club out there. For the last 53 seasons, the Wizards have been known (in sequence) as the Baltimore Bullets, Capital Bullets, Washington Bullets and Washington Wizards. Before that, the team was in Chicago. For just two seasons. They spent the 1961-1962 season as the Chicago Packers and the 1962-1963 season as the Chicago Zephyrs. I'm guessing the name change between the two seasons was made because no self respecting Chicago sports fan ever wants to chant "Let's go Packers!" A year after the Zephyrs started play, they were in Baltimore as the Bullets and there would be no more Packers or Zephyrs in the NBA. 

I've been to Chicago a few times before last week so I had checked off a number of my Chicago must see destinations. When I started putting my agenda together for this trip, I decided I should add the spot where the Wizards played those first two seasons to my list so I could go see where exactly the franchise started out. As it turned out, I had to go to two separate spots in the city because in addition to changing their name, they also switched arenas. I expected to find very little and that turned out to be almost true but I did find a couple of interesting sites which made this side trip totally worthwhile. 

1961-1962: Chicago Packers

How fitting would it be if the future Wizards played near the old Chicago Union Stock Yards which presumably inspired the Packers name? Well...very fitting would be the answer; perfect, even. And they did.

The Union Stock Yards were opened in 1865 in an area of Chicago right along the railroad which had previously been the location for various smaller stock yards used to hold cattle and pigs for slaughter prior to that time. With the creation of the Union Stock Yards, the railroad barons who owned and controlled the Yards created the largest single meat processing plant in the world and used their trains to distribute their product all over the Midwest and east coast. They also created an unsanitary dangerous place to work which employed the least powerful classes of people in Chicago, a situation which inspired Upton Sinclair to write The Jungle as a fiction-based-on-fact expose of the exploitation of workers in Chicago. Ultimately, his book had a huge influence on the labor movement in the United States in addition to giving rise to new health laws for operations involving food processing. It's also survived pretty well and is a good read.

In 1934 the Stock Yards built a building to host the 1934 International Livestock Exhibition and it was this facility, otherwise known as the International Amphitheater (postcard above), in which the Packers-Zephyrs-Bullets-Wizards franchise played their inaugural season's home games. It seated all of 9,000 for basketball and was used for that purpose for just the one season that the Packers played ball here. The building was closed in 1971, the same year the Stock Yards were closed, and it disappeared for good in 1999. 

International Amphitheatre site today.

Today the site is less than impressive. There's almost no memory of the Stock Yards around and there's an Aramark Uniform Services building on the block formerly occupied by the Amphitheatre. There's a Wizards tie-in here: Aramark is company that primarily supplies patrons like me with mediocre food and overpriced beer at Verizon Center. Appropriate, I guess, that the building they built here is about as exciting as I get about their food at Wizards games. It was better for me looking at the site to imagine the International Amphitheatre still in place. 

Where the Wizards played their first season is important to the history of Chicago and the United States and it has nothing to do with basketball. Head to the north and west of the old Amphitheatre site and you'll find the old main entrance to the Union Stock Yards, a gorgeous Richardson Romanesque arched structure that looks sufficiently important to announce the Stock Yards' presence. There's nothing else to do in this part of Chicago that I could see this past weekend but it's probably worth a look if you are ever in this area of town. 

1962-1963: Chicago Zephyrs

A year after they started playing at the International Amphitheatre, the Packers ditched their name and their home building and moved in to the Chicago Coliseum, which was located on South Wabash Avenue right at the intersection with East 14th Place. The Coliseum was one of the most infamous buildings in the United States back in its heyday, but that was when the building was a prison in Richmond, Virginia, not when it was an event venue in the Midwest.

Yep, that's right. A prison. The Coliseum (postcard above) began life as a warehouse by the side of the James River in Richmond, Virginia and the original construction date of the building is likely unknown. But in 1861 the Confederacy had started to use the building as a prison for Union officers and continued to use it for that purpose until 1864, the year before the Civil War ended. The Libby Prison, as it ended up being called, was probably second only to Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia in terms of notoriety. And that's saying something. Andersonville was pretty much hell on Earth for the men who were held there.

Despite that background, someone cared so much about the building that he paid to have it dismantled and moved to Chicago. That someone was candy manufacturer Charles Gunther, who relocated the building in 1889 and opened it as the Libby Prison Civil War Museum. Ten years later, Gunther closed the museum and tore most of the building down and the Chicago Coliseum was born out of the rubble, so to speak. Part of the castellated wall of the façade was retained and integrated into the exterior of the building but the rest was gone.

The building was still standing as an events center when the Packers turned Zephyrs were looking for a new home in 1963. A little bit of refurbishment for the new tenant turned the Coliseum into a 7,000 seat venue for professional hoops. That was 2,000 fewer seats than the team had the first season, although I can't imagine that was a problem for the last placed Zephyrs: no attendance figures exist for the team but the NBA Champion Boston Celtics that year drew an average of fewer than 5,000 fans per contest.

Chicago Coliseum site today.

The Coliseum disappeared entirely in 1982, although a part of it is allegedly on display in the Chicago History Museum. Visit South Wabash and 14th Place today and you'll find a huge city block with a variety of buildings on the site, the perfect place for a basketball arena. The Coliseum has been replaced with the Soka-Gakkai International building. Soka-Gakkai is a Japanese based Buddhist group which bases its beliefs on the teachings of the 13th century Japanese priest Nichiren. File this in the "you learn something every day" category.

As a building site, the lot where the Coliseum stood is far more connected to the city of Chicago than the site where the Packers played. The old Stock Yards area has an industrial and abandoned feel; the Zephyrs had a home that is way more vibrant and bustling in present day Chicago. And just like the Stock Yards gate over by the International Amphitheatre, I found another spot worth visiting on this site: Vice District Brewing Company, an English ale style brewery with six offerings on tap which I enjoyed in a sampler before moving on to other weekend out of town activities.

My experience at Vice District was pretty standard. Six different brews, six three to four ounce sampler glasses sequenced from lightest to darkest. I'm a porter lover at heart but at Vice District I did not love the porter the best, finding it too coffee flavored. I'd uncharacteristically order the Kitchen Sink beer here, which is their lightest offering.

But in talking with the bartender (Howard University grad btw!) it appears the best is yet to come for Vice District and their brewmaster, who refreshingly is a woman (not the norm in the brewing industry). They have been in business two years but are planning an expansion with a production and canning facility on the south side of town in addition to some experimentation with sour ales, a much overlooked (in my opinion) Belgian brewing style. I'd love to go back once it's up and running.

Two years. Two names. Two buildings. And then basketball was gone from Chicago to Baltimore. Of course in 1966 Chicago got the Bulls, so tell me who got the better end of that deal. I can't necessarily recommend the two places the Wizards played in the Windy City as must sees when you are in the Midwest, but there's at least something interesting in both spots. Now I know where the Wizards started out. I somehow feel a bit more connected to the team and Chicago for it. Maybe I'll be back at Summer League next year. Then again, maybe not.

Traveling

Minneapolis: Camera phones in 2007 just weren't what they are today.

When the television broadcast schedule was announced for the 2006-2007 NBA season, it appeared to me that I would have to miss the February 25, 2007 game at Minnesota because it just didn't look like it would be on TV. It was a Sunday afternoon game and ABC, who owned the national TV contract with the NBA that year, had the broadcast rights. That usually works out fine because the game would be shown on national TV, but this particular Sunday, ABC had the rights to several other games in that same time slot and would only be showing one based on the perceived popularity of the teams playing. Reviewing the schedule that day, it didn't look to me that the Wizards-Timberwolves game would be the one shown by ABC. When the NBA's national TV network owns the rights to a game, they prohibit the same game being shown on local cable television to eliminate competition. So on Sunday, February 25, our local cable network, Comcast SportsNet, had no plans to show the game.

Instead of resigning myself to missing the game, I decided to go to the game in person. I looked for airline tickets and it appeared we could leave Washington in the morning, see the game, and fly back the same day. My friend Mike checked for tickets on Ticketmaster and incredibly found two tickets in the second row at center court. Sold! We were going to Minnesota for the day to see the Wizards.

Sunday morning, February 25, came and it was snowing. Our flight out of National Airport was delayed. That was ok, we had some time for our connection in Chicago. As long as the flight wasn't too late, we'd be alright. And we were. We landed in Minnesota about an hour before tip-off, got off the plane with no luggage (we were just going for the day, after all), took a cab directly to the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis and walked to our second row seats wearing our gold Arenas and Butler road jerseys. Other than the loss, the game was great. We had great seats, had beverage service because we were essentially courtside, and the game was close. The Target Center is dark and quiet and the fact that the crowd is almost completely racially homogenous is strangely unnerving but everything went according to plan. After the game, we hopped in a cab back to the airport for our trip home. We would just make our flight and be back home in DC that night. Except that last part didn't happen.

After we left Washington, it had continued to snow and as it turned out, National Airport had closed. So had Dulles and BWI, so we were stuck in Minneapolis for the night and would have to miss work the next day. It was snowing in Minneapolis too; worse, in fact, than in DC, but they are equipped to deal with more than a few inches of snow. Washington  sometimes has difficulty with rain, let alone snow. I still struggle with this concept after nine years in upstate New York, by the way, but it is what it is. Fortunately, we were able to get a hotel downtown and found a bar with a friendly bartender and talked for a few hours about what it was like living in Minnesota. The next morning, we got up, put on the same clothes we had worn the previous day and went to the airport. We got lucky and managed to get a direct flight home, albeit to a different airport than we had flown out of. My trip home that day involved light rail from downtown Minneapolis to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport; a flight from Minneapolis to Dulles airport in northern Virginia; a bus from Dulles to the West Falls Church metro station; a metro ride to National Airport; and finally a trip home from National in my car. Still, it was worth the trip and we got home safe.

After that game in Minnesota, my dad said he recalled seeing an interview with Gilbert Arenas where Gilbert talked about the growing popularity of the Wizards and pointed to the fact that there were two fans in gold Wizards jerseys in the second row at the Target Center when the Wizards played the Timberwolves that year. I've never found that interview but it would be ironic if it were true.

Front row seat behind the Wizards bench in Atlanta. I LOVED these seats. The Wizards soonafter abandoned the gold names on the jerseys in favor of gold trimmed with white.

Despite the unplanned overnight stay, the missed day of work and the trip home, I was determined to take more Wizards road trips, perhaps even make it an annual event. I just resolved to make sure I didn't pick a game in a cold weather city in the dead of winter. So when the 2007-2008 season schedule was released, I looked for the next opportunity. That year, as it turned out, all the Wizards road games were on our local cable TV channel so the decision as to where to go see was not driven by anything other than personal preference. I decided on an early season game against the Atlanta Hawks and decided the trip should include an overnight stay and a little bit of an exploration of the city, rather than just going to see the game and leaving. I'd never been to Atlanta and had always wanted to see the High Museum of Art so it seemed like a good idea. That blueprint has formed the basis of all my road trips since.

The trip to Atlanta was notable from a basketball standpoint for a couple of reasons. First, the team won despite being 0-5 at the time and it got a winning streak of six straight started that got our season on track. It's the only time in four road trips that the Wizards have won a road game I have attended. Second, we managed to get some seats right behind the Wizards bench from a seller on StubHub. I have never sat courtside and I am sure my opinion will change if I ever do, but watching a game from right behind the team bench is definitely the way to go. Basketball is a game which changes as you get closer to the action. You can't see plays develop quite as well as you can from a seat in the upper deck of an arena, but you see and hear nuances of the game which are just not evident until you get up close. From our seats immediately behind the bench, we could hear pretty much everything that was being said by the players on the bench and by the coaches in the team huddles. It gave an insight into the game that we couldn't have had from anywhere else in the building.

Since it worked so well on the Atlanta trip, we sat in the same spot in 2009 at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indiana, a gorgeous facility which that November night hosted a terrible showing by the Wizards in what was supposed to be (but wasn't) a season when we made some serious noise in the playoffs. On that trip, we managed to talk to Wizards play by play announcer Steve Buckhantz and we were actually featured in the broadcast. I got an incredulous text message from my friend Chris during the game saying that the camera had just focused on me and Mike, they had mentioned us by name and talked about some of the trips we had taken. It was almost as if Chris couldn't figure out how Steve knew all this about us. To his credit, Chris captured it and you can see us on the broadcast here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgscnNbJ4GY. If I actually get 15 minutes of fame in my life, this is surely and sadly 1:03 of those 15 minutes. Yes, I am wearing an Andray Blatche jersey and no, that doesn't necessarily make me a loser. I was just misguided by Andray's enthusiasm at the beginning of that season. 

Caron Butler staring me down in Indianapolis. He's probably trying to figure out why I would spend money on the authentic Andray Blatche jersey I was wearing.

One of the great things about traveling is the people you meet, like our bartender in Minneapolis. For those who know me well, this may actually come as a surprise, but it's true. In our road trips, I have met some interesting people whose lives are nothing like mine but in some ways are connected. It's encouraging to me when those connections come from basketball, which sometimes they do. On our way to the United Center in Chicago in 2010, I got into an animated exchange with our cab driver about the Knicks-Bulls 1990s rivalry. Turns out he hated John Starks and I certainly hated Michael Jordan so we had a lot to discuss during our debate about the best dunk from that rivalry. I didn't convince him of my position, but Starks' dunk over Jordan was way better than Jordan's dunk on Patrick Ewing. Just hands down, it is.

So far, I've been to four NBA cities to see the Wizards play on the road. I'd better pick up the pace if I intend to make it to all 29 like we told Phil Chenier in Indianapolis. I wonder where the schedule will take me this year.