Whose Signature Is That?

Last week I wrote my second to last Wizards blog post of the 2018-2019 season. Just like last year, I'm taking the summer off, although I will likely blog about the schedule when it's released rather that in September like I did last year. For now, I'm bullish on this coming season after what I see as a positive draft. Since my draft optimism stems mostly from the fact that the Wizards actually acknowledged that drafting in the second round is a good thing, there's tons of room for my euphoria to fully deflate before opening night. And it will. Pretty much can guarantee that free agency will do that.

Last week's blog post concerned the Sixth Man Referral program offered by the Wizards, a rewards benefit for current season ticket holders to refer new season ticket holders to the team. One of the gifts I received for my referral was a Wizards team autographed basketball, which now sits in the back of my closet on display surrounded by pictures of family, various power cords for phones and things and my bottles of prescription drugs (hey, I'm old and my diet hasn't been that healthy earlier in life!). I graded this reward as a C- for a couple of reasons. First, there are only 11 signatures on the thing. I know the Wizards tried to keep as few people on the team to avoid sniffing any sort of luxury tax but I don't believe you can carry fewer than 13 on a team so where are the other three? Second, some of these signatures are completely unintelligible. 

I'm hoping one of the half dozen or so people who occasionally read this blog can help me identify some of these. Here goes...let's start with the ones I can figure out before we move to those I need help with.

So this one is clearly Dwight Howard. It's a little lazy; just a large D with a 21. I guess these guys do have a lot of stuff to sign. Economizing is good.

Next up: Thomas Bryant. Very obvious T Bryant going on here with his #13 after it. Well done!

Then the rookie Troy Brown. Less legible than Thomas Bryant (the other TB) but there's clearly a T and B and his number 6 is fully understood.

Working our way down the ball...Kelly Oubre is the next one I find. I love Kelly's signature. Very well thought out and ready for use as a branding label (I would expect nothing else from this guy): a KO with the 12 inside the O. Good stuff!

On the same panel of the ball is Bradley Beal. Brad's signature has been the same since he got drafted. It's a little messy here so maybe I got the end of Brad's signing session but it's clearly "B Beal 3".

Now I need some help.

On the bottom of the ball, I have a clear Jason Smith autograph. Jason's helping me out immensely with a clear 14 next to his signature. I'm stumped on the other one. Assuming I'm looking at the beginning of last season (Jason Smith was traded mid-season so I think that's a good assumption) and I'm throwing away guys in training camp who didn't make the squad (not necessarily a good assumption), then I'm looking at John Wall, Otto Porter, Jeff Green, Tomas Satoransky, Markieff Morris, Austin Rivers,  Ian Mahinmi, Chasson Randle, Devin Robinson and Jordan McRae as possibilities. I cannot make the squiggle next to Jason Smith's name into any of these.

Next three...I got nothing here either. Maybe the one in the middle of these three is Tomas Satoransky? I can't begin to even explain which way up the other two signatures go.

Last one. I have no freaking clue. I looks like it's partially cut off, like whoever was signing was holding a piece of paper over the panel when they were writing and some of the signature ended up on the paper.

I'd appreciate any help. Also, if anyone out there wants this thing let me know. I own about 10 or 12 basketballs signed by various current and former Wizards. This one's not likely to make it to next season. Hopefully I will. Have a good summer everyone. Let's hope somehow Tommy Sheppard can make gold out of lead this free agency period.

BROOOOOOK-LYYYN!

This is my last Wizards blog post of the year. I need some time off from writing about this team. What is it that I keep needing time off from writing about them by the way? It's not good. After this weekend, I'm completely exhausted by Ted Leonsis, Ernie Grunfeld and the rest of the Wizards' so-called brain trust.

I went to Brooklyn Friday for a very very quick weekend getaway. It's not the shortest Wizards road trip I've ever planned, but it was close. All told, this was the 16th different opponent I've seen the Wizards play on the road. 13 to go, I guess. Before this game, my road record was a surprisingly good 8-8 (while I'd seen the Wiz play 15 opponents not the road prior to this one, I'd seem them lose to the Clippers twice in L.A.). Now it's below .500 again.

Let's cut to the chase here, shall we? Below is a list of the three best things that happened Friday night in Brooklyn:

3. The Subway is way better than Metro. I love that train system.

2. They have Brooklyn Brewery beer at Barclays Center.

1. Kelly Oubre made a heart sign with his hands for Sophia when he saw her wearing his jersey.

Not so good, right? Now let's look at the worst three things that happened Friday in Brooklyn.

3. The Wizards played another uninspired game and lost to another team with zero All-Stars like they have done countless times in the last two or three years.

2. During the game, the Wizards front office orchestrated a three way trade to send Kelly Oubre to Memphis only to have the trade news leak and Memphis blow the whole thing up.

1. OK, so there were just two worst things that happened in Brooklyn Friday night but number 2 above once again emphasized for me that staying under the salary cap is more important to ownership than long term strategy or winning even while season ticket prices continue to increase.

Definitely not so good.

Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. One of my favorites. 

I like going to Wizards road games. I love traveling and I love cheering on my team on the road. So the results are not always what I want but hey, if I can get to an even record over the years that I've been heading all over the country to see the Wiz, that's honestly better than the team's overall winning percentage over that same span. One day, maybe, I'll make it to all the other arenas in the NBA for a Wizards game. Hopefully this team doesn't kill my spirit before that happens.

This was not my first NBA trip to Barclays Center. I came here twice before during All-Star Weekend in 2015. This time I had better seats. Like 10 or 15 feet from the edge of the Wizards' bench kind of seats. Totally different perspective than sitting where I've sat before in the building. Basketball is a completely different game when you are close enough to hear the dialog between players and coaches and when you can see the eyes of the players. Those were some pretty good seats. I won't say much about the actual game other than the Wizards fell behind in the first quarter but recovered for a lead at the 12 minute mark then fell behind in the second the exact same way and never really decided to recover. 11-18 and behind the Nets. Might be called an off-night if there weren't so many just like this already this season.

Obligatory "I was at the game" picture.

One of the things I love about traveling to road games is checking out the other team's arena, especially with so many new buildings out there. From an architectural standpoint, Brooklyn's Barclays Center has to be one of the best out there. While other buildings make an effort to fit into their surroundings or go the generic downtown sports arena route, Barclays dares to be different.

It starts with their curved, video streaming iconic entrance that reveals itself as you emerge from the Subway and extends inside the arena to a lobby that flows right into the main space. You can actually see the scoreboard when you walk in as the walls between the main entry and the arena space were intentionally left off to create this effect. The concourses that make their way around the court space are pretty wide, way wider than we find at Capital One Arena. The more road arenas I see the more this fact hits home that our home building would have benefited so much from an extra 20 or so feet in the north - south direction and it's not a function of the street grid since G Street was eliminated to make way for then-MCI Center.

If MCI Center was one of the first downtown arenas to incorporate some of the character of the surrounding blocks by integrating Chinese motifs into the exterior skin of the building (and I think it was one of the first FWIW), it didn't go much further than that. Barclays does. While it may seem like a minor gesture, they have integrated large photographic displays of some of the early Brooklyn basketball teams into the concourse walls. Fed Ex Forum in Memphis had similar graphics when I was there earlier this year. It provides a great tie to the basketball history of the city. Basketball didn't just arrive on Long Island when the Nets moved from Jersey in 2012. It has been there for a more than a century since just after James Naismith invented the game in the late 1800s.

The front entrance of Barclays Center.

One of the early Brooklyn basketball teams with a beer vendor selling Brooklyn beer.

So let's talk about this whole trade thing. When it was clear that the Wizards were not going to win this game (or more accurately when it was mathematically impossible for that to happen), we headed for the exit. As we did, Kelly Oubre punctuated the loss with an emphatic dunk, leading one of our fellow Wizard fans (our row was ironically full of Wizards fans) to say something to the effect of he probably dunked that hard because he just found out he was traded. 

Hold up! What?

So sure enough a quick check of Twitter got us the news. Trevor Ariza back to the Wizards; Kelly Oubre to Memphis; and Austin Rivers to Phoenix. Oh and the Wizards got a second rounder out of the deal and a very very very very protected second second rounder. Initial reaction: the team is giving up on Kelly, getting a second round pick that they don't value at all and hoping the few years older version of Trevor Ariza gets the Wizards back to where they were when he was in Washington the first time. And of course, there has to be some cash savings, right?

About a half an hour later, that deal was dead. The initial scuttlebutt was that Memphis and Phoenix seemed confused about which Brooks from the Grizzlies (Dillon or MarShon) was headed to the Suns. Later it came out that the Grizz were upset about the deal being leaked  before it was finalized and torpedoed it. Whatever the reason, it was dead and the Wizards had two guys in the locker room who knew damn well the team had just given up on them. Couldn't be long before they got back on the trading block.

Coach Brooks furiously scribbling out a play. As bad as the Wiz were Friday, this happened a lot.

Sure enough by Saturday afternoon there was a different deal done, one that got the Wizards the same two players out of Washington and got less (that's right you read that correctly: LESS!) in return. Second rounders? Forget about it.

I have two takes on this trade. First, before I get to either opinion, let me say that the Wizards are in some sort of salary cap hell and likely will be for a while if they don't make some moves that reduces their cap number going forward like now. They are over the cap this season and have an 11-18 record. Next season, they already have $112 million committed to just five players (Wall, Beal, Porter, Mahinmi and Brown) against a cap expected to be around $123 million. Throw in Dwight Howard's $5.6 million player option and they are about capped out with just six bodies. How do you win with six players and no track record of being able to attract good free agents on discounted deals? You don't. You need more flexibility in a big big way. If the Wizards intend to trade their way out of this situation this year (and I think they have to) then they have lots of work to do. This deal ain't it.

First Take: This is one of many moves to transform this team.

There is a possibility here that the Wizards have a larger plan that nobody outside the organization fully understands (nor should they be privy to that lest it tips the league to the Wizards' hand). I know I'm giving a lot of benefit of the doubt here but stay with me just a bit.

On the surface of things, Ariza on an expiring deal does not seem like the fix the Wizards need, even for a team in desperate need of defense. If there's a plan to keep him, there better be a plan which is pretty darned solid to move Otto Porter and that move better come with a future first round pick coming back to Washington. Ariza is also clearly in demand, if rumors around the league are true; if the intent is to use him as trade fodder for another deal then I can get on board with that. But that trade better return some young talent and a first round pick because it's likely the team interested has some sort of championship aspirations this year and whatever pick comes back ain't going to be that great. 

In this scenario, the team is willing to part with Kelly Oubre because they just traded for Sam Dekker, who effectively becomes the Wizards' replacement draft pick from the 2015 NBA Draft. Dekker was picked three spots behind Kelly that year, is a year and a half older, is probably steadier right now but has nowhere near as much upside. He's also probably easier to retain on a reasonable deal because guys with little upside don't get big contracts unless they are really really really good (or Ian Mahinmi if Ernie Grunfeld has anything to do with it, I guess). Dekker ain't.

Kelly Oubre in his last game as a Wizard. Probably.

Second Take: The Wizards are trying to do whatever it takes to get below the luxury tax.

This take is way easier to execute and way more short sighted and has the capacity to cripple to team for years to come. And since it is the easier and more obvious take, it's the scariest because as fans, the primes of John Wall and Bradley Beal (who has already allegedly asked out of Washington and will no way re-sign) have been completely wasted. It's also scary because even if the plan is to go with Take 1 and it doesn't work no matter how well planned, you have achieved nothing to solve the short or long term issues with this team which means you end up with Take 2 anyway and have completely failed. Completely.

Before we get to the salary cap stuff, let's start by addressing the arguments that Kelly Oubre wasn't that good for the team now or in the future anyway.

I'm sure there are some folks out there who think Kelly Oubre will never be as good as he should be. Now, I'm not pretending that Kelly is the best player on the floor most nights or even most minutes right now but here's what's good about Kelly: (1) he plays hard; like with more energy and effort than anyone on the Wizards, a team noted for not playing hard at all most nights the last season and a half, (2) he's got a ton of upside; sure he may not pass the ball as much as he should and he commits some poor fouls sometimes (he is getting way better) but he's likely to be better than Trevor Ariza will be in three years or so and he's likely to be better than Sam Dekker ever will be. Or not; there's some risk there. Kelly's a swing for the fences type of prospect. You might also strike out.

For those out there who say there's no way we will be able to re-sign Oubre in the offseason, I say why not? First, the Wizards can match any offer if they really wanted to; maybe Kelly gets not much interest and the offer is reasonable. Second, if he gets an offer that you are not willing to match, then sign and trade may be an option. If he gets a great offer and you let him walk, he's not here next year. Guess what? Neither is Ariza. If there are no more plans to move Ariza, then you've traded away flexibility for a shot at glory this year. Ariza ain't the difference maker the Wizards need so you really traded Oubre for nothing. There won't be any glory this year based on this trade.

So if it's a salary cap move, what's wrong with that? Isn't ownership allowed to save money if they want to? Well yes sure, but the fact that the Wizards are choosing to save money and sacrificing competitiveness short term without having a long term vision that's attainable (that point is very important) should be important to every fan of the team and especially those who pay for season tickets every year. My lower level seats increased in price 20% this year and the owner of the team gave the front office an A grade for the offseason and here we are trying to dump salary in December. Again, all this assumes future moves don't materialize. Not future moves are not intended; intent gets you nothing here.

Can we take a look at that offseason A grade just for a paragraph or so? The big moves since the 2017-2018 season were trading Marcin Gortat for Austin Rivers (who the team just traded again); drafting Troy Brown (who hardly plays); and signing Jeff Green and Dwight Howard (who has played in nine of the team's 27 games this year). Doesn't look like an A to me.

Part of the pennant wall at Atlantic Social across from Barclays. Not relevant maybe but too good not to post. 

I left Brooklyn upset on Friday night. Upset at another poor showing on the court but more upset about what I see as trading away a young player with lots of promise who plays hard and is likable as strictly a salary cutting move. My patience is wearing thin with this front office. It might be absolutely done. If we as Wizards fans think trading Kelly Oubre for Trevor Ariza thinks this makes the Wizards good enough to compete this year or better long term we are absolutely fooling ourselves. It does neither of that. I can't see any argument that will convince me of that.

The pressure should be on this front office. Not to deliver millions of dollars of tax savings by cutting salaries short term, but to produce a winner that is more than a failed promise of competing in the Eastern Conference year after year after year. So far, there has been nothing delivered in that regard. If they can't do it, then someone else needs a shot for the fans' sake. For the sake of the people who spend millions of dollars collectively to go watch the Wizards in person at Capital One Arena.

I realize I've said nothing about Austin Rivers in this whole narrative. You can take that silence as my opinion of the relative value of him on the Wizards.

When it became obvious to the Brooklyn faithful that the game was in the bag Friday night, we started to hear long choruses of BROOOOOOK-LYYYN coming from the crowd behind us. Why can't we get that sort of enthusiasm from our crowd at Capital One Arena. Maybe if we got that kind of enthusiasm on the court or from our front office we would. Here's hoping my next Wizards road trip gets me back to even.

Kelly Oubre, Jr. Bobblehead

So as it turned out for me, March 2017 was Washington Wizards bobblehead month. The first Wizards home game this month on the 3rd vs. Toronto featured the only bobblehead freebie of the season in a Kelly Oubre, Jr. bobblehead. That same night by coincidence I also picked up the 2016-2017 G-Wiz Kids' Club bobblehead of Bradley Beal. All that of course means two bobblehead posts this month. Read on! We'll start with the Oubre bobble and get to Mr. Max Deal a little bit later this month.

Every once in a while the Wizards hit it out of the park on the fun scale with their bobblehead promos. They did it over a decade ago with the Gilbert Arenas talking bobblehead (mine still talks) and followed it up with the DeShawn Stevenson bobble-HAND a couple of years later to celebrate D-Steve's "I can't feel my face" move after each big shot he hit during a game. This year's Oubre, Jr. bobble falls into the same category. Nope, it doesn't talk and it doesn't have a waving hand but it does have real hair. Well, not real hair but simulated real hair, not hard plastic molded hair. Every once in a while, you just gotta do something different. And this something different works for me.

But the best part of the giveaway may be the video the Wizards released of Kelly Oubre talking about himself in miniature plastic bobble form. Kelly's super into this thing, which is not unexpected since KOJ loves to comment on this sort of stuff and has the enthusiasm of a little kid sometimes which is really refreshing in the league he plays in. Not everyone has it.

Our @KELLYOUBREJR bobblehead presented by @CapitalOne is our giveaway this Friday at #WIzRaptors! Get your tickets: https://t.co/H41JDmVTqq pic.twitter.com/uDzpBSaU5i

— Washington Wizards (@WashWizards) March 1, 2017

The video can be accessed in the link in the tweet above. And because Kelly's so juiced about this thing, I thought I'd give my comments on one of the latest additions to my bobblehead collection as a point by point response to Kelly's narrative.

"See the hair? Oh, that's cold, man! And the hair is soft, just like mine, too."

Kelly's right. The hair is exceedingly soft, although I'm going to have to take his word for it that it's just like his. The hair is clearly the best part of this bobblehead but the shaved portions on each side remind us that this is a giveaway. These areas are sloppily painted. The right side of my Kelly bobblehead's head (shown above) has a sideburn that comes to a point; the opposite side of the head is cut square. And if there's an honest complaint about this bobblehead, it's that the back of the hair is not dyed like Kelly dyes his; it's all black and that's just not correct. Again, free. I get it.

"See the short shorts, too?"

For sure, this thing has some short shorts, which is the most noticeable Kelly-ism about his gameday dress once you get beyond the hair. I wondered last summer if they'd go with the short shorts on what I predicted would be the G-Wiz Kids' Club bobblehead this season. I was wrong about the Kids' Club, but right about the shorts. This sort of a detail proves people are putting thought into these things. Bravo on this one, Wizards!

"They got the low-cut socks."

Honestly, it's a testament to how much Kelly thinks about his on court style that he's focused on the length of his socks. I quite frankly just missed this one but I guess he does wear low-cut socks. The socks on my John Wall bobblehead from last year and last year's Otto Porter Kids' Club bobblehead are all appreciably higher than they are on bobblehead Kelly.

"They got the little chin-hair I got too. It's pretty dope!"

No way does Kelly Oubre have this much facial hair. They got it in the right place on his face but there's not enough fuzz on Kelly's face to warrant this much on his mini-bobble likeness. I guess if they proportioned it correctly, we'd have to use a magnifying glass to see it. This shot above of Kelly's face shows the impressive intense hazel eyes in addition to the all too thick 'stache and goat. And in typical free bobblehead fashion there's some stray paint on the face that I just can't remove because it would lose its treasured free quality level.

I'd been waiting for March 3 all season ever since I first saw the promotional schedule and the Wizards did not disappoint on this one. I've put Kelly on my bookshelf next to John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, Marcin Gortat (in action figure, not bobblehead, form) and head coach Scott Brooks. Finally I got a full lineup of current players again.

Told you I called the short shorts. Appreciate the shout out from Rory Harty eight months after I tweeted.

22 And Counting

These 2015-2016 Washington Wizards just don't seem to want to be playing in the postseason. Last night's double overtime loss to the woeful Minnesota Timberwolves means that the Wizards have now lost to two of the three worst teams in the Western Conference at home. They are now 3-1/2 games behind the Detroit Pistons for the eighth spot and seem to have about as much chance of making it as our starting shooting guard did of making a bucket in the second half last night. You can't score if you don't try, folks.

So with all that said, it's time to think about potentially happier times in the future, albeit something else the Wizards are sort of bungling at the moment.

At the beginning of the 2015-2016 season, there were 19 teams in the NBA Development League, the NBA's minor league of sorts that is rapidly morphing from a series of independently owned franchises with loose ties to the big leagues into a bona fide farm system. This season is the first year that all the D-League franchises have a single affiliation with an NBA team. That means the 19 NBA teams which have signed up for this deal get to assign younger players to a team where they can play which is also operated with the exact same defensive sets and offense schemes as they run in the show.

The Wizards, in true franchise underperforming seemingly always behind the times character, are not one of the 19 teams with this unique development advantage. That means they can't send someone like Kelly Oubre, Jr. anywhere to get him more playing time which reinforces what the Wizards are doing on NBA courts. They have to rely on meaningful in game situations for short spells or relatively meaningless end of game blowout win or loss scenarios where Kelly inevitably fouls too much and shoots too much or too poorly or both. The rest of the time, he's riding the pine watching and practicing with the big boys. Not saying that isn't valuable but it's not real playing time.

Next year, the NBDL will expand to 22 teams. Of course, the Wizards aren't one of those teams who are expanding. Our hometown franchise seems to be content to wait until the team's new practice facility is complete which should be 2018, barring construction delays. That means the earliest the team would field a D-League team is for the 2018-2019 season. That's two more years at least of being underserved in this department.

Rendering of the Wizards new practice facility.

The NBDL played it's inaugural season in 2001-2002 and was located entirely in the southeast of the United States. The league operated franchises in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama and nowhere else. The league could realistically be viewed as a complementary league to the now defunct Continental Basketball Association which stretched across the Midwest of the country and followed similar regional basketball leagues that had existed for decades.

The teams in those two leagues had some crazy names: Greenville Groove, Roanoke Dazzle, Mobile Revelers, Flint Fuze, Dakota Wizards, Gary Steelheads. Some of the team nicknames were tailored to have regional relevance and others weren't. What you ended up with was a set of teams with names that existed pretty much nowhere else in professional sports and this has always been one of the most fun aspects of minor league sports for me. I remember living in Cooperstown in the mid 1990s and checking out all the minor league caps for sale in town. The Chattanooga Lookouts and the Lansing Lugnuts were always my favorites.

Since the NBA's gotten more involved in the D-League, the names have been toned down a bit. Sure the Sioux Falls Skyforce still exists in the NBDL from the old CBA days but all the original D-League teams are relocated or gone and the only other CBA city other than Sioux Falls that still has minor league basketball is Grand Rapids. And only since 2014, when the Detroit Pistons bought and relocated the Springfield Armor from Massachusetts. The Pistons elected to call their new franchise the Drive, to align with their parent team branding, rather than go back to the old Grand Rapids Hoops, which I would have loved.

So let's say the Washington Wizards buy into the NBDL and start a team in 2018. What are they going to call it? Let's take a look at some possibilities based on the four existing examples set by the 19 current and three future NBDL teams.

Model One: Be Unique

This is my favorite category because the identity of the D-League team is totally different from the parent franchise. This allows regional identity to be expressed in the selection of the team's nickname which allows local civic pride to shine through. Instead of feeling like the team is owned by some larger, more profitable organization, the team feels like it's a part of the community where they play. Half of the 22 teams which will play in the league next season fall into this category and they all, with the exception of the Maine Red Claws, pre-date the current one to one alignment trend.

The Fort Wayne Mad Ants are named after General Mad Anthony Wayne (the city's namesake), the Rio Grande Valley Vipers are named after a local reptile and the Reno Bighorns are named after the elusive sheep that live in the mountains around the city. The Erie Bayhawks, Canton Charge, Iowa Energy, Sioux Falls Skyforce, Texas Legends, Bakersfield Jam and Idaho Stampede round out this category. Each name has nothing to do with the parent franchise. I love it!

Model Two: Use The Same Name

In 2012, the Golden State Warriors bought the Fargo, North Dakota based Dakota Wizards and shipped the team west to Santa Cruz. They re-named the team (are you ready for this brilliance?) the Warriors. Other than the coincidentally named Wizards who had no relationship to my beloved Washington Wizards, it was the first time an NBDL and NBA team carried the same nickname and it started a trend.

Starting with the 2016-2017 season, the Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Raptors will all be affiliated with a D-League team named the same as their franchise. The Spurs even renamed the Austin Toros to the Austin Spurs in 2014. There is generally no inventiveness here; the teams are just copying their names to spread brand identity and it's pretty obvious to me that's the intent. I don't like this except I think it's worth highlighting the Bulls and Raptors efforts here.

The Bulls new D-League affiliate will play in Hoffman Estates, IL and they wanted I guess to keep the Bulls brand. Suffice it to say that they probably didn't want the Hoffman Estates Bulls so they rolled out the Windy City Bulls. I'm not thrilled but it's better than Hoffman Estates. It kind of makes it sound like there are two teams in Chicago named the Bulls though.

Toronto's D-League team, which began play this year in Mississauga, Ontario, has also elected not to use the place name in their team name. But unlike Hoffman Estates, the Raps have decided to use the area code to I suppose identify with a broader audience. They rolled out Raptors 905 (yes, that's the name of the team) last fall. While I don't like this whole overt identification with area codes trend, I'll give them some props here for doing it differently.

Model Three: Use A Related Name

The Philadelphia 76ers are named after the signers of the Declaration of Independence which was signed (in case anyone doesn't know) on July 4, 1776 in (yep, you guessed it) Philadelphia. When it came time for the Sixers to rename the Utah Flash, who they bought and shipped cross country to Newark, Delaware, they chose the name 87ers, to commemorate the first ratification of the United States Constitution, which was signed in (wait for it...) Delaware in 1787. Same theme, different place, different name. Get it? Good!

The 87ers aren't the only D-League franchise that is named along this theme. The aforementioned Grand Rapids Drive and the about to start playing Greensboro Swarm (owned by the Charlotte Hornets) are in this same category. I like this as a nice compromise between "you WILL use our name" and "do whatever you want." It ties back to the main franchise but also allows a completely unique nickname for fans of the minor league franchise.

Model Four: Same City, Different Name

In the 2016-2017 season, there will be two D-League teams that will exist in the same city as their parent club: the Los Angeles D-Fenders and the Oklahoma City Blue. And they both use the same city name as the major league team. They could have come up with a more imaginative solution here like the Bulls sort of did (admittedly not facing the same problem but the example fits) but they didn't.

The result for LA and OKC is pretty much just blah. The D-Fenders I guess is a play on the league's name but the Blue??? Really??? I get the dilemma a team could be in. Without thinking outside the box, you automatically name the team after the city where it's located and both the D-Fenders and the Blue play in their big brother franchises' cities. But you can't really name your NBDL franchise better than your main team, right? And both these teams have less than impressive names. I'm not suggesting that they deliberately picked mediocre names but, well, yes I sort of am doing that.

So all that begs the question, what will the Wizards do? Will we get Wizards 202? Or the Washington Red (please, no)? How about letting the Sea Dogs, that finished as runner up to the name the Wizards contest in the 1990s, finally see the light of day and let those fools who voted for that name at long last cheer for the Washington Sea Dogs. I'm pleading that it be none of these.

The Wizards clearly can't use the same nickname for their future D-League franchise if they also want the name of the city they are going to play in as the name of the team. That would yield the Washington Wizards and nobody really wants that at all. In fact, I'd steer clear of Wizards and anything Wizards related. No Ward 8 Wizards or DMV Wizards or Capital Wizards or any other Sorcerers or Spells or Necromancers or anything else magical. Although I'd consider Ward 8 momentarily before realizing it was incredibly narrow (albeit potentially powerful) in its breadth.

So what to do? Well in addition to the suggestions above that I've already thrown in the trash, I wouldn't use any of the names that lost the naming contest in the '90s. This would throw out Dragons (not close to Chinatown where it might make sense), Express (because it sucks) and Stallions (also because it sucks).

I don't think the team will use Washington Bullets for a couple of reasons: they've steadfastly refused to consider a name change for the Wizards and Washington Sports and Entertainment nixed the idea for the Arena Football League franchise they bought pretty quickly, although admittedly it could be because they are saving the name for the D-League. A few years ago, I thought it would be cool if the team put a NBDL team in Baltimore and called them the Bullets. I don't see it working in Washington, although it would sell a lot of merchandise I'm sure.

So where does that leave us? Washington Monuments? I wouldn't put it past the Monument obsessed ownership group but it's awfully difficult to chant that isn't it? I think it would be cool to borrow a former Washington sports team's name and use that. Professional teams played basketball in D.C. under the Capitols and Caps names in the '40s and '60s but clearly that wouldn't work. Other teams like the Senators (Major League Baseball), Lions (American Hockey League) and Diplomats (North American Soccer League) don't seem like winners either.

If it were me, I'd go with Capital Bullets. That would harken back to the 1973-1974 season for the current franchise and the only time the team used that name when they first moved to Landover in 1973. It would also have some more regional appeal and wouldn't be confused with the throwback Washington Bullets memorabilia that the NBA churns out. Plus maybe they could finally make that division champs banner that's missing from that's year's campaign (along with a couple of others) and hang it in the new building. Just my suggestion. I'm sure I won't be listened to.

What's With The Juniors?

Five and a half years ago, the Washington Wizards drafted Johnathan Hildred Wall with the number one overall selection in the 2010 NBA Draft. John is named after his dad, Johnathan Carroll Wall which, according to Wikipedia, makes John a junior, although we wouldn't necessarily know it unless we looked it up. John doesn't advertise being his dad's namesake, preferring to keep his relationship with his deceased father private, and that's OK with me. That's also the way things used to work with people's names in professional sports until very very recently.

About six months ago, the Wizards drafted Kelly Oubre, Jr. with the Atlanta Hawks' 15th overall pick (which they acquired via trade) in the 2015 NBA Draft. Based on reading the previous sentence, Kelly's dad is quite obviously also named Kelly Oubre. But you don't have to read this blog post or look anything up; it's obvious looking at Kelly's uniform when he's on the court because it reads not just "Oubre" but "Oubre Jr." This seems to be all the rage in professional team sports lately and I guess it's fine to be proud of your lineage and advertise just exactly where you sit in your family tree of exact same or close-enough-for-Wikipedia names. But it's very non-traditional. 

Now before you start accusing me of being old and stuck in my ways, I'm fine with it; I really am. I just have a request, which I'll make in a paragraph or two. Here locally in the Washington, D.C. area, our most famous sports junior is likely Robert Griffin III, the former (and likely always former) Washington professional football team starting quarterback. In fact, RG3 may have been the player who really elevated this practice of identifying yourself as the son of someone bearing the same name to my attention. Good for him, I guess. He paved the way for the Wizards current crop of juniors.

Yep, you guessed it, John Wall and Kelly Oubre are not the only juniors on the current Wizards' roster. Otto Porter shares a name with his father, Otto Porter, Sr. And Drew Gooden not only is named after his father but also after his grandfather which makes him, just like RG3, a third, although calling Drew "DG3" has not caught on the way RG3 has swept the national capital area. Or at least I believe it has swept the D.C. area based on the number of license plates I see in town paying homage to a 25 year old professional athlete who by the team's choice has not played at all this season.

So here's my question or request or whatever you want to call it: why can't Verizon Center get it right? When Kelly Oubre steps on the wood for the Wizards, he's wearing an "Oubre Jr." jersey and that's what shows up on the scoreboard. However, Drew Gooden gets no such love for his "Gooden III" uni; he just gets "Gooden" on the display above center court. I guess I can understand this a little bit; I mean Drew did play his first season as a Wizard as just "Gooden", although admittedly that was two seasons ago but maybe VC is just slow to catch up.

But the thing that really confuses me is Otto's name on the scoreboard because despite never wearing a jersey with "Porter Jr." on it, Otto shows up just that way when he enters (or these days starts) a game. What gives? Can't we just match the names on the jerseys? That seems like the smartest thing to do. That's all I have to say on this subject. Get it right and keep it right.

As an aside, or postscript, I'm not sure I agree with Wikipedia on John Wall being a junior; I think the whole name has to be the same for one to truly be a junior but whatever.  I'm certainly no genealogy expert, if that's even the right word to use in this case. Eventually they may just agree with me and the link contained in this blog post may make no sense. That's fine with me.  Go Wizards! is my only response to that.

Matches the scoreboard but not the actual player jersey.

Summer League 2015

Today is the final day of the 2015 Las Vegas Summer League. The championship game, which is the only game played today, pits the Phoenix Suns against the San Antonio Spurs in a tournament that means little more than pride. Last year my beloved Washington Wizards bowed out in the semi-finals of the event, a fairly impressive outing that saw an overall 5-1 record plus two all tournament selections in Otto Porter and Glen Rice, Jr., who also managed to snag the most valuable player honor for the entire league. Last year's trip to Vegas was all about those two second year players and the Wizards made pretty much the most of their summer trip to the desert.

This year promised to be completely different. And it was. With no returning summer leaguers whatsoever, the Wizards experience this year was all about Kelly Oubre, our first round and number 14 overall pick out of the University of Kansas, and to a much much lesser extent Aaron White, who we grabbed with our second round pick out of the University of Iowa. White has pretty much zero chance to make the team with our roster already filled with the offseason signings and trades of Jared Dudley, Gary Neal, Alan Anderson and Drew Gooden III. As I've done the past two years under the tournament style format, I made it out to Sin City for two of our three non-tournament games before heading back east with little tolerance for more than three nights in Vegas.

By all accounts (considering the Wizards won three of their last four), I made it to the wrong two games. Not only did the Wizards lose their first two games to the Phoenix Suns and the D-League Select team, they lost pretty handily, getting pushed around by the Suns' second year center Alex Len in game one and then getting out-worked, out-desired and out-experienced by a group of perennial NBDL players dying to make it to or back to the NBA in game two. Not like winning really matters too much in Summer League, but winning's better than losing under almost any circumstance and it's just nice to have it happen once now and again.

The Wizards 2015 Draft class: Aaron White (left) and Kelly Oubre (right).

I think Wizards fans sort of got what we expected in the first two Summer League games out of our draft picks this year. In Oubre, we got raw talent and most likely a project who if he pans out at the projected level of ability, is THE steal of the draft. But we'll likely have to wait and see what he can do in not many minutes on the floor this year. He'll likely be parked on the bench behind Otto Porter and likely Jared Dudley for much of at least the first half of the season.

In his first two games in Summer League he looked more often lost than found. It's not entirely surprising considering he's playing on a team that had been together less than a week but from my perspective in the fifth row or so, Kelly got more than he bargained with when he was going up against older, stronger players, some of whom were almost fighting for their basketball lives. It might not have helped at the beginning of the league that he was being cheered on by a number of visitors from nearby Findlay Prep where he finished out high school. He was one of the only guys I saw there with local and personal support. Sometimes those things can cut both ways.

I thought on the offensive end he was far more effective letting the game come to him than when he created on his own. I suppose every player is but the difference early on was striking; he got rejected several times going to the hoop in what looked like far too ambitious circumstances. When you are 19 years old and going to the basket guarded by two or three older players, you might expect to get blocked or miss. He settled down after the first half of game one but never looked fully comfortable to me unless he was putting back off a rebound or receiving a pass close to the hoop. I would have loved to have been there for his final game when he dropped 30 on the Oleksiy Pecherov-led Denver Nuggets. Just to see Pech and KO going at it would have been amazing.

In other parts of the game, I thought Kelly looked much better. He made a couple of nice defensive plays in the Phoenix game, including blocking a shot on a fast break and taking a charge. He got beat on some one on one match ups but is clearly both gifted and talented. There were a couple of rebounds that he got in traffic that showed how big his wingspan is relative to his height. That's a tantalizing skill if he can harness that.

Final score: D-League Select 94, Wizards 74.

Then there's Aaron White, who showed enough in games one and two where you could understand why he got drafted but also showed enough to validate him being a second round pick. Since draft night, the Wizards have unfortunately (for Aaron) signed enough players to have zero roster flexibility barring an unbalanced trade or waiving a player via the stretch provision (I wouldn't be surprised if we let someone like DeJuan Blair go this route). That means he's stuck in a spot where the Wizards have control of his rights but have no home for him. Barring the Wizards letting him go, Aaron's options appear to be overseas for  decent money or staying at home in the NBDL for very little money.

If there's one thing that impressed me about Aaron it was his ability to run the floor. This is a really athletic guy out on the court, not some stiff who can just shoot. He also had some impressive hops, especially on one offensive rebound putback for a dunk. But he clearly has tons of room to grow. Lack of obvious success seemed to discourage him out on the floor and any hope we had for him being a homegrown stretch four this coming year evaporated with his game two shooting performance where he started 0-8, including a number of bricked wide open three point shots. I know it's difficult to draw any conclusions from two two-hour games but there's more development required here.

Jordan Crawford defending Seth Curry (right).

The Wizards played two games within a span of about 24 hours, playing their first game vs. the Suns on Saturday at 3 p.m. and their second, a 20 point loss to the D-League Select, at 1 p.m. the following day which finished a couple of hours later. Just like that, my two Wizards games were done. I'm not sure I've had a quicker Summer League. Maybe I should stay longer next time. Maybe.

But one other thing I wanted to do with my few hours over at the Thomas and Mack Center was to catch up on a couple of former and almost Wizards since the schedule worked out just perfectly that way. I was not able to see any play from "I got buckets, son" Oleksiy Pecherov but I did catch up on a couple of old friends.

The Wizards played in the third game on the Saturday we arrived in Vegas. The first game that day featured the Dallas Mavericks taking on the New Orleans Pelicans. The starting two guard for the Mavs that day? Jordan Crawford, a guy traded three times in his first four years in the league who once denied ever playing for the Wizards, the team who really gave him the best shot to show the league what he had.

When we first traded Kirk Hinrich to the Atlanta Hawks for Jordan, we acquired our fourth first round selection from the 2010 draft and got a guy who was apparently instant offense and had once dunked on LeBron James and LeBron's own camp. How could we not love this guy? But the organization soon had Jordan playing deep in the rotation behind rookie Bradley Beal, who was younger and more talented and definitely was more interested in playing some defense. Last year Jordan played in China and then spent the tail end of the year playing for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants in the NBDL, ultimately failing to get picked up for a playoff run by a contender.

The few minutes Jordan played in the one Summer League game I saw were pretty unremarkable but he still gets lost on defense pretty easily, especially when circumstances require him to do something different than just cover his own man. I typically hold grudges against guys who badmouth our franchise after leaving but I don't with Jordan; I just think he's too much of a character. Maybe he can work on his defensive liabilities and be a bit of a spark plug for someone in the next couple of years. If not, I think he's got to be resigned to playing somewhere else other than the NBA.

Glen Rice, Jr., hands on knees, vs. the Phoenix Suns.

Speaking of offensive minded guards who play questionable defense and have perhaps a higher opinion of themselves than they should…

Last November I headed to Toronto to watch the Wizards take on the Toronto Raptors in an early season matchup that didn't go very well at all for my team. There was little positive for the Wizards to take away from that game but ultimately they managed to fix most things about their on court performance which ultimately culminated with a 4-0 sweep of Toronto in the first round of the NBA Playoffs.

But one thing we didn't fix about that game was an on court encounter between head coach Randy Wittman and Glen Rice, Jr. which apparently led to another verbal altercation between the two the next day. I noted Glen had some words for Sam Cassell last year during Summer League so this had sort of become a pattern. A couple of weeks after Toronto, Rice was in the D-League. Two months later, he was no longer a Wizard.

I got to see maybe five minutes of Glen Rice on the court during last week's Summer League action. In those five minutes he scored ten points, including two three pointers, one of which beat the buzzer at the end of a quarter. As far as Summer League and scoring go, Rice has that down pat. He led the tournament last year with a  25.0 points per game average and he finished this year with a 19.0 points per game average.

But I have to say as soon as I sat down at the Suns-Rockets game on Sunday afternoon, I saw Rice yelling at the official for some perceived non-call while the play was going on and his man had the ball. While he was focused on the referee, the Suns scored. A minute later on the next Suns trip downcourt, Rice was still upset, lazily kicking his leg out while defending an inbound pass for what should have been a layup (the Suns just blew it) instead of getting his head back in the game and playing some D. Maybe this is super unfair to write this based on five minutes, but he's clearly got some issues to overcome here. No matter how good he is at putting the ball through the hoop, he's not good enough to overcome attitude like this. If he won't outgrow this, I don't see him back in the league anytime soon.

The packed packed packed Thomas and Mack Center.

Finally just a few words about Jordan Clarkson and the popularity of Summer League in general. Jordan Clarkson was the Wizards 2014 second round pick whom we parted with for cash from the Los Angeles Lakers which one could argue we spent on multiple attempts to find a quality bench point guard to back up John Wall. Clarkson's a point guard who made the All-Rookie first team last year. We had him and we let him go.

I've often opined about the Draft being a total crap shoot when you get outside of the top few picks and I get that nobody could have seen an All-Rookie selection out of the 46 pick in the draft but this kid is electric. You could see it in some games the Lakers played last year (especially January 27 when the Wizards visited Los Angeles) and you could see it in Summer League this year. Ernie Grunfled was on our flight out to Vegas this year and I thought about asking him about the draft but ultimately decided against it; every time I talk to Ernie I get very little information because he plays things so close to the vest.

I watched Clarkson last week in the game the Lakers played against the Philadelphia 76ers, a game which featured the Lakers' D'Angelo Russell (number two overall pick) and the Sixers' Jahlil Okafor (number three overall pick). After the Wizards succumbed to the D-League, we figured it would be a good game to watch in a relaxed atmosphere over in the main arena at the Thomas and Mack. Not so much.

I've been coming to Vegas for Summer League since 2008 and I have never ever ever seen the big arena filled the way it was for this game. I get that part of it was the Lakers contingent being so close to Los Angeles but the upper deck was open (never seen that before) and it was genuinely difficult to find a seat in the place. It was insane.

When I first started coming to this event, nobody knew about it. If you got in a cab on the strip and asked to be taken to the Thomas and Mack Center the cab driver usually asked what was going on over there. Getting a cab home was honestly touch and go; the only way you usually got one was if someone was getting dropped off. I have in past years walked to either the Hard Rock Hotel about a half a mile away or all the way to the Strip, which is about a mile and a half. There was never a line for tickets and seats were plentiful inside the arena, with the exception of John Wall's first game in 2010 when the Cox Pavilion was packed solid.

Two years ago, we had difficulty getting tickets and immediately entering the arena so the couple two years, I have bought the first day in advance, incurring hated Ticketmaster service fees. That same year, I finally saw some cabs waiting outside the arena. Vegas was clearly catching on.

This year when we arrived for the Wizards' game one, we saw guys directing traffic and cones set up to define lanes for the expected flood of cabs which were coming. We also stood in line to get into the building all the way down the main steps to the arena. Every year we see Summer League founder Warren LeGarie stalking the sidelines of both the Thomas and Mack Center and the Cox Pavilion and he has to be absolutely ecstatic with the way things are going. This thing is huge business now. I hate complaining about success but this event is no longer the intimate experience it was the first year I went in 2008. It's now Vegas sized and it's different. Might be time for a year off for me. Or I just need to go all in mid-week maybe. Anyway, that's all from Vegas this year. Next up: two months of thumb twiddling before training camp. Ugh!

Waiting in line to get in, Saturday afternoon. Are you kidding me?