Meet The Team

As of this writing, the Washington Wizards are off to an inauspicious start to the 2013-2014 season, going 0-2 in their first two games with honestly no realistic end to the losing with upcoming games against Miami, Brooklyn, Oklahoma City and San Antonio. It might just take a fluke of a game. I figured we could pick up a couple of easy Ws against the Philadelphia 76ers both here in D.C. and in Philly in the first four games of the season but somehow Philly has managed to go 3-0 to start the year so I'm counting on a loss Wednesday when we play up there at this point. So before I get too frustrated to deal with writing about this team for a while in a positive light, I thought now would be an appropriate time to look back on last Saturday's Season Ticket Holder Party at Six Flags.

The Season Ticket Holder Party (or the Meet The Team Party as it used to be called) is one of the most important events of the year for the rabid season ticket holder. I once left a business meeting in Roanoke, VA early so I could get back to D.C. for this thing. It's the event where fans like me can stand in line for about an hour to get some stuff which is essentially worthless autographed by my favorite players and add it to my rapidly expanding autograph collection, which is displayed in various locations throughout my condo in and around my also expanding bobblehead collection. And yes, I know I'm too old to be collecting autographs and bobbleheads. Let it go!

This is how it all starts: standing in line to get to the spot in the park when you really stand in line.

I've attended the Season Ticket Holder Party / Meet The Team Party every year since the 2003-2004 season. I missed out the first three years of my tenure because the team didn't have this sort of thing during the Michael Jordan years (presumably because it would have been a complete mob scene if MJ was signing) and I think I bought tickets too late the first year I signed up in 2000-2001. The format and location of this event has changed over the years drastically. I love the current format because it rewards resourcefulness and planning (which I have in spades) and aggressiveness (which I don't have; just can't knock little kids out of the way) is of little to no value. Let me explain.

The first couple of years I went to this event at Verizon Center were pretty much a free for all. The players were rarely at tables signing in an orderly fashion but were instead just standing around in random spots around VC or in some cases giving locker room tours. I remember talking to Jared Jeffries one year as he helped kids into the moon bounce set up at the west end of the building. I think that same year I almost literally bumped into Gilbert Arenas while trying to get my bearings and Kwame Brown was giving locker room tours; we each shook his hand before the tour and he introduced himself ("I'm Kwame"; yeah, no kidding!). In those days getting autographs was literally a mad scramble: it was almost impossible to plan because there was no rhyme or reason to where guys were located and the lack of lines meant that sometimes getting something signed involved pushing your way to the front of a loose mob. There were also no name tags so it was sometimes difficult to tell who was who. My friend Mike helped me identify Larry Hughes one year by the "LH" tattoo on his neck.

There's plenty of this going on. Notable here are Jan Vesely knowing he's just had his fourth year declined on his rookie contract and John Wall, who is not exactly Mr. Personality during these things.

The event stayed at Verizon Center through the 2009-2010 season (with one random year at the Newseum) but the team decided to change the format once we started to make the playoffs. In those middle years of my season ticket holder tenure, the team decided to distribute color coded tickets to attendees which allowed you to stand in one (and theoretically only one) line to get autographs from 2-3 preselected players. There were ways to get additional tickets if you tried, including grabbing more than one ticket the years they handed them out at the door and trading for different colored tickets with other fans the years they mailed them. These years were the worst. They rewarded neither resourcefulness and planning nor aggressiveness. It didn't matter how early or late you got there and you had no control over who you wanted to stand in line for: your fate was predetermined by the color of the ticket you owned. It also hindered any ability to get a single year's team collected on a single ball or whatever other object you elect to get signed. I like to use the box the season tickets come in.

Chris Singleton, Jedi Knight, with Bradley Beal and Glen Rice, Jr signing away furiously.

Then when Ted Leonsis took control of the team, he moved the event out to Six Flags in Prince George's County. This year the event was held on a Saturday afternoon in the picnic area of the park since the place was still open to the public; the past three years, it's been held at night on a weekday. In all four years I have been going to Six Flags for this thing, the format has been essentially the same: players are arrayed in different positions around the park with orderly lines set up and start signing about an hour after fans are admitted. For those who are resourceful and can plan, the hour before signing allows scouting out of locations to determine who is where and laying out the ideal sequence to get players in priority order. It's been tight the last two years but I've been able to get the entire team both years so I can check that box in my neurotic obsession about this stuff.

Basketball cards: my new favorite item to get signed.

Because of the rush associated with this event, there's very little opportunity to interact with players which is too bad (conversation after all slows down the line for others and hinders the annual complete set of signatures quest). But some players can't help themselves and I can't get by Kevin Seraphin without a couple of sentences in French (after a couple of sentences my language skills betray me) and without him showing stuff to his neighbor. Kevin's one of those guys who loves being semi-famous and having fans. He has his own hashtag on Twitter (#KevinSeraphinLife) and loves the spotlight that being a backup center for an NBA team affords him. He's humble but there's also no question he has an ego that he likes to have stroked. Last year I pulled up a picture on my phone of him as Superman and he made me show it to Earl Barron who was sitting next to him. This year he had to show Trevor Ariza the gold basketball card (above) I handed him so Ariza could be impressed by the kind of products Kevin inspires I guess.

This is the sort of event that makes me feel a little more engaged with the team. I know most of these guys must hate sitting at tables for an hour signing stuff for fans who should have outgrown this stuff years ago but I think it's great the team makes this happen. Fans are the reason these teams exist so I guess for one day anyway it makes me feel good as a fan that we get something exclusive for the money that we are forking over. Maybe one day this event will cease having so much value for me. Until then, I'll be leaving business meetings early or whatever else I have to do to get over to this each year.

This year's season ticket holder box, signed by the team.

The First Four Years: 2000-2001 Through 2003-2004

What had I gotten myself into? Prior to my entry into the not-so-exclusive Washington Wizards season ticket holder fraternity, the Bullets/Wizards franchise mark for fewest wins in an 82 game season was 21, set during the 1994-1995 season. In the 2000-2001 season, the team "bested" that number by two games, posting a 19-63 record, good for third worst in the NBA ahead of only the Chicago Bulls and the Golden State Warriors. My first year as a season ticket holder and we are already setting franchise records! Leonard Hamilton, the coach Michael Jordan lured from the University of Miami before the season, was relieved after a single campaign.

The Wizards had just one second round pick in the draft prior to that season because our first round pick was owned by the Warriors as part of the trade made six years earlier to acquire Chris Webber, who finished the 2000-2001 season as the cornerstone of the 55-27 Sacramento Kings. With that 2000 pick, Michael Jordan decided the way to go was to draft Mike Smith, a forward out of the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Mike Smith turned out to be a Wizard for life, logging 17 games, 51 points and 22 rebounds in the 2000-2001 season, the only season he played in the NBA. Not a good start for our new general manager.

Unfortunately enough, the highlight of the 2000-2001 season may have occurred off the court, when Jordan managed to move Juwan Howard and the two plus years remaining on his seven year, $105 million contract along with Calvin Booth and Obinna Ekezie to the Dallas Mavericks for Christian Laettner, Courtney Alexander, Loy Vaught, Hubert Davis and Etan Thomas. While only Etan Thomas would last with the team long enough to see the playoffs, the purpose of the trade was to shed Howard's contract and create future flexibility for the team. This trade may have been the best move Jordan made as general manager of the Washington Wizards.

Then the team got a lucky break: they won the draft lottery and were awarded the number one overall pick in the 2001 NBA Draft. The 2001 draft would not be remembered as a deep draft, despite producing future all-stars Pau Gasol, Joe Johnson, Zach Randolph, Gerald Wallace and Tony Parker, but the number one overall selection can be the anchor of a franchise for years to come. For the Wizards, it came down to a choice between two high school seniors: Kwame Brown and Tyson Chandler. In what is now Wizards lore, the decision was finalized during a game of one-on-one organized by Michael Jordan on the practice court of the MCI Center. Brown easily bested Chandler and assured himself the distinction of being the first of what likely will be only three overall number one picks ever selected directly out of high school. LeBron James and Dwight Howard were the other two.

In addition to being fortunate enough to select first in the draft, the team made two big moves in the 2001 offseason. The first was signing Doug Collins as head coach. Collins had a reputation for turning losing teams around quickly based on his successes in Chicago and Detroit and he would do it again in Philadelphia in the 2010-2011 season. But whatever he had done for the Bulls and Pistons just wouldn't work for the Wizards and he lasted only two years with the team. The second big move was that Michael Jordan decided he would leave his post as general manager and return to the court and play, giving up his ownership stake with an alleged handshake agreement that he could have it back when he hung up his sneakers. As much as I detested Michael Jordan as a player when I was a Knicks fan, this could only mean good things for the Wizards, right?

Turns out I was wrong. The two years Jordan suited up for the Wizards, the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 seasons, ended up essentially putting the franchise on hold for a couple of years. The team went 37-45 both years and finished tenth in the conference the first year and ninth the following year, meaning the team neither made the playoffs nor had a good shot at getting a franchise player in the draft. Jordan was 38 when he returned to the court and he was clearly the best player on the squad but the team he had assembled around him as general manager was too inexperienced and just didn't work. He also had too much input, spoken or unspoken, into playing rotations and couldn't either tolerate his teammates lack of ability or elevate their games like he did with his teammates in Chicago. Eventually he took to calling out his teammates in the press for lack of effort and ultimately just lost the team. Every home game Jordan played for the Wizards sold out and the atmosphere was incredible because on any given night you knew Jordan could do something spectacular, despite his age and his knees. But the team results weren't there.

Perhaps the greatest casualty of the two Jordan years was our number one overall draft pick, Kwame Brown. In all honesty, Kwame just wasn't ready for the NBA and the team had no business taking number one. He lacked basic life skills like being able to shop for groceries or understanding how to take clothes to the dry cleaner and he struggled to adjust to living on his own. But the pressure from Jordan and Collins seemed to break him and he ended up looking like an overwhelmed young man in his years in Washington. Sally Jenkins reported on Kwame great detail in her April 21, 2002 article, Growing Pains, published in the Washington Post Magazine which can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112800709.html. The story is both funny and sad. On a personal note, I met Kwame Brown before the 2004-2005 season. I've met a lot of NBA players over the years but Kwame struck me as the biggest man I have ever met. He was absolutely huge. It wasn't difficult for me to believe this was a man who could post 30 points and 19 rebounds in a game on a regular basis like he did against the Sacramento Kings on March 17, 2004. But his discomfort at talking to a dozen or so fans was obvious and it wasn't difficult for me to see that his experience in the NBA was a little too much for him to handle. Kwame Brown has to date had a serviceable career, averaging 6.8 points and 5.6 rebounds per game over 12 seasons with six NBA teams. NBA player? Yes. Overall number one pick and franchise savior? No. Not even close.

During the 2003 offseason Michael Jordan called it quits as a player. Then something surprising happened: owner Abe Pollin fired Jordan and hired Ernie Grunfeld as general manager and Eddie Jordan as head coach. Ernie Grunfeld was general manager of the Knicks during my time as a Knicks fan in the 1990s and had put together the two teams that made appearances in the NBA Finals in 1994 and 1999, despite being fired during the 1998-1999 season because the team was failing to meet expectations. He had most recently put together a team in Milwaukee that made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. I always liked Grunfeld and still do, despite some questionable personnel moves over the last nine years which has drawn the ire of many Wizards fans; my opinion on this matter is all general managers make mistakes and evaluating talent and personalities in the NBA is on some level a complete crap shoot. Our new head coach Eddie Jordan was the lead assistant to Byron Scott on the New Jersey Nets' staff which had just guided the team to back-to-back appearances in the NBA Finals. Just like that, Michael Jordan was gone and Grunfeld and Eddie Jordan were in. I loved it!

I was watching the 2003 playoffs at my parents' house one weekend when the winner of the NBA Most Improved Player award was announced. That year, the award was conferred upon Gilbert Arenas, a point guard playing for the Golden State Warriors who had been selected in the second round of the same draft that had yielded Kwame Brown. Without understanding that he was even a free agent, I told my dad that Arenas was the kind of player the Wizards should sign. Turns out Ernie Grunfeld felt the same way and a few weeks later, the Wizards signed Arenas, giving him a deal that essentially used up all the money available under the salary cap.

Gilbert was a shot in the arm for our franchise. He came to Washington as the antithesis of Michael Jordan, complete with a monster chip on his shoulder and innumerable quirky stories: he wore number zero because his detractors claimed that's how many minutes he would play in college at the University of Arizona; he once played the second half of a game dripping wet, having showered fully clothed at halftime; and he once covered donuts with baby powder when his teammates in Golden State tried hazing him as a rookie. Arenas alleges he made his decision to sign with the Wizards based on a coin flip that the Wizards lost. He would kick off the most successful run for the Wizards in a long time and would eventually do his part to tear it down but in 2003, he was a much needed breath of fresh air. The Washington Times provided essential background reading on Arenas in an article I printed out that day and still have kicking around my place somewhere. It's available here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/nov/19/20031119-120708-4019r/?page=all.

For some reason, I received an email invitation from the Wizards to attend Gilbert's introductory press conference; So my friend Mike, who had replaced my former co-worker in sharing the cost of season tickets during the last season, and I ventured over to F Street and into the bowels of the MCI Center to hear what Gilbert had to say. I still have no idea why the team sent that invite. The room was filled with team personnel, the press and about six fans, including the two of us. It was just a regular press conference and somehow we had been asked to attend. The only thing I remember about Gilbert that day was that he guaranteed we would make the playoffs, despite not having been there in either of his seasons with the Warriors. We left that day with new hope for our team.

The 2003-2004 season, Gilbert's first, did not fulfill the playoff guarantee as Arenas missed 27 games due to injury and the team went just 25-57, finishing sixth in the Atlantic Division. Arenas was the team's leading scorer, averaging 19.6 points per game and he was about to lead the team to a four year playoff run on the way to enhancing his own legend but that was a year away and we didn't know that yet. All we knew in April 2004 was that another season had ended.