Summer Of '18

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

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

June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August

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

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

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

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

September

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Lucky!

Let's start this blog post with a test. Raise your hand if you think Ernie Grunfeld is a below average NBA general manager. Keep your hand up if your judgment is based in whole or in part on his drafting history. I'm guessing a lot of people reading this have at least one hand up. If you do, is it because he drafted Oleksiy Pecherov, Nick Young and JaVale McGee in the first round of successive drafts or is it because he selected Jan Vesely over Klay Thompson, Tomas Satoransky over Draymond Green and traded a pick that he could have used on Stephen Curry? Put both hands up if it's all of the above. Pretty damning, right? I mean this guy really doesn't know what he's doing.

So who do you think drafts well? How about the Golden State Warriors, since in the last seven drafts they've selected Stephen Curry (2009), Klay Thompson (2011), Harrison Barnes (2012), Festus Ezili (2012) and Draymond Green (2012)? All five are still with the team and three of the five (Curry, Thompson and Green) have made at least one NBA All-Star Game, not to mention Curry being named MVP of the league two years in a row and the franchise appearing in the last two NBA Finals (winning just one thanks to Keke Vandeweghe).

Sounds pretty good, right? Never mind the fact that there was a different general manager in place in 2009/2011 vs. 2012 and that the same guy who drafted Stephen Curry in 2009 selected Epke Udoh with the number six overall pick a year later. And if anyone thinks the strategy used by the Warriors to select Draymond Green with the 35th pick in the 2012 Draft was genius, consider that if they had to do it all over again, they might select him over Harrison Barnes at the seven spot but they would for sure certainly pick Draymond ahead of Festus Ezeli five picks earlier. Draymond's game only took off after he lost 20 pounds one year after he was drafted. The Dubs for sure got some good bounces on this stuff.

Let's try another test. Raise your hand if you would have selected Kevin Durant over Greg Oden with the number one overall pick in 2007. Or Marc Gasol over Nick Young that same year. Raise your hand or keep it up if you would have grabbed Russell Westbrook over O.J. Mayo or Michael Beasley the very next year. What about in 2011? Raise one hand if you would have picked Kawhi Leonard, two for Jimmy Butler or zero for Derrick Williams if you have the number two overall pick. Did you have at least one hand raised throughout this paragraph? If you did, I say you are lying or your memory is really short.

In the 2007 Draft, at least half of the teams would have selected Oden over Durant. Heck, the Seattle SuperSonics might have selected Oden if they were unlucky enough (as it turned out) to have the number one spot that year. Know how many teams passed on Marc Gasol? 25, including the Los Angeles Lakers who drafted him. But only after they picked up Javaris Crittenton and Sun Yue before him. In 2008 the whole debate about who goes number one centered around Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose; Russell Westbrook was NEVER an option. And Leonard (drafted 15th) and Butler (drafted 30th) would never in a million years have been selected by any team ahead of Derrick Williams in 2011. Discussing anything else is revisionist history.

Let's get back to Ernie Grunfeld. Assuming he still trades the 2009 five pick for Randy Foye and Mike Miller (total bust of course), he still could have drafted Rajon Rondo or Paul Millsap or Kyle Lowry in 2006 instead of Pecherov; Klay Thompson, Kawhi Leonard or Jimmy Butler in 2011 instead of Vesely; and then of course Draymond Green over Tomas Satoransky in 2012. But who's he supposed to take in 2007 instead of Nick Young? Al Thornton? Acie Law? Julian Wright? Oh wait, all those guys were gone already. What about Daequan Cook? Wilson Chandler? Morris Almond? I mean I get Mo Almond was about the most successful Wizard ever (6-0 record) but look at the list and tell me who he's supposed to pick with the benefit of hindsight. That year was just a bad year.

What about John Wall? That pick was pretty good, don't you think? Would you rather have Evan Turner, who was really the only other option at number one anyway? The answer is no. You might say you want Paul George or DeMarcus Cousins but you wouldn't have claimed that so articulately back in 2010. And don't tell me Grunfeld had no other choice but to take Wall and therefore gets no credit whatsoever because there was another choice. There's were tons of other choices.

Should we pick on the Bradley Beal or Otto Porter picks? The Wizards could have Steven Adams or C.J. McCollum instead of Otto. Or Damian Lillard or Andre Drummond instead of Beal. At this point, is there really that much of a difference here? Remember the Wizards could have opted for Thomas Robinson (selected ahead of Lillard and Drummond) or Ben McLemore (picked ahead of McCollum and Adams) but didn't. Yes, Lillard and Drummond have made the All-Star Game but Derrick Rose won an MVP and can't stay on the court any more. Wait a few years before you start picking on Beal and Porter.

So what's the point here? Well, it's certainly not to exonerate Ernie Grunfeld for all his past draft mistakes because for sure there have been some (Pecherov sticks out really badly to me). But it is to remind everyone that we can't just go back and re-write history to complain about what ifs using the absolute best possible outcome from every draft year. It doesn't work that way. Do you remember how Grunfeld got trashed for picking Vesely in 2011? No? Know why? Because he didn't. Fox Sports and NBADraft.net gave the Wizards a B that year; Sports Illustrated's Sam Amick and Ball Don't Lie gave the Wiz an A+. A+!!!!! For Vesely, Singleton and Mack. Everyone that year was convinced the Wizards needed an athletic big man to run with John Wall and plenty of people loved Jan Vesely in that role. Nobody knew that pick was going to turn out horribly.

When the selections start Thursday night, rest assured there are about a million mock drafts out there that all look relatively similar. And if any team picks much outside that order, whatever general manager has dared to deviate from the plan will get immediately crucified like the second coming of the Kristaps Porzingis pick last year. Oh wait a minute...so far that pick's looking pretty good. There's no crystal ball, no surefire thing. There's a ton of luck and things breaking the right way here. And there are a lot of things to derail any exciting draft pick.

At the end of the Draft this week, every team is going to go home convinced they did the best they could and they made some smart picks (well, maybe not the Wizards because we don't have any picks). But we won't really know until next season, or the season after or maybe five or six seasons from now. There's so much luck involved in this process. Well, unless maybe you select Jonny Flynn fifth overall...because what was David Kahn thinking that year? Don't overreact to anything about the Draft this week. It's a little bit of a crap shoot after all. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And sometimes you have to wait a while to find out.

 

Jonny Flynn...we hardly knew ye.

2.2%

The NBA's Draft Lottery, the annual event that determines the selection order of the NBA Draft (this year held on June 23), will happen this week. For the first time in three years, when they moved up from the eight spot to number three, my beloved Washington Wizards are participating in this event. Finally, Wizards fans have an NBA event to look forward to, although don't get your hopes up, folks. The Wizards are part of this event this week because quite simply they failed to live up to expectations and ended up going home the day after the regular season ended after missing the playoffs.

So there's a silver lining, right? At least the Wizards will have a top 14 draft selection this year, correct? Well...not necessarily. You see, the Wizards (who finished 13th worst in the league this year) traded away their first round pick this year to the Phoenix Suns, the same organization that snagged our 2014 first round selection, in exchange for Markieff Morris. The good news here? It's top nine protected. The bad news? It's extremely unlikely that the Wizards will get a top nine pick.

If there's one thing for sure, it's that the Wizards draft selection will fall in the 1, 2, 3, 13 or 14 spot. If it ends up as a 1, 2 or 3 pick, the Wizards keep the pick and the Suns will end up receiving a future first rounder. If it doesn't, the Wizards will be out of the draft entirely, having already traded this year's second round pick on 2015 Draft night as part of the deal to acquire Kelly Oubre, Jr. for 674 minutes of game action this year.

The Draft Lottery is conducted by drawing a series of four ping pong balls marked with unique numbers. There are a total of 1,001 combinations, of which 1,000 are assigned to teams that failed to qualify for this year's playoffs. The first three picks in the draft are drawn by lottery. The remaining picks are assigned in reverse order of finish. The Wizards have six combinations, meaning they have a 0.6% chance of receiving the number one overall pick and a 2.2% chance of making it into the top three (or having a draft pick at all).

The Draft Lottery has operated in this exact format for 11 years prior to this one (meaning 14 teams in the lottery) and no team finishing worse than 9th worst has ever moved into the top three (that happened twice - Chicago in 2008 and Cleveland in 2014 - both times in the number one spot). That doesn't mean it can't happen for the Wizards but the odds are certainly against them. Get out all the lucky charms you can find and have them at the ready when the show airs Tuesday. I know I will. But expect to take June 23 off.

I Stayed Up For THAT?!?!

Last night the Barclays Center in Brooklyn hosted the 2014 NBA Draft, the annual event that gives hope to fans of underperforming franchises everywhere that their team might just get lucky and snag a future superstar who will take them to the promised land of the NBA playoffs or, maybe just maybe, a NBA title. The Washington Wizards at the beginning of the night held just one pick, the 16th selection in the second round or 46th overall, whichever way you prefer to look at it. Their first round pick this year was in possession of the Phoenix Suns who received it from Washington just before the start of last season in exchange for Marcin Gortat. If we can manage to keep Marcin with the team this year and beyond, that trade was probably totally worth it. But the second round has yielded some gems for other teams. Why not us?

Last night was the third time in my 14 years of being a Wizards season ticket holder that the Wizards were without a first round draft pick. In 2005, the Orlando Magic had our selection as a result of a 2001 trade featuring a protected draft pick in exchange for Brendan Haywood. In 2009, we traded the number five overall pick to Minnesota for one year of Mike Miller and Randy Foye, one of the worst mistakes this franchise has made in the last decade and a half.

Unless I'm on a plane flying to Germany like last year, I watch the draft religiously until the Wizards' picks are complete and then hit the sack. Since we were sitting at 46, I knew last night would be a long one. Despite the maximum five minutes per selection allotted in the first round, the draft never manages to pack 12 picks in an hour. Even though each team pretty much knows exactly who they are going to take, the possibility of some other team calling and making an offer too good to be true forces each pick to last the maximum amount of time. Then there's a minute or two extra while the Commissioner announces the pick and the clock re-sets.

I know next to absolutely nothing about college and international basketball so I generally have no educated opinion about who the franchise should draft. For me, the draft is all about rumored blockbuster trades that rarely happen and learning a little something about the player or players my team manages to trade for or draft. In terms of excitement, 2010 was perhaps the best Wizards draft ever, with the team holding the number one overall pick (John Wall) at the beginning of the night and pulling off two draft day trades to acquire the 17th (Kevin Seraphin) and 23rd (Trevor Booker) picks. The worst year for me was 2005, when I waited all the way to the 49th pick to hear Andray Blatche's name called and the announcers proceeded to say absolutely nothing about Andray, presumably because they had no idea who he was.

So last night I set my expectations bar at the 2005 draft level, knowing I'd have to stay up late but hoping that the folks at ESPN knew something more than nothing about whoever the Wizards would end up drafting at number 46. That moment came at about 11:35, way past my bedtime, when the Wizards selected Jordan Clarkson out of the University of Missouri. OK, so he's a point guard. That's cool, we drafted one two years ago who we can't get to come over from Europe and play for us and we have Andre Miller who's almost 40 as our backup. Makes sense. What did ESPN tell me about him? His father battled cancer. That's it.

Then about two minutes later came word on Twitter that we sold the pick to the Los Angeles Lakers for some cash (about $2 million). Draft over. I stayed up until 11:40ish for that? Very disappointed. I was tired this morning and the team has no more players than it did last night before the draft started.

I'm not really that upset, but I should be. The reason I'm not that upset is that the team's track record of drafting and developing talent quite honestly is not that good so I had really very little confidence that we would have made anything out of the pick unless we just got super super lucky. I should be upset not about trading the pick necessarily but that I have no confidence we could have done anything with the player in that slot once he arrived in Washington. I'm jaded I guess.

In the 14 years I've been a season ticket holder, I've never seen a second round pick pan out. Well, not with our franchise anyway; Shelvin Mack played pretty well with Atlanta this year. I've seen a number of other teams make something of a second rounder or draft an international player and bring him over a couple of years later with some success. The Wizards have drafted three international players in the second round (Juan Carlos Navarro, Vladamir Veremeenko and Tomas Satoransky) since I've been with the team and I've yet to see any of them take the court in a Wizards uniform. I'm adding this to my concerns list about this team, right behind the fact that we do not have a single affiliation with a D-League franchise.

Best draft in 9 years and the Wizards emerge with a couple of bucks. On to Summer League. Two weeks! Can't wait!

Draft Lottery? Who Cares!

If you are a conspiracy theorist (and those of you who are know who I am talking about), the Los Angeles Lakers will win tonight's NBA Draft Lottery. The Draft Lottery, the results of which will be broadcast this evening at 8 p.m. on ESPN, is the annual event that determines which of the biggest losers in the NBA gets to pick first, second and third in this June's NBA Draft.

Conspiracy and NBA Draft Lottery is nothing new. Claims of the NBA rigging the event to meet its own needs go back all the way to the first Lottery in 1985, when then commissioner David Stern felt around for the envelope with the bent corner or the hot envelope (microwaved before the event, maybe?) and plucked the New York Knicks card out of the bin and awarded them the right to pick Patrick Ewing first in that year's draft, thus restoring basketball glory to the city of New York. Wow, that sentence was long. I think it worked, though.

More recently, folks have decried the Lottery as fixed almost annually. In 2011, the Washington Wizards won to compensate the franchise for their owner dying. The next year, the Cleveland Cavalier snagged the top spot so owner Dan Gilbert would feel better about losing LeBron to the Miami Heat. And two years ago, the New Orleans Pelicans getting the right to select Anthony Davis first overall was seen as a reward for Tom Benson taking the Pels (then the Hornets) off the NBA's hands for a tidy $338 million the previous year.

There's always someone there to see the dark side of every event. So tonight, there's no more obvious team to be awarded the number one overall pick on June 26 than the Lakers. The most popular team in the NBA has had a miserable last 15 months. Two leg injuries to top star Kobe Bryant sandwiched around a first round playoff sweep last year and a franchise record for losses this past season. Surely, this can't go on and new commissioner Adam Silver is just the guy to fix it by granting the Lakers, who have nobody but themselves to blame for their current woes, the number one pick. Perfect, right? Never mind the Milwaukee Bucks, who lost more than any other team this year, or the Philadelphia 76ers, who lost 26 in a row this year. The Lakers fix has to be in, right? At least a top three pick, right?

You know what? If the Lakers win it, I don't care. I don't care who wins. I've sat on the edge of my Eames Chair ottoman for the last several years begging the basketball gods to give the first overall pick (or at least a top three pick) to the Wizards. But tonight I just don't care because for the first time since 2008, the Washington Wizards have no chance of winning the NBA Draft Lottery. Zero. None. Zilch. Not a chance at all.

Last year the Wizards were the biggest lottery winner out there, moving up from eighth to third to ultimately snag Otto Porter with the number three pick on draft night. But this year, there’s no shot at all. And that’s because we mercifully are no longer involved in this desperation exercise as a playoff team. And it feels really good.

Sure, it won’t feel good on draft night, when future stars (or busts) are being picked by the lottery teams and we're sitting idly by waiting our turn.  In fact it won’t feel good on draft night when we get out of the lottery (or top 14) picks because the Wizards don’t own a single first round pick at all, having traded our pick this year to acquire Marcin Gortat before the start of the 2013-2014 season, a move that will either lock up a quality starting center for years to come or amount to a one year rental. Ball’s in Ernie Grunfeld’s court on that one.

But tonight, when the results of the lottery are announced on ESPN, there will be no anguish or joy for me at all and honestly, I’m perfectly fine with that. I’m actually perfectly fine never sitting through this process again. I’d love to just keep making the playoffs every year. Although I do think it would be funny if the Lakers win. We'll know in about two hours.

What?!?! You Missed The NBA Draft?!?!

Yes, I missed the NBA Draft. Despite the Wizards having the third overall pick and the Draft being at the brand new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, I skipped it. I also missed the start of free agency, perhaps critical to the Wizards this year because we actually have a free agent in Martell Webster that I desperately want our team to re-sign. I skipped both of these "events" (the start of free agency isn't really an event) because sometimes, other stuff gets in the way. I know, it's hard to believe, but it's true. And from June 27 to July 7 this year, I was off exploring Bavaria, and the history, geography, food and beer it has to offer and that kept me away from the draft and the subsequent start of free agency.

But being out of the country doesn't mean a complete break from being a Wizards fanatic. I took a few shirts with me on the off chance that anyone in Germany wanted to talk Wizards hoops with me. I also followed the Draft on Twitter on my phone from the runway during our flight delay and free agency every day on my laptop and (until I left it in a bathroom) my iPad.

So, a lot happened while I was gone. I managed to stay dialed in to the Draft to the seventh pick by the Kings, so I knew before I left the U.S. that the Wizards selected Otto Porter out of Georgetown University or exactly the player we wanted. I'm glad we resisted the temptation to take Nerlens Noel despite my opinion that our biggest need for a young player is at center. After five years missing the playoffs, it seems that we needed to be more realistic about taking a solid player and not shoot for the stars taking a flyer on a freshman center coming off an ACL injury. Good restraint there.

I had to wait until 8 a.m. Germany time and our connection in Frankfurt to find out that we  traded our two second round picks to the 76ers in exchange for the draft rights to Glen Rice, Jr. meaning the organization stayed true to its word about not wanting three rookies on the roster on opening day. I saw Rice down in Hidalgo playing for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers during my February Texas road trip. While his 18 points in the game I watched didn't stand out (the Vipers scored 139), his 33 and 25 points in two NBDL Finals games sure did.  Hopefully Glen can occupy a more deluxe sort of role that Cartier Martin had on last year's team.

Hanging out at Castle Neuschwanstein in the German Alps.

Then free agency hit July 1st and the Wizards made short work of that whole process. The organization wasted no time wrapping up Martell Webster for the full mid-level exception for three years with a partial guarantee on a fourth year (pretty much exactly what I asked for by the way). Good for Martell. He deserved it with his play last year and he really wants to be in Washington. It's so refreshing to get a team first guy who can contribute and wants to be here. I'm just remembering the whole Gilbert Arenas contract negotiation/blackmail ploy. Now I can finally order my Martell Webster jersey and relegate my Chris Singleton jersey to games I watch from my upper level seats at VC. Sorry, Chris.

In addition to re-signing Martell, the Wizards picked up point guard Eric Maynor to back up John Wall and re-upped Garrett Temple on a guaranteed one year deal. I think Maynor's a good move. I appreciate what A.J. Price brought to the team last year but the Wizards get a guy in Maynor with a little more experience in the NBA and probably a little more upside. I'd have preferred someone with a little more experience here to mentor Wall but it's too late for that now, I guess. I already put it out there that I think it's worth giving Garrett Temple another shot so I'm OK with that move.

If there's a concern here, it's that the Wizards are essentially sticking with a team that won just 29 games last year. I realize that's grossly unfair to characterize it that way considering the number of injuries to, well, pretty much everyone except Emeka Okafor last year but that's really what we are doing. The organization is clearly counting on the magic (not kidding here) that our starting five (Wall, Beal, Webster, Nenê and Okafor) brought last year while on the court together and hoping they can make it happen for close to the whole season this year instead of about 25% of the season. 

The strategy also counts on Wall, Beal and now Porter getting better month over month and contributing more. Don't get me wrong, I know this is how it's supposed to work with young players. I also agree with the overall strategy and wouldn't have asked for anything else. I think this team can be a playoff team and with the offseasons that the Celtics, Bucks and Hawks have had this year, there may be room for some different teams in the top eight come next April. I'm just hoping that pressing the repeat button and having everyone together more allows the turnovers to go down and the offensive rebounding to go up.

Summer League starts for the Wizards Saturday and I plan to be in Las Vegas for the first two games. That means this coming weekend I'll be eight time zones removed from where I was this past weekend. I hope the liter glasses of beer in the two pictures in this post suggest I had a great time while in Bavaria. It took me all the way to the last full day there to get a reaction to my Wizards attire. I ran in to a "John Wall fan" from Boston at the Hofbrauhaus gift store and got a "Wizards! Yeah!" from a passerby on the Marienplatz later that same night. I'm assuming there will be more Wizards fans in Vegas. Can't wait until Saturday.

Part way through a half liter of Spezial Hell at Andechs Abbey.

Off Season Priorities

It's conference finals time. My rooting against the teams and players I dislike the most has helped bump the Brookyn Nets, Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks from the postseason so far. I'm still delusionally hopeful that the NBA Finals this year will feature the Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs despite the current deficit the Pacers face in their Eastern Conference Finals. I like the way Indiana's team is built around a defense first, no star system. In my wildest imaginings, I could see the Wizards resembling that team in the next few years. 

In the meantime, there's been some good news for the Wizards in the form of a top three Lottery pick when the team could have stood still at the eight spot or, God forbid, moved down as far as 11th. That win gives the team a whole lot more options when approaching the off season. It's a lot easier to make deals with a number three overall draft pick than it is with the eighth pick.

When I look over the Wizards roster at the moment, I see some glaring holes that need to be addressed. However, for the first time in years, I feel pretty good about our top five guys under contract, which coincidentally can be fashioned into a credible NBA starting lineup of John Wall and Bradley Beal in the backcourt, Trevor Ariza and Nenê at the forward spots and Emeka Okafor in the middle. I think management has done a good job cobbling together a unit that can score and defend at a playoff caliber level in the NBA.

Beyond the "starting five" listed above, the team is thin. We have some free agents whom we may or may not try to re-sign and a bench of four guys on their rookie contract deals. It's definitely easy to understand how this team finished tied for seventh worst in the NBA last season. Despite that assessment though, we may actually not need to tweak our roster that much to slide into the seventh or eighth spot in the Eastern Conference. Sounds crazy but it might be true. Here's how I view our offseason priorities.

1. Draft The Best Available Player

For the first time in several NBA Drafts, the Wizards are in a position where they don't need to draft someone who has to start next season or even contribute in a major way right away. I am sure between now and draft night both the front office of the Wizards and most folks in the press who cover the team will debate whether the team should draft for need or take the best player available. Here's my message to everyone: the Wizards have needs at every position; select the best available player, even if that player is a guard and has to come off the bench behind John Wall or Bradley Beal for the next four years.

Fortunately, the Wizards this year moved up in draft order by winning the Draft Lottery and hold the third overall selection, rather than the eighth spot based on order of finish. The third overall pick allows the Wizards far more flexibility in making a draft choice and should allow them to not only get a quality player whether or not that player can contribute right away. If I were drafting for need for the Wizards, I'd select a center. The Wizards have young potential at every position except center (I'm putting Seraphin at the four for the purpose of this discussion). But if the right player isn't there, I'm picking the best available. Based on early projections, it appears Nerlens Noel (center), Ben McLemore (guard) and Otto Porter, Jr. (forward) are the top three talents in this year's draft. If that proves to be true, I'd take whichever one of those three wasn't selected in the top two and hope I made the right choice. To me, the draft is a total crap shoot anyway.

2. Re-Sign Martell Webster

The Wizards signed Martell Webster right before the start of the 2012-2013 season as a presumed sixth man at a pretty much bargain price of $1,600,000. Martell turned that opportunity into a season with career highs in points, rebounds, assists and three point field goal percentage while managing to shoot almost 85% from the free throw line. He replaced Trevor Ariza in the starting lineup when Ariza went down with an injury in December and never gave it back. He embraces coach Wittman's game philosophy and also seems to play off other players on the team, and particularly John Wall, very well.

So it looks like Martell has set himself up in a "contract year" to be paid really well or even overpaid. It seems like the Wizards are in a position where they have to pony up some dough to keep him or risk losing him to free agency like we have lost other players in the recent past. If I had a vote, I'd pay Martell. In fact, I'd probably pay him (assuming he would accept it) the full mid-level exception for a period of three years. That would allow us to bring back our starting five from last year plus sixth man Ariza and then start to incorporate other players into the mix, including our first round draft pick and whatever other free agents we retain or sign. And with a three year deal, Martell would be coming off the books in time for the team to throw a boatload of cash at Bradley Beal after his rookie contract expires.

I wonder what the offseason holds for Chris Singleton and his over life size billboard at VC.

3. Figure Out The Seraphin / Booker / Vesely / Singleton Thing

Over the past three seasons, the Wizards have drafted four small or power forwards in Kevin Seraphin, Trevor Booker, Jan Vesely and Chris Singleton. Other than the "starting five" mentioned earlier in this post, these four are the only players currently under contract for the 2013-2014 season. I believe the Wizards drafted so many players to fill potentially one position because they hoped one of the four would naturally rise to the top of the pile and become a regular rotation player (or even a starter) on their rookie deal. That hasn't exactly happened. If you could take Seraphin's offense with Booker's rebounding and defense and Vesely's passing, I think we'd get what I think we intended to get.

So it's probably time to part ways with one or more of this group but which and how? Over the past season and a half, Seraphin has clearly established himself as the most reliable of these four. Towards the end of last season, once he shook off injuries from the first half of the season, Booker emerged as the better of the other three primarily due to his ability to rebound consistently. Trading Vesely and Singleton for someone or some thing of value would be the best thing for the Wizards but to make a trade they need to find a partner willing to take a gamble on one of those two. It may be that we have to trade Booker to get a team to accept one of the other two and hope that whatever we get back is of greater value and that whomever we don't trade can contribute something of real value going forward.

4. Find Some Backcourt Help

During the 2012-2013 season, A.J. Price started 22 games for the Wizards and Garrett Temple started 36. Both guys were thrust into a starting role by injuries to either John Wall or Bradley Beal. I like both A.J. and Garrett as pieces on this team and as players. I love A.J.'s high assist-to-turnover ratio and his ability to play defense. I love Garrett's size and ability to defend both guard spots and toward the end of last season, I actually liked his ability to score in bursts. But if this team is going to succeed beyond maybe squeaking in to the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference, I'm confident when I say that these two guys cannot be our third and fourth guards next year.

If I were running the Wizards, I'd try to re-sign both A.J. and Garrett at the right (i.e minimum) price. I think they both did enough to earn a spot on the team next year. But I'd also go out and find some help to be a first backup at both guard spots. At the point guard, I'd love to find a former starter that had a good contract who is now willing to accept a role for less money backing up John Wall. A guy like Devin Harris would seem to be a good fit. He's coming off a 5 year, $43 million deal and last year was supplanted in the Atlanta Hawks' starting lineup by Jeff Teague. He's still a good point guard and he can defend. If we could wrap up someone like that for a couple of years, I think that would help tremendously.

At the shooting guard first and foremost, we need someone who can score in bunches and I'd even overpay a little or find someone traditionally not thought of as a defender to get that instant offense off the bench. I'm thinking someone like Nate Robinson here. Nate made the veteran minimum with the Chicago Bulls last season but clearly saved some games singlehandedly for that team in the Bulls' playoff run this past spring. If we could wrap up a guy like that for a year or two at a reasonable (less than $2 million per) price, I'd do it. 

5. Fill The Roster With Professional Veterans

During the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons, after it was clear the team wasn't competing for a playoff spot, the Wizards starting auditioning players from the D-League for a spot on the team. Larry Owens, Shaun Livingston, Cartier Martin, Othyus Jeffers, Mike Harris, Cedric Jackson, Mustafa Shakur and Alonzo Gee all made stops in D.C. during those two seasons. I believe the organization's hope was that one of these players would prove to be a diamond in the rough, and we'd be able to pick up a quality rotation player for very little investment. It didn't work. The Wizards couldn't or wouldn't afford to sign Shaun Livingston, who proved to be the most effective in his time in Washington, and they missed out on Alonzo Gee, who last season started all 82 games for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

During the off season last year, the Wizards traded Rashard Lewis and his $22 million plus salary to the New Orleans Hornets for Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza. While it first looked like the trade may have been a mistake because we took back another season's worth of salary when Lewis' expiring deal would have given us cap flexibility this summer, the veteran presence of Okafor and Ariza helped the team immeasurably. Both Emeka and Trevor are smart professionals and both understood and supported the plan to make this team into a playoff contender. Sure they cost more than someone on a rookie contract or a D-League call up, but their maturity and  experience was essential in allowing other players on the team to weather tougher times last season. When it comes to filling the rest of our 2013-2014 roster, I'd love to see the Wizards invest in high character, veteran players who provide leadership on the practice court, from the bench and in game situations in spot duty.

So that's how I see the Wizards' priorities for the 2013 off season. I'm looking forward to the NBA Draft on June 27 and the start of free agency three days later. Hopefully we can pull together something between now and the start of next season that will allow a playoff appearance in 2014.

Will the future ever get here for Dippin' Dots??

"Winning" The NBA Draft Lottery

I'll keep this post short and sweet. Short because it doesn't take much to say what I have to say tonight. Sweet because about an hour ago, that's what this Tuesday night became.

Tonight the NBA held its 29th Draft Lottery. The Washington Wizards have participated in an astonishingly low 17 of those 29 lotteries. I say astonishing because that previous sentence might imply the Wizards franchise has actually been good the other 12 of those years. In fact, the Wizards have been absent from the Draft Lottery process in that stretch more times due to poor trades than they have due to playoff appearances in the prior season. But make no mistake about it: the Wizards are the big winner in this year's NBA Draft Lottery!

I know...they didn't win the number one pick. That distinction went to the hated Cleveland Cavaliers for the second time in three years. The Cavs, assuming they use the pick, may start the 2013-2014 season with four top five picks in the last three years in their starting lineup. But it doesn't matter. Only the Cavs and Wizards moved up in the Draft order this year. And whereas the Cavs jumped from third to first, the Wizards jumped from eighth to third, a tremendous stroke of good luck for a team that has only moved up two times in its previous 16 Lottery chances.

The 2013 Draft is allegedly a draft class with few superstars, a lot of balance and some highly rated NBA ready guys. If there's one thing the Wizards DON'T need, it's another project from the Draft, meaning they need someone who is NBA ready now. Odds are they can get someone at the three spot who fits that bill (i.e. contributes off the bench immediately) at whatever position they choose. I believe the Wizards need to draft the best player available with the third pick; we lack depth across the whole roster and need backups at the one through five.

The third pick worked out pretty well for us last year. I think Bradley Beal, who represented the team at tonight's Lottery, has the talent and drive to be a significant player in the NBA for years to come. In a draft where the talent drop between the first and third picks may not be significant at all, I'll take the third pick. The difference in salary between the first pick (Anthony Davis) and third pick (Real Deal Beal) in last year's draft was a little more than $1,000,000. Now I'm not looking to penny pinch here but the salary cap is real and owners, including Ted Leonsis, are going to try to avoid exceeding the NBA's luxury tax. That million bucks may come in handy.

Early indications are that the Wiz will select Otto Porter, Jr. out of Georgetown University. I have no idea if that's the right pick to make but I know one thing: I'm excited for Summer League and I'm excited for the start of the 2013-2014 season already. The Cavs may have four top five picks in their starting lineup but I'm optimistic about adding this year's third pick to a lineup featuring John Wall and  Bradley Beal. I don't want to get ahead of myself but maybe our luck is turning.

This may be the most truthful statement written about the Wizards in the last 13 years!

NBA Draft 2012

The 2012 NBA Draft was held last Thursday night in Newark, New Jersey. The Draft is the annual meeting where NBA teams select rights to players who are eligible to play in the league. For the most part, either college basketball players who have completed between one and four years of college ball or international players younger than 22 years of age are selected and assigned to teams for a contractual period defined in the NBA's collective bargaining agreement.

Reduced to its simplest form, the Draft is essentially an event where names are announced, with up to a five minute gap between names in the first round of 30 and up to a two minute gap between names in the second round of 30. That's it! 60 names being read! Literally, nothing else happens. But for NBA fans, and especially fans of teams that are not so good or even awful, the Draft offers hope. Hope that things will get better. That maybe, just maybe, my team will get lucky enough to select someone who will turn the franchise into a perennial playoff team and if things go really well, a championship contender. I don't know much, if anything, about the players who are being drafted, nor do I think anyone, including the so-called experts, can predict accurately how a player will perform in the NBA, so nobody will ever know the night of the Draft whether a team has made the right selection or not. But for me the Draft is all about hope and that is why I watch.

As recently as 2000, the Draft was held in NBA arenas on a rotating basis, but starting in 2001, the location became fixed at the Theater at New York's Madison Square Garden. With the MSG Theater under renovation the last two years, the Draft has shifted to the Prudential Center in Newark, an arena large enough to allow space for enough fans that they actually sell tickets. Since I'd never been to the Draft and tickets were available, I decided this was the year to attend, especially since the Wizards held a high pick as a result of having the distinction of the second worse record in the league.

So last Thursday morning, I put on my Jan Vesely shirt, packed up a couple of days of clothes, and headed to Union Station to board Amtrak's Northeast Regional to Newark to see if the Draft in person would be at all exciting. I managed to talk my friends Mike and Bryan into coming with me; God love those guys for coming on trips like this with me, although I realize that if there were no beer available, I'd definitely be going solo. The trip up was flawless: our train was on time, we checked into the Newark Hilton and were drinking beer at the Edison Ale House right outside the Prudential Center at about 5:15. The crowd in the restaurant was just as I expected: NBA fans of many different teams including the Celtics, Trailblazers, Sixers, Knicks and a contingent of Milwaukee Bucks fans featuring a guy in a Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson jersey. I wonder how many times a year that guy wears that jersey. We wondered if we would see fans of every NBA team at the Draft and thought if any franchises would not be represented, it would be the Charlotte Bobcats and the Sacramento Kings.

The Prudential Center: The Jewel of Downtown Newark, NJ.

The Prudential Center opened in 2007 as the new home for the New Jersey Devils, although the arena played host to the New Jersey Nets the last couple of years before they turned their back on Jersey and moved to Brooklyn as soon as the 2011-2012 NBA regular season was in the books. I have been in my fair share of sports arenas in this country in my life but I am not sure I have been in one built in quite the same manner as the Prudential Center. I assume funding was scarce during the construction. I haven't seen gypsum board walls or what appeared to be corrugated metal decking used as wall covering in any other NBA or NHL arena. The appearance of the place is completely unimpressive and the lack of wayfinding signage is confusing. I actually walked past our section until we realized you had to push aside the curtains dividing the concourse from the seating to access the seats. It appears the only thing that money was spent on was an inordinate amount of New Jersey Devils logos on the floors, walls, seats and even the urinal and water closet flush valves. I think I would have skimped on some of the logos and splurged for CMU walls in lieu of the gypsum board walls which are already showing signs of premature age. You can always add logos later.

Were the New Jersey Devils logos on the flush valves really that essential??

The Draft was actually interesting. No, seriously. I'm not sure I'd ever go again but I wouldn't rule it out either. It's definitely different in person than it is on TV, even though the ESPN broadcast is taking place in the arena. You can watch what you want to watch, rather than being restricted to watching what ESPN wants you to watch. The audio commentary, including analysis of picks and interviews with players and others, is mostly inaudible in the upper level of the arena, which was disappointing. Fortunately, we could still hear the names being announced (that's the whole point after all, isn't it?) over the cascade of boos that commissioner David Stern elicited every time he stepped to the podium.

The rumored trades involving the first few picks of the draft which promised to re-shape the NBA landscape never materialized so we ended up filling the time between names being called by talking to other fans, which is always one of the best parts of traveling. We swapped our own analysis of the picks with the Knicks fans behind us and the Sixers and Suns fans in front of us, even though we knew we wouldn't understand how the picks would work out for years. Surprisingly, a lot of the fans around actually seemed to think the Wizards had things going in the right direction, which is a perspective I can't get being so close to the team in DC. I hope they are right.

The event was full. I'd actually say close to being sold out. I'm not sure we saw paraphernalia from all 30 NBA teams but we did see the Bobcats (Gerald Wallace still counts, even though he's two teams removed now, right?) and Kings (there's always one Jimmer Fredette fanatic) represented. I think the most confusing sight of the night was the guy with the "Bring back Darius Miles" sign and his five different Darius Miles jerseys. After making his case for Miles in vain, he eventually settled on his Jason Thompson jersey, which was equally confusing, but which added representation for the Sacramento Kings in a way that somehow seems appropriate for that franchise. 

Our view of the Draft stage from our upper deck seats.

As for the Wizards, they drafted Bradley Beal out of the University of Florida with the third pick, who was the guy we wanted all along. There was some anxiety that the Bobcats would trade down and allow another franchise to draft Beal at number two, but that never happened. We traded for Trevor Ariza and Emeka Okafor the week before the Draft so shooting guard is the only spot in our lineup with a clear talent deficiency and Beal was generally considered to be the only superior shooting guard in the draft. We left over a full minute on the clock when we selected Beal, which I think was the most of any pick in the draft. Hopefully, he and John Wall can solidify our backcourt for years to come.

In the second round, the Wizards selected Tomas Satoransky, a 6'-7" guard from the Czech Republic, who will probably wait a couple of years before coming to the NBA, which might allow us to re-sign guys like James Singleton, Cartier Martin and Roger Mason, Jr, all of whom did what I thought was a good job at the end of last season.

Summer League starts July 13. Vegas, here I come!

The completed first round Draft board. The upper deck closes after round one. It's open seating downstairs after that.