Hoops At The Garden

The first NBA game I ever attended in person was in December of 1995 in Madison Square Garden in New York City: the New York Knicks hosting the then very young (as a franchise) Toronto Raptors. Over the next 28 months, my dad and I would attend four additional games in the Garden watching the hometown Knicks take on the Clippers, Kings, 76ers and Jazz and see the Knickerbockers go 4-1 over that stretch, with the only loss being an overtime affair with the Jazz.

The season after that Jazz game was the 1998-1999 lockout shortened season and in a show of disgust with millionaires and multi-multi-millionaires arguing over how to split billions, my dad and I decided we would not even attempt to attend a game that season. The next year, I moved to Washington, switched basketball teams and started one of my obsessions of a lifetime by scheduling my life around the Wizards and ultimately deciding to go all in and do something really crazy by starting this blog.

Until last week, it had been 19 years since I'd been to a home Knicks game. My cousin visiting from England and the Wizards happening to be in New York for a Thursday afternoon game provided the perfect opportunity to break that streak.

Now, last week's game in New York wasn't the first time I'd seen a hoops game in the Garden in all that time. I managed to get some tickets to the NBA All-Star Game two years ago when it was in the City and saw the West defeat the East in front of a star-studded crowd on a Sunday night. But other than John Wall and Carmelo Anthony being in attendance, that game bore little resemblance to a home Knicks game in the greatest arena in basketball. Seeing a Knick game in person is an experience all hoops fans need to go through. Even if they are the most dysfunctional franchise in the league right now.

I know what you are thinking. Did you read what I wrote right? The "greatest arena in basketball"? Yes. Look I love Verizon Center as much as the next person and I'm dying for that place to be a raucous home court advantage for the Wizards the way some buildings are for other teams, but there's no way VC is the Garden.

I spent about half a blog post a couple of years ago talking about how special it is to make your way from the New York City streets to the inside of the Mecca of Basketball so I won't repeat all that save to say there is nothing like the interior of the Garden. It's all about that wooden ceiling. There is no other place in the league where looking up means so much. So of course I had to include one shot of the court during the game. First one to 100 wins. Again.

When my dad and I took in those five games at the Garden 20 years or so ago, we never got good seats. We always sat in the upper deck in the end zone so the experience we got was pretty one dimensional. Our court view was pretty much always the same game after game after game after game after game. We even had to sit behind each other one game because we couldn't get two seats together. But with the advent of secure, convenient and reliable secondary market ticket sales outlets; the decline of the Knicks as any sort of serious playoff threat; and maybe me having a little more disposable income, it was time for me to experience a Knick game on a different level. And by that I mean the lowest level of the building.

In addition to my seat location, there are some other changes that have taken place over the last 20 or so years. One of the things I appreciated all those years ago about games in New York was the lack of theater surrounding the team introductions. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong but I believe in the early '90s Patrick Ewing's Knick teams were introduced with the lights on after the classic "Go New York! Go New York! Go!" introductory video. I didn't really expect that level of simplicity this time around but I did expect something less over the top than what I saw at a Lakers game a couple of weeks prior.

 

I was wrong. If I thought the curtain with the jumbo sized graphic projection in Los Angeles was out of place for a below .350 Lakers team, I really question the wisdom of the Knicks City Dancers' lengthy light and costume show (complete with lighted uniforms) for the below .400 Knicks. It was more deluxe than almost any halftime show the Wizards have put on this year. It was so long that I almost couldn't remember who was introduced in the Wizards' starting lineup. I know I sound like an old fogey here complaining about the show that the kids love these days but it just seemed grandiose for a team that has had no shot at the playoffs in years.

The Knicks City Dancers in the midst of their most elaborate team introduction ceremony.

Once we got through the opening act, it was on to the game. With the Wizards on a 50 win quest and (at that time) still hoping for a shot at the East's three seed, I hoped for a quick killing of the Knicks and some rest for our starters so we'd be extra prepared to face the Miami Heat at home just two days later. Of course, I've been watching the Wizards play week after week since the All-Star break so I don't know what I was thinking with that expectation. There was no quick killing, no extra rest and no win at home vs. the Heat.

 

The first half looked great. A 12 point lead in the first quarter and a 10 point lead in the second quarter had dwindled to eight by halftime but the Knicks were never really a threat to take the lead despite some play from Brandon Jennings that drove me crazy. That eight point bulge swelled to 15 in the third before the Wizards decided it was probably all they needed to do and eased off the gas pedal a little. Or a lot. The Knicks ended up winning the third by a point and with less than three minutes to go in the fourth behind some poor free throw shooting from the visitors, the game was knotted up.

 

I gotta say there's no other city like New York and no other people like New Yorkers. There I was sitting in the lower level of MSG watching the Wizards struggle to beat a team that has won just one playoff series in the last 15 years (behind a grand total of four appearances) and the place starts going nuts. I guess there are enough people in New York that the building is pretty much always full but everyone seemed to be behind this team all of a sudden. I can't say I've heard Verizon Center get much louder at any point this season during the best season the Wizards (not Bullets) have ever posted. I find it astonishing how continually embarrassed about our crowd noise I am on the road. And it wasn't even caused in New York by a t-shirt toss (of which there were very very many) or something like that. No free chicken required; just love of a team. Imagine that.

While I was watching the Wizards struggle to contain the Knicks (with no Kristaps Porzingis by the way) I have to say that I was impressed with how helpful the scoreboard at the arena was. There's all sorts of cool information on this thing and it displays each team's stats in team colors, which I think is awesome. Check out the scoreboard at Verizon Center and you'll be well informed about how many points each team has; the points and fouls for each player whether or not their name fits on the scoreboard in full; and how many time outs remain for each team in full and 20 second versions. Yep there's also a big screen on each of the four sides showing replays and live action but as far as stats, that's all you get.

 

Now check out the Garden's display. Game score? Check. Points and fouls by player with full names on the board? Check. Timeouts in full and 20 second versions? Check. How about assists and rebounds in addition to points and fouls? Kind of cool; Verizon Center has corner of the arena displays for these stats on a rotating basis by team but they are not visible when looking at the scoreboard. Even cooler than that? The shooting percentages from the field, the free throw line and three point range. It's pretty easy to start to correlate why the Wizards have a 10 point lead in the picture above when they are outshooting the Knicks from the field and beyond the arc by 19 and 17 percent respectively.

 

At the end of the night last Thursday, my teams were 5-1 in games I've attended at Madison Square Garden. 4-1 as a Knicks fan; 1-0 as a Wizards fan. I'm not jealous of the Knicks team but I have a serious crush on their building. When I was here 20 years ago it was before the team embarked on a multi-year renovation and modernization of the place. Today it's even better than I remember all those years ago. There really is no better place to watch pro hoops. I got other places to go to watch the Wizards play in this country, but I'd go back to the Garden every year if I could make the time. It's that good there.

Name me one other NBA arena where you can get a knish. I don't think you can do it.

 

NBA Logo Rank, Part 5

August is almost over, that means my logo rank is also almost over. Actually when you have read this (or just looked at the pictures), it will be. Let's find out who I have number one. But first…number six.

6. San Antonio Spurs

How great is the Spurs franchise? They have five titles in the last 15 or so plus years, they are the model of consistency and team play and they have this awesome logo. Sometimes, it really is about the simple things and you can't get a whole lot simpler than the Spurs have here. I mean it's really nothing more than a boot spur doubling as a "U" in the Spurs name but it just works perfectly. No fuss, nothing fancy. Just like the team it represents. No complaints here. Nothing but praise.

5. New York Knicks

If this ranking were about primary logos only, the Knicks would do about as well as their team did last year, which if you weren't paying attention, would be just about dead last. The Timberwolves kept the Knicks out of the NBA basement last season. The Clippers would certainly keep the Knicks out of the 30 spot on this rank based on primary logo alone.

So the primary logo is a basketball with the word Knicks in astonishing three dimensional font above and a triangle in back. Not good. Not really anywhere close. The logo used to not have the triangle. I hope the team didn't pay too much for someone to re-vamp their image and end up with just a triangle to add. I'd ask for my money back if that's what happened.

But the other two logos? Stunning. The "Knicks" in the basketball is so super simple and obvious but it's graphically brilliant. It helps that the Knicks colors are blue and orange so they can use the actual color of the basketball as a background to their team name.

And then there's the subway token logo. Long long ago before paper or plastic slide or touch subway cards, pretty much all subway systems in the United States used a token, something resembling a coin that you placed in a slot that allowed you to walk through the turnstile. Now, of course, most of these are all gone, although I did get to use some in Philadelphia when I visited last year to watch the Wizards take care of the Sixers. New York's subway tokens had a large central "Y" shaped cut into the center of the token with an "N" on the left and a "C" on the right. The Knicks have used that exact same token design substituting the "K" for the "C." It's absolute genius. The New York City subway is the most famous in the United States. I can't think of a better way to honor the city than converting the token into this logo. I love it.

4. Memphis Grizzlies

My list of all-time favorite NBA logos is pretty short. I haven't actually made one but it's not a bad idea to write about that subject in some later August. If I had made one, the Memphis Grizzlies bear head logo (the center one above - minus the words below it) would be very near the top of that chart. I love this graphic. It's abstract without being cartoon-y, stern and serious without being too scary and I love the half sun / half shadow thing its got going on. I was in Memphis in 2007 and actually thought about buying a shirt with this logo on it in the team store before I came to my senses and realized I couldn't really wear any other team's apparel. I think this is the best logo in the NBA today. No question about it.

BUT…this ranking is a list based on all of each team's logos and honestly, the yellow-orange ball in the blue bear claw just doesn't do anything for me. Pass. This logo drops the Grizz from first to fourth. The Celtics, Bulls and Wizards thank you for it.

3. Washington Wizards

Homer pick? Maybe. But I really like this set of logos that the Wizards introduced in 2011. They completed Ted Leonsis' re-brand this past offseason by killing the Wizard jumping over the moon logo which had served as the primary logo for the team either in the original blue, black and bronze scheme or the slightly tilted red, white and blue scheme since the team ditched the Bullets name. That move bumped the Wizards up a bunch of spots into the number three spot.

The "Unity Hand" logo (above, center) is a throwback to the old Bullets logo, which featured the two "l"s in the middle of the word as hands reaching skyward to catch a basketball. Since there are no double "l"s in either Washington or Wizards, this is the re-interpretation we ended up with. I like how it echoes the past, especially with the retro looking basketball. I don't particularly like the font but the letters clearly spell out "dc" which is good enough for me.

The "Monument Ball" logo is a number of things all at once. It's a basketball but also includes the Washington Monument which is so prominent on the city's skyline and a star echoing the three stars in the flag of Washington, D.C., a design patterned after George Washington's personal coat of arms. I loved the Monument Ball since the day it was released and I was pleased this past spring when the team elected to make it their primary logo. I find this choice surprising since this logo is not featured on the court but whatever.

There's nothing weak here. I love the designs and the colors. I'd say a strong number three. Who you got below the Wizards that is better? Name one and let's have it out.

2. Boston Celtics

You can't get much more classic a logo than the Celtics primary logo. For as long as I can remember this has been the Celtics logo and for good reason. This HAS been the Celtics logo since 1968 which is the year of my birth. True, until 1996 the logo just had two colors (green and white) and before 1976 there was a reddish basketball behind the figure but as far as I'm concerned, the C's have just had one logo. I mean, if it ain't broke, why fix it? Classic works, right? Don't mess with a good thing.

And so that's just the thing with the Celtics logos. They went and messed with it. Until 1998, the Celtics primary logo was good enough. Better than good enough, actually. Maybe the best in basketball considering design and tradition (I know I've just said the Grizzlies head is the best logo in the game today; that logo didn't exist in 1998). But marketing or whatever else got the best of the C's and they felt like they needed to add a shamrock logo. OK, not disastrous. They can probably still finish on top.

But then a year ago, Boston went and introduced the silhouette Celtic logo. I mean OK, it's not horrendous but it's weak enough that for me, it dilutes the branding. Everyone's got to have a second and third logo, right? Well, almost everyone...

1. Chicago Bulls

50 years. One logo. That's right the Chicago Bulls are the only franchise that has never ever ever changed their logo or added a second logo. With this design, they don't need one. I don't know what else to say here. This image is just about perfect. It's an angry bull with red tips on its horns. It's mean, threatening and is one of the classic sports logos ever. I hate that the Bulls ended up number one here but I don't know who else can do any better than this. 

That's it. That's the end. Don't agree with any of my opinions? That's fine. You don't have to. I'm always open to discussion about this subject or anything else about the NBA. Give me a heads up and I'll meet you before the next Wizards game.

NBA Team Name Rank, Part 3

So here it is: Part 3 of my three part series of posts about how awesome or terrible or somewhere in between each NBA franchise's nickname is. Hopefully by now you have pored over the first two parts and are eagerly awaiting the listing of the top ten, culminating in the naming of a winner of sorts. Let's get right to it.

Category Nine: Good Stuff

So at this point, all the team nicknames are pretty good, meaning relevant and a little inventive and centered around things which are mostly readily identifiable. There are no more weather nicknames, no more non sequiturs and no more silliness (you know who I mean, Toronto Raptors). This late in the countdown, every team has some sort of legitimate credibility.

10. Boston Celtics / 9. New York Knicks

Their are many many similarities between the Boston and New York NBA franchises. They are the only two original NBA franchises who remain in their original cities; they both have winning traditions (stop laughing, Celtics fans); and they both named their teams after a portion of their own city's population.

The Celtics of course are named after the Irish immigrants that settled in Boston after the Great Irish Famine of the early to mid-1800s. Irish settlers were typically poor and had neither work nor food in their own country and so traveled across the Atlantic to the nearest possible port which is how a lot of them ended up in Boston. Once in Boston they formed a close knit community of lower class or blue collar workers. No nickname for a team in the late 1940s has a good chance of being all inclusive when it comes to describing a city's population. The Celtics name does a pretty good job though.

The Knicks are named after Father Knickerbocker, a city mascot of sorts that dates back to the days when the city was named New Amsterdam. The character was popularized in the early 1800s by Washington Irving and ultimately was adopted as a term to describe the city's aristocracy. Not as cool as working class Irish; I get it. But no opinion poll that I write where New York and Boston are tied will give the tiebreaker to Boston. The New York New Yorkers finish in ninth; the Boston Bostonians finish tenth.

8. Indiana Pacers

The American Basketball Association had some pretty good team names. Of the four franchises absorbed into the NBA as part of the NBA/ABA merger, three are in my top eight. The other one, the Nets, are not. The Indiana Pacers are the first of three consecutive former ABA franchises. I love the Pacers name because there is a dual meaning (just like the less impressive Thunder nickname).

There are two kinds of famous sporting races held in Indiana. The first and most famous is the Indianapolis 500 held annually at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Every one of those races has a pace car, which leads the field to the starting line. The second is a little known (at least to me outside of Indiana) horse racing tradition featuring harness racing pacers. Could the name be better? Sure, it could and it definitely causes mascot issues for the team. But it's better than most.

7. San Antonio Spurs

How scary is a spur? Well I think the answer is not very, unless you are a horse or in a fight with a dude using a spur as a weapon and you are (a) unarmed and (b) unable or unwilling to outrun him. But the Spurs name is perfect for a Texas team and it blows away the other two Texas franchises, the Mavericks and Rockets. There's an outlaw imagery about Texas more than any other state so I think the name works perfectly for a Lone Star State franchise, even if it is a clothing accessory of sorts.

6. Denver Nuggets

The first recorded gold find in what is now the state of Colorado was reported in 1850, when Lewis Ralston, a settler bound for California, dipped his pan into a river and discovered gold. I think if I had found some gold in a river on my way somewhere, I would have stuck around to see what else I could find but for whatever reason, Ralston did not. Instead he returned eight years later sparking the first of several gold rushes to Colorado. Denver had a small one that same year which ended quickly when prospectors determined there just wasn't a whole lot of gold around Denver.

There have been several Denver Nuggets teams over the years. The first was an AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) team founded in 1932. They were followed by an NBL franchise 80 years after the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. The present Nuggets came into existence in 1974 when the ABA's Denver Rockets switched nicknames in anticipation of an NBA/ABA merger (can't have two teams with the same name after all). I like the Nuggets nickname. It's not exactly fearsome but it's uniquely Denver. Good enough for sixth place anyway.

5. New Orleans Pelicans

The New Orleans Pelicans have played exactly one season in the NBA under their current name. Before the 2013-2014 season they were inappropriately named the Hornets (stay tuned for why it was inappropriate). When the franchise announced the decision to change the team name to the Pelicans, state bird of Louisiana by the way, they drew some fire from some folks. I mean who's going to be afraid of a Pelican?

At the time of the initial name change announcement, I wrote about how impressed I was with the team's decision to change it's name without a relocation effort. I remain as impressed, if not more so, today. Last January, I actually had the Knicks and Nuggets as better location specific nicknames; I may have re-considered since then. I just think it takes balls to do something that had only happened twice before in NBA history. And for those folks who think pelicans are not fearsome, ask the woman in the picture above. I love the Pelicans name!

4. Chicago Bulls

This past summer, I took a trip to Madrid and went to see a bullfight (however one-sided that turned out to be). Until then I didn't really understand how powerful and scary a bull can be, even one with a clear disadvantage to armed men who outnumber the creature. After that experience, one of the last things I want to be chased by is a bull. I can't imagine why anyone would consider running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain each year. I assume some of the folks in the photograph above might have regretted their decision to do so.

If there's a city with an NBA franchise that deserves the Bulls nickname, it's Chicago, so it's appropriate that their team carries that name. From the end of the Civil War to the early 1920's, more meat (mostly pigs and cattle) was processed in the city of Chicago than any other city in the world. No other American city is more identified with cattle slaughter (is that a good thing?) than the windy city. The Bulls name both reflects the history of the city and it ends up being way more than the city name with some arbitrary animal. Take that, Stuart Pritchard.

So I guess these guys are the original 76ers, right?

3. Philadelphia 76ers

The original Phildelphia NBA franchise was called the Warriors, who now reside in Oakland, California under the Golden State name. The folks that moved the Syracuse Nationals to the City of Brotherly Love in 1963 and renamed the team had a better idea.

No city except maybe Boston (and then only a maybe) was more important to the original 13 colonies' declaration of independence from Britain and the subsequent Revolutionary War. The Declaration of Independence document was signed there, Benjamin Franklin called the city home and the first Continental Congress was established there. Heck, if it hadn't been for slave owners in the south, Philadelphia might have become the capital of our nation. This was a tight call with the Bulls for the three spot but I'm giving the nod to Philly, despite the fact that a bull is way scarier than an 18th century American aristocrat with a pen.

2. Portland Trailblazers

One of the stories I love the most about American history is the expansion of the country west to the Pacific. From Lewis and Clark's search for the northwest passage to the annexation of parts of Mexico to the discovery of gold in California and Colorado to the settlement of vast tracts of available land in places like Oklahoma. I can't imagine how scary and wonderful expanding our nation west was for the people who did it in search of a better life for their families.

One of the most famous journeys west by regular people was the settlement of Oregon by the people who traveled to that territory via the Oregon Trail. The Trail connects Missouri to Oregon and is 2,200 miles long. I find it amazing that 400,000 people made the journey by foot and horse and wagon over an unpaved trail through sometimes hostile wilderness in a forty year span from about 1830 to about 1870. The Portland NBA franchise was another of the many named by public contest. The original winner of that contest was Pioneers, which works just great, but is shared by the nearby Lewis and Clark College. Trail Blazers finished second but won by disqualification of sorts. I like Trail Blazers better; I like it so much that I think it's second to only one other name.

1. Charlotte Hornets

I can't believe that any ranking system I created has the Charlotte Hornets at the number one spot but that's just what's happened here. Let me say it here so it's clear: I LOVE the Hornets name. I think it represents the very best of what a sports franchise name should be. It's ferocious, you can make a cute mascot out of it for the kids and it's location specific in a very obscure but very measureable and relevant way. This is a legit first place finish; I'm not just giving the Hornets a bump for ditching the Bobcats name a couple of months ago. Although honestly, they might have finished 30th with the old name.

As of this past spring, there have been two Charlotte Hornets franchises. The first was established as an expansion franchise in 1988 but split town for New Orleans in 2002 under a cloud of shadiness by the then owner, George Shinn. When the team headed south to the Crescent City, they kept the name for a bit until they decided that the Hornets name wasn't for them (see 5 above) and gave it up. Major props to Michael Jordan (did I really just write that?) for picking it up instantly and moving quickly to get the name back in the Queen City.

The original Hornets nickname (surprise, surprise!) was the result of a contest to name the team. I know, right? It's so surprising! Contests have yielded some crappy team names over the years (see 19 in Part 2). But this one is truly brilliant, plus if there were no contest here, we'd be rooting against the Charlotte Spirit. During the Revolutionary War, the British commander Lord Cornwallis referred to the city as a "veritable hornets' nest of rebellion" which inspired the name of a minor league baseball team in the city which was established in 1901. The name was later used for a World Football League team. Despite the borrowed or stolen name, this nickname wins my NBA team name rank.

So that's it. I'm still in disbelief that the Charlotte Hornets won anything I put my name to but that's the way it is. And since it's August 25 today, I think I can declare my project to rank all 30 NBA team nicknames a success. Now I have to think of something to do next August.

The Wrong Teams

Early evidence of me as a Jets fan.

Wednesday night in Detroit, Michigan marks the start of my 14th season as a Washington Wizards season ticket holder and I'm still waiting for my team to win something. That's right, the Washington NBA franchise has not hoisted a banner of any sort for winning something since 1979, when they won the Eastern Conference championship as the Washington Bullets en route to their second consecutive NBA Finals (they won in 1978 and lost in 1979). Now before you take pity on me for the plight of my beloved Wizards, let me just say I'm used to losing. I've had a ton of practice. In fact, I'd say if I had tried to be more strategic in picking teams in the four major U.S. sports that would not win much at all, I don't think I could have done it.

When my mom and dad moved themselves, me and my sister to the United States in 1979, I was forced to abandon my allegiance to football (soccer) and pick a new sport. This was not a quick emotional decision; it wasn't possible to get any coverage of domestic soccer in this country in the late 1970s, let alone a league all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Fortunately for me as a sports crazed 11 year old kid, America offered four major leagues to choose from and follow. No longer was I limited to a late summer through early summer sports schedule like I was in England. Now I could follow sports all year round. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to embark on a horrible series of choices in this regard. 

The first American city I set foot in was Boston on the day I immigrated to this country. My family took off from London and landed seven or so hours later in Massachusetts with our eventual destination just east of Hartford, smack in the middle of Connecticut about equidistant between where we had landed and New York City. Over the next 34 years, those two cities would produce a rich sports winning tradition over all four major sports which is probably unmatched in the nation. But I was not destined to take part in any of that. In the months after I got off a plane at Logan Airport in mid-summer of 1979, I'd set in motion a series of events that would prepare me very well for the last 13 seasons of being a Wizards season ticket holder.

The first American sport I took to was probably baseball and the first games I ever watched were between the Baltimore Orioles and the California Angels in the 1979 American League Championship Series. This was back when only four teams made the playoffs in Major League Baseball. I'm not sure why I started rooting for the Orioles although if I had to take a guess, I'd say it was because of the orange in their uniforms (I've always been partial to orange for some reason). The Orioles defeated the Angels before losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series but I stuck with the Orioles as my team.

All things considered, the Orioles were not a bad choice at that time for a first American sports team. They had been one of baseball's most successful teams over the past decade and a half and were stocked with future hall of famers like Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray and manager Earl Weaver. In 1983 the Orioles would win the World Series with that lineup and rookie Cal Ripken, Jr. who I can still remember leaping to catch the last out of the decisive game against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Next up was football. My initial choice of professional football teams was the New England Patriots. I mean, that's logical, right? We lived in New England. But somewhere between July 25, 1979 when we landed in this country, and the end of the 1979 NFL season, I had become a New York Jets fan. I believe my switch in allegiances was made solely on the basis of helmet design. And I think it occurred while ordering a dessert.

When we first lived in the United States, my dad used to take us to Dairy Queen a lot (my dad loves ice cream!) and in those days DQ used to serve sundaes in miniature football helmets. I believe my memory of this is fairly vivid. I remember looking at all the helmets available and picking the Jets sleek modern looking 1970s helmet over the Patriots' crappy looking Pat patriot helmet for my sundae one day and that was it. From then on until this day, I was a New York Jets fan. Ice cream. It's almost cruel what it left me.

The last American sport I picked up in the '70s was hockey. No basketball yet (ironically); hoops wouldn't enter my life until college, and then only in a casual way. For hockey teams, there was only one choice. In 1979, the World Hockey Association had forced a partial merger with the National Hockey League and one of their four teams to survive the merger was the Hartford Whalers, making the Whalers the only team in the four major sports to reside in Connecticut. The Boston Celtics played a game every now and again at the Hartford Civic Center but the Whalers were Connecticut's only real team. Sold! I'm proud to say I followed the Whalers from their inaugural 1979-1980 season until they split for North Carolina in 1997.

Champions at last in 1998! 20 years in and only one division title.

How smart were my initial choices of American sports teams? Not very. Despite the rosy start to my Orioles fan stint, the team soon faltered. After their championship run in 1983, the Orioles embarked on an unprecedented (for that franchise) run of futility, punctuated by an 0-21 start to the 1988 MLB season, the worst starting mark to open a season then and to this day.

The Jets were a poorer choice. They didn't win anything until 1998 when they finally won the AFC Eastern Division. Yes, it took 20 seasons before my football team won a division title in a division with only five teams. We had a good run as a non-division winner in 1982 when we made the AFC Championship game but couldn't get past a rain soaked Orange Bowl field against the Miami Dolphins.

The Whalers were a little more successful (sort of) than the Jets as a division champion but still only won a total of one division title and one playoff series in their 18 seasons in the NHL. While I can credibly argue that the Whale would have gone on to win the 1986 Stanley Cup if they had just been able to get by Montreal (they lost in overtime in game seven), they didn't. My love for the Whalers died the day they left Hartford and I won't root for the Carolina Hurricanes ever but the team in Hartford sure didn't have much success.

I stuck with the teams I picked as a pre-teen for a long time. I'm still a Jets fan, I picked up the Washington Capitals when I moved to the Washington D.C. area in 1999 (since I had no hockey team at that time) and I defected from the Orioles when the Montreal Expos moved to D.C. and became the Washington Nationals. No great winners in the Caps (despite many many division titles in the last decade) and the Nationals, although the Nats did finish with the best record in baseball in 2012 before bowing out in the first round of the playoffs.

All of that long narrative of hopelessness brings me to the Wizards, who are sort of the subjects of this whole blog. Between living in Connecticut and moving south to northern Virginia, I latched on to basketball as a sport and fell in love with the game. When I lived in upstate New York, I became a Knicks fan, a fantastic choice of teams considering the franchise made the playoffs every year I was a fan between 1994 and 1999 and managed to reach the NBA Finals twice in that span. When I moved to Washington and was presented with a pro basketball team less than ten miles from my apartment, I switched teams and started buying season tickets. Making that decision was like a flashback to the late '70s and it set me on the course of mostly misery I have been on ever since.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post and in my preseason blog post last year, the Wizards have won nothing in my time as a season ticket holder or in fact for a long time before that. Sure, there have been four playoff appearances and one playoff series victory in the last 13 seasons, but in terms of winning something which is represented by a banner in the rafters, the Wizards have nothing. Nada. Zip. And all of that's par for the course for me.

So as if all the whining and complaining in the previous 14 paragraphs weren't enough, let's sum up my lamenting with some graphs to prove my point about how poor my professional sports team choices have been. Each of these graphs have been prepared assuming each team in their respective leagues stands an even chance of either making the playoffs or winning their division, conference/league or championship. I know there's no way this is true in any one year, but over time, it should start to even out a little, right? We'll start with a look at playoff appearances.

In assembling these graphs, I was surprised to see my teams didn't fare worse when it came to making the playoffs (that's optimism, right?). The Capitals and Knicks exceeded the league average during the time I supported those teams which is no surprise considering how good they were or have been in the stretches when I was or still am a fan. The Jets and Orioles also represented pretty well over the last 34 years, finishing at about 90% and 80% of the league average respectively. The real disappointment is in the rest of the teams, which of course includes the Wizards who finished with about half as many playoff appearances in the almost last decade and a half as they should have.

Let's move on to division championships.

While I was pleased with my playoff appearances graph, things start to fall apart when we start looking at actually winning championships of any sort. These are the victories that mean something. Making the playoffs as a non-division winning team is an important step and many teams in all four sports have won championships the same year they didn't win their own division. But if you don't win it all, winning your division counts (at least in my book where I'm craving wins).

Once again, the Capitals show strongly in this category, having dominated the NHL's now defunct Southeastern Division over the past ten years or so. But the rest of the bunch is not so impressive. The Knicks are a touch above the league average in the six years I was a fan but the rest don't look so good. All my other teams have struggled in this category but the worst of them all is the Wizards, who have no division wins with me as a fan.

When we get to the conference championships graph, my teams' performance starts to look really really thin. Now instead of just the Wizards with nothing to show, five of my seven teams are posting a goose egg. Only the Orioles and Knicks have any success in this category and maybe only because when I picked those two teams, they were winning at the time. The other five teams I have supported since I moved to this country are zero for 87 combined seasons.

Finally, there's the championship graph. Despite making the NBA Finals in 1994 and 1999, the Knicks came up empty both times, leaving only the Orioles with a single championship in professional sports since I moved to this country. I've been here 34 years plus and have only one championship to show for all the blood, sweat and tears I've poured into professional sports in that time. It's been 30 years since the Orioles won that lone championship in 1983 by the way. That's a lot of suffering so don't feel bad for me that the Wizards haven't won anything in my 13 years as a season ticket holder. I'm keeping the faith and will continue to do so until it pays off.

Now I know there may be fans out there who think they are long suffering. In the past ten years or so, I've heard the laments of Washington Redskins, Boston Red Sox, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins and even St. Louis Rams fans bemoaning their teams' lack of recent success. For all those people, I'll just ask you to re-read the above. But if re-reading all of the above still isn't enough to convince you that I have it worse than you and have picked absolutely the wrong combination of teams, consider these three additional facts:

1. For the first 12 years I lived in the United States, I resided either full-time or part-time in Connecticut. Despite my residence in New England, I have never been a fan of any Boston sports team. During the past 34 years, each of the Boston sports teams in the four major sports has won a championship. The Bruins have won a Stanley Cup, the Red Sox have won two world series, the Patriots have won three Super Bowls and the Celtics have won four NBA Championships. If only...

2. When I arrived in this country, there were seven New York teams in the four major sports: baseball's Yankees and Mets, football's Giants and Jets, basketball's Knicks and hockey's Rangers and Islanders. Of those seven teams, only two have not won a title in their respective sport since I set foot in America. The Yankees and Mets have won a combined seven world series, the Giants have won four super bowls and the Rangers and Islanders have combined for five Stanley Cups. The two teams who haven't won a championship, the Jets and Knicks, are the two teams I picked.

3. Not only have my teams only won one championship when I have been a fan since living in this country, most haven't even won either before or after I have been a fan. The one exception has been the Carolina Hurricanes, the one team I refuse to follow ever for taking my Whalers away. The Hurricanes hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2006.

What a downer!

The 2013-2014 NBA season tips off tomorrow (the Wiz have to wait a day) and once again, I have high hopes for the Wizards' chances of at least making the playoffs. It's the second year in a row that I am hoping for a playoff appearance before the season starts after a few years of really having very little faith whatsoever. I honestly believe that this team is on the right track. I know I'm not winning anything this year but I hope maybe a few years from now I might. I'll just keep hoping.

NBA Mascot Rank, Part 1

August and September are boring months for the committed NBA fan. Summer League is over, all the in demand free agents are under contract and training camp has yet to begin so we're stuck in limbo for a couple of months with little to occupy our time. Last year we were fortunate to have the Olympics to tide us over for the month of August. This year, there's only the WNBA. And let's face it, nobody watches those games.

So in an effort to keep myself occupied and to make myself feel good about keeping my blog going, I thought I'd take a look at the mascots in the NBA and see if any of them can measure up to the Wizards' excellent-in-every-way mascot, G Wiz. And if that's not blatant foreshadowing, I don't know what is. That curiosity has resulted in what will end up being a five post mascot-fest where I rank all the NBA mascots (and more) from 30 to 1. This first post deals with the concept of mascots and tallies those that don't exist or never have. Read on!

I have to confess I used to hate mascots. I saw them as unnecessary distractions for fans that were less committed than me. I cheered the University of Michigan when I was enrolled there for banning the student-created "Willy the Wolverine" mascot from Michigan Stadium. But as I've grown older, I've come to view them as part of the game experience and have actually started to have positive views of some of them. There are mascots who are genuine icons (think of baseball's Philly Phanatic or the San Diego Chicken here) but others are just downright uninspired, goofy or a complete waste of time.

Some NBA teams don't have mascots and some do. Some teams have multiple mascots or inflatable versions of their primary mascot and some teams keep switching their mascot because they can't decide what they really want. All of that makes ranking them somewhat complicated but I've managed to do it. I can tell you are already impressed. Here's how my rankings work.

When evaluating mascots, I've considered three criteria: name, relevance (either geographical or franchise nickname relevance) and appearance. Some mascots have creative names, are really relevant to their teams and look awesome. Others just don't. In my studies, I've typically only considered a team's primary mascot in my rankings with two exceptions: the Cleveland Cavaliers, because I can't figure out who their primary mascot is, and the Washington Wizards, because, well, this is a blog about my life and the Wizards. So let's get right to it. We'll start with number 30, after some honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention: Hugo T. Hornet, Charlotte Hornets

Yes, that's right...CHARLOTTE Hornets. If there's one wrong that has to be righted in the NBA's mascot world, it's that Hugo has to be restored in Carolina where he started out (this is going to occur in 2014 by the way). If the Hornets name (and consequently Hugo) still existed in the NBA, he would surely challenge for the top spot in this ranking on appearance alone, especially if he were in Charlotte where the Hornets nickname is relevant. Good thing for G Wiz this isn't being done a year later.

Hugo scores so high on relevance and appearance and those two factors more than compensate for his average name. There's no question he looks like a mascot, is clearly what he's supposed to be (a hornet) and represents the team perfectly. He's cartoony without being overly simple. There's a richness in the details here. Can't wait to see Hugo back on the court next October.

Honorable Mention: Squatch, Seattle SuperSonics

If there's a tragedy in the NBA, it's that the city of Seattle does not have an NBA team. That situation could have been righted a few months ago with the sale of the Sacramento Kings to a Seattle based investment group although that would have just transferred the NBA-less tragedy from the Emerald City down to California's capital. When the team that would become the Oklahoma City Thunder left Seattle in 2008, they left the SuperSonics name, the uniforms and the 1979 NBA Championship trophy behind for the city of Seattle. 

They also left behind the Sonics excellent mascot, Squatch, who like Hugo above, would surely be a top 10 mascot in this ranking. Squatch (short for Sasquatch, duh...) has an awesome name and he really couldn't exist anywhere else except for the Pacific northwest (I'll refrain from going into my account of how I think I saw one once in Pennsylvania; that's a story for a totally different time). He also looks just like most of us convince ourselves bigfoot looks like so he scores high in my book on name, relevance and appearance. We will likely have to wait a few more years for Squatch to re-appear. Maybe if the Bobcats/Hornets keep performing poorly enough.

Honorable Mention: Clipper Darrell, Los Angeles Clippers 

I first became aware of Clipper Darrell (real name Darrell Bailey) at NBA Summer League in probably 2008 or 2009. I was watching the Clippers play some other team (I don't remember who although I don't think it was the Wizards) and the Clips were playing miserably, just like they did pretty much every year before they drafted Blake Griffin and the NBA gifted Chris Paul for them. Between chants like "U-G-L-Y you ain't got no alibi" I heard this guy in blue and red yell out something to the effect of "Come on, show them how we play Clipper basketball." Based on the laughter which followed a muffled rejoinder from someone on the other side of Cox Pavilion, I believe it was pointed out to Darrell that the Clippers were actually playing Clipper basketball at the time. 

Among NBA super fans, Clipper Darrell (shown above with his now deceased Clippers car) is my hero. He's the epitome of the loyal-no-matter-how-the-team-performs fan. Five years ago, if there was a team that needed a change of fortune from their entire history, it was the Clippers and Darrell was the symbol of a fan base clinging to absolutely no hope whatsoever. And now thanks to Griffin and Paul, the Clips actually stand somewhat of a chance. They won their first division title ever last year and despite the Clippers organization trying to disassociate themselves with Darrell last season, he's stuck with it. Good for Darrell. I hope one day the fortunes of the Wizards will turn the way they have in Los Angeles. 

Now...enough honorable mentions. On to my rankings. 

30-26 (Tie): No Mascot, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, New Orleans Pelicans, New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers

No mascot means one of two things to me, either the franchise is too iconic to stoop to having a mascot or there is just no willingness to be the least bit imaginative and create one. The Lakers and Knicks clearly fit into the former category whereas the Clippers and 76ers fall into the latter. The 76ers actually have experimented with mascots, last in the form of Hip Hop, a rabbit with absolutely no value whatsoever. Hip Hop was retired or killed or whatever about two years ago and mercifully hasn't been seen since.

Now, one could clearly take the position that having no mascot in some cases is actually better than having a terrible mascot. Maybe so, and I'd totally entertain that argument but since this is my blog, that argument doesn't work this month. Well OK, it works for one team. On to number 25...

25 (Tie): No Mascot, Golden State Warriors, and G Man, Washington Wizards

In 1997, both the Golden State Warriors and Washington Wizards rebranded themselves with new uniforms, new mascots and, in the case of the Washington franchise, a new nickname. I am totally convinced that the two organizations cheaped out on their rebrand and split the cost of the re-design because both franchises emerged with the exact same product. Their new jerseys looked remarkably similar, from the offset numbers on the front under their nickname tapering from a large W to a small S to the numbers on the back of the uniform which were the exact same custom designed font.

They also emerged from the rebrand effort with the same ugly mascot, a blue muscled dude wearing the terrible uniforms that the franchises likely split the cost of. The Warriors' mascot was named Thunder; the Wizards' mascot was named G Man. Since 1997, both franchises have rebranded themselves again, both adopting uniform designs similar to the uniforms the two franchises wore in the 1970s, when each won a title. When the Warriors rebranded themselves in 2010, they dumped Thunder. When the Wizards rebranded themselves in 2011, they unfortunately kept G Man.

The two franchises are tied for 25th best (or sixth worst if you prefer) in my rankings because for me on a mascot level, they are inextricably linked and nobody is going to be able to convince me the two franchises didn't collude and get a two for one deal on mascot design. You get what you pay for and these mascots honestly stink. I could have stuck the Warriors tied with the Clippers, Lakers, Knicks, Pelicans and Sixers but quite honestly, I think they deserve some credit for dumping a terrible mascot and so they sit above the other five franchises currently without mascots. The Wizards should follow the Warriors' lead and dump G Man.

Switching Teams

In the fall of 1999, I decided to call it quits in upstate New York and move to Washington DC. I still consider that day the third most important day of my life, after my birthday and the day my family moved to the United States 20 years earlier. Instead of living in a town of slightly less than 2,000 people, I was now part of a metropolitan area boasting more than 5.5 million residents. While comparing a town to an entire metropolitan area may seem unfair, Cooperstown is the seat in a county with a total population of slightly more than 62,000 and only one town in the county has more than 10,000 residents. It's a different world.

In a basketball sense, my world had also changed. Instead of being 190 miles away from the closest NBA arena, I was now just 12. But the local five in DC was not the New York Knicks of the 1990s. In my six seasons as a confirmed Knicks fan, the team had posted at least 55 wins three times,  only once finished worse than second in their division and had made it to the NBA Finals twice, in 1994 and then again in the lockout shortened 1998-1999 season. Before that season, it seemed the team had lost its way by trading away Charles Oakley and John Starks for Marcus Camby and Latrell Sprewell only to have Camby prove to be the difference maker in the series against the Indiana Pacers, the team that had sent the Knicks home the previous year. Along the way, there were battles against teams that were so easy to hate: Reggie Miller's Pacers, the Pat Riley coached Miami Heat and Jordan's Bulls. While the Knicks never bested Jordan's Bulls in the playoffs during the 1990s, the 1999 Finals run included satisfying series wins against both the Heat and Pacers, including Larry Johnson's incredible four point play to win game 3 in the Garden over Indiana in the Conference Finals, best seen in completely unexpurgated fashion here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TUDx78lyC0 in a video that also sums up how special that 1999 Finals run was. The entire Garden standing in unison when the shot falls is something I will never forget.

The Washington Wizards were an entirely different kind of franchise. While the Knicks had been one of the more successful franchises in the NBA during the 1990s, the Washington Bullets, renamed the Wizards in 1997 after owner Abe Pollin's friend Yitzhak Rabin was slain two years earlier, at best could be described as mediocre, and that may be a real stretch. While I was watching the Knicks in upstate New York, the Washington franchise had made the playoffs only once, in 1997, losing in three games to the Chicago Bulls. At the time, that team was described by some as an up and coming team, with Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Rod Strickland and 7'-7" Gheorghe Muresan. But the team failed to make the playoffs the following year and management decided Chris Webber was not the answer, trading him to the Sacramento Kings in a swap for Mitch Richmond. It turned out Chris Webber was the answer for the Kings, who prospered after the trade, and Mitch Richmond was not the answer for the Wizards. But the recent history of the Bullets and Wizards didn't tell the whole story. The Bullets had won the NBA Championship in 1978 and followed up the next year with a 54 win season, a division championship and a return trip to the Finals. Since then, the franchise had enjoyed just five winning seasons with no division championships and no more than 44 wins in any one season. They had also won only one playoff series, in 1982.

I absolutely hate moving. I moved to DC for the long haul, to find a place to call home after living in a series of places that I no longer had any real connection to and I was here to stay. Despite all the history of the Wizards franchise staring me in the face, I knew I had to switch teams and become a Wizards fan. I watch sports to see my team win, not to see the sport itself and NBA basketball is my number one sport. I can be a disinterested viewer if I have no stake in the game, so the idea of sitting in an NBA arena and not rooting for one team or the other doesn't appeal to me at all. I could no longer watch every Knicks game on TV and I wanted to go to more than just the two games each season that the Knicks visited DC. So I switched to a team with a less than glorious recent history unaware how committed I would become. But there was some good news. Nobody really wanted to go see this team so tickets were available. I didn't have to ask my mom to spend hours on the phone buying tickets. And I could sit somewhere other than the end zone of the upper deck. And I didn't have to travel hundreds of miles and worry about blizzards and deer in the road. All good.

That first year in DC, I attended only two games: one against the Clippers and one against the Knicks. It was difficult and unnatural to root against the Knicks and I'm sure I applauded by accident sometimes when they scored that year. Then during the 2000 offseason, a co-worker and I looked into the cost of Wizards season tickets. Michael Jordan had been hired as the general manager and given ownership of part of the team that year. If he could be anywhere near as good as an executive as he had been as a player, then things would surely turn around. The cost of Wizards season tickets in the upper deck for the 2000-2001 season? $410! For the whole season!! 41 games!!! And these were pretty good seats, in the seventh row of the upper deck on the side. After the struggles my dad and I (and my mom) had getting basketball tickets the previous few years, I think I bought season tickets as much out of spite as thinking this season ticket holder stuff would become a long term gig. But its 2012 and I still have them and I no longer accidentally applaud when the Knicks score.