Banner Night

At first, I didn't think they'd do it. In today's win all or win nothing NBA environment, I thought there was a good chance the Washington Wizards would skip the ceremonial raising of a Division Championship banner. I mean how silly is it to watch a piece of cloth pulled up from the hardwood court to sit among similar banners hanging in the rafters of Capital One Arena when all you have done is finished first in a five team division? Come on, it's five teams. You should be winning once every five years on average.

But the Wizards don't win the division once every five years. In fact, as I've ranted and raved about many many times in this blog, they haven't won one since 1979. That's 38 years ago. And they've never won one as the Wizards or in the District. Last time they hoisted one of these things, it was in the 1970s, a year removed from an NBA Championship and they were called the Bullets and played in Maryland. As if all my fears about the Wizards skipping this thing that I'd waited through 17 years of being a season ticket holder for weren't enough, I attended the Washington Capitals season opener earlier this month. They won a division last season. No banner raising.

Then on Monday we got an email from the team. Get to the arena early on opening night for the "special pregame programming" that was supposed to last all of 15 minutes starting at 6:30. This had to be it, right? Right.

Wrong. My original instinct was right. The promised "special pregame programming" was a ruse. It never happened. I was in my seat at 6:30 on the dot, ready for what I was sure would be a cathartic banner raising after 17 years of being a Wizards season ticket holder. I got bubkus. Nothing. Nada. The banner was already in place when we got to Capital One Arena tonight. And to make matters worse, it was just a tack on to a new compendium of franchise division championships banner. Sure the 2016-2017 Washington Wizards are there at the very bottom but I really wanted one of my own. I'm disappointed and disheartened. I get that it's JUST a division championship but come on...it's been almost four decades. 

It's almost difficult for me to say that I'm so proud of this team for finishing first in the Southeast Division last year. Difficult because it sounds so silly to be celebrating something that a lot of franchises (including the Wizards apparently) don't even bother celebrating any more because just winning a division means nothing compared to what that team's expectations have become every year. But I'm not a fan of those other teams and I don't have that expectation. Yet. I hope one day I will. Until then, I'm going to revel in knowing there's finally a banner hanging in the rafters for a team that I watched, one called the Washington Wizards, even if the team paid it no mind whatsoever. 

Congratulations to all those fans who have suffered years and years for this moment, even if we really didn't get our moment. I'm right there with you. Let's see one of these a lot more often in the next decade please, starting with this season right in front of us.

At least, I guess, I finally get to see the Capital Bullets banner I've been after the team to raise for years. Wizards are 1-0. This was a missed opportunity for me. Huge mis-step by the team.

Southeast Division Champions!

 

Tonight the Washington Wizards clinched the NBA's Southeast Division Championship. I'm so happy and proud to say I was there when it happened even though it was on the west coast. It was a game the Wizards had no business losing and then ironically had no business winning.

It is the first division title for the franchise since they adopted the Wizards nickname and the first since I first bought season tickets in the fall of 2000. Finally, my team has won something and I couldn't be more happy. I can't wait to get my hands on a Southeast Division Champions t-shirt, which will be ordered as soon as they are available online or picked up at Verizon Center next week, whichever comes first.

Why am I so happy about this? Know how long it's been since the Wizards franchise last won a division championship? 1979. 38 years ago. That year the NBA had 22 teams in four divisions. The Jazz were still in New Orleans, the Nets were still in New Jersey, the Kings were still in Kansas City, the SuperSonics were still in Seattle and the Clippers were still in San Diego. The Rockets and Spurs were in the Eastern Conference and the Kings, Bucks, Pacers and Bulls were all in the Western Conference despite all those four cities being east of both Houston and San Antonio. The SuperSonics that year beat the Bullets for the NBA title, Moses Malone was the league's Most Valuable Player and George Gervin led the league in scoring.

As you might expect (and if it wasn't obvious from the paragraph above), in the 37 seasons between championships a lot has happened in the NBA. The league has expanded to 30 teams by putting franchises in Dallas, Miami, Charlotte (twice), Minnesota, Orlando, Toronto and Vancouver (who have since moved to Memphis). One of the Charlotte expansion teams moved to New Orleans to replace the departed Jazz who moved to Utah. Three teams have changed their names not related to a city move: the New Orleans Pelicans who ditched the Hornets nickname, the Charlotte Bobcats, who picked up the Pels' unwanted Hornets name and my beloved Washington Wizards, who decided the world was just too darned violent and would rather not be called the Bullets anymore. Some folks are still clinging to the old name.

Of course there have been 37 champions crowned since the end of the 1978-1979 season but only 11 franchises have managed to hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy over those years. The Lakers have won it all 10 times, the Bulls are second with six, the Spurs follow them with five and the Celtics, Pistons, Heat, Rockets, 76ers, Warriors and Cavaliers fill in the rest of the years. Congratulations to all those franchises I guess as well as the Trail Blazers, Suns, Knicks, Magic, SuperSonics, Jazz, Pacers, Nets and Thunder who made it to the Finals but couldn't pull it out. At least you made it.

There have been lots and lots of Division winners since '79 too, just not the Wizards. 28 different teams to be exact, including one franchise (the Seattle SuperSonics / Oklahoma City Thunder) who won at least one under two different names. The Spurs have raised the most banners since the 70s with 19, the Lakers are just one behind and the Celtics and Heat round out the list of 10 plus division winners since the 80s began. Before this year, just four teams were without titles in their current incarnations: the Brooklyn Nets (who did win four while in Jersey); the Charlotte Hornets (who didn't win one the first time they were in Charlotte or when they were called the Bobcats or under their current identity); the Memphis Grizzlies (who stand with the Hornets as the two only completely win-less franchises); and the Washington Wizards.

Now the Wizards are off that list. I feel a weight lifted. Congratulations to the 2016-2017 Washington Wizards for winning the Southeast Division. And to me, for persevering this long. Well, 17 years anyway.

The madness, and I use that term lightly, once theWizards had clinched.

 

Why The Division Matters

The Washington Wizards are about to embark on a five game west coast-ish road swing, their longest such streak of games away from Verizon Center this season. These five games represent the first part of the payback that the rest of the league owes the Wizards for a very friendly front-loaded home schedule. There are only 21 games remaining in the 2016-17 season for this team and just six of those are being played over at 601 F Street. With the team sitting in first place in the Southeast Division later than they ever have, my question is can the Wizards hold on and win the Division? And should they?

Winning a division in the NBA used to get you something in the way of playoff seeding. But just prior to the 2015-2016 season, the NBA made a change to the playoff seeding rules. Starting with the 2016 playoffs, the league decided postseason seeding would be determined solely on the basis of win-loss record and would not offer special seeding or qualification based on a team winning a division.

This is not the first time playoff seeding rules have changed since I became a serious pro hoops fan back in 1994. Under the old two division per conference system, the division winners always received the one and two seeds and the league kept this rule the same when the conferences re-organized to three divisions per conference beginning with the 2004-2005 season. Then they tweaked the guaranteed part a bit starting with the 2006-2007 season when they decided the division winners would be guaranteed a top four seed, but not necessarily the one through three seeds.

The effect of last season's rule change removing a guaranteed 1 through 4 seed could have had a significant impact in past seasons. While no division winner has ever performed poorly enough to miss the playoffs entirely, if the new rules were in effect from the beginning of the division system in the league, there could have been some significant changes in matchups in past postseasons. Most notable among these would be the 2006 playoffs, when the Denver Nuggets finished tied for the seventh best record in the conference and still got the three seed, albeit without home court advantage. If Denver had been in the seven spot it could have had a potential huge effect on the series outcomes. Or not. The Mavs might still have won the conference. Who knows.

The change in playoff qualification procedures in 2015 caused a number of media outlets to declare the end of relevance of the divisions. A quick google search while I was writing this post yielded SBNation declaring divisions "essentially meaningless" while For The Win went with "the uselessness of divisions." Further searches got me Deadspin's declaration that the NBA move would "kill divisions" and Blazer's Edge wrote "division titles no longer relevant."

While most of these articles I found (correctly) address the lack of connection between division titles and playoff qualification, they collectively de-emphasize the importance of anything but an NBA championship and some go further than the playoff seeding issue only. The For The Win piece notes that no teams are "holding parades to celebrate a team winning the Eastern Conference's Atlantic Division." While they are not incorrect, the importance of winning a division is not diminished completely by the re-organized playoff seeding rules. After all, no team celebrates anything but a NBA title. That doesn't mean seasons aren't worth celebrating if a team fails to win it all.

I've had or been witness to a few conversations this season about whether the Wizards should try to win the Southeast Division. After all, the conventional wisdom out there is sometimes that the division title means nothing. In today's NBA, there is definitely a prevailing undercurrent that if you can't win it all, you may as well tank and start over. Maybe you'll get lucky enough to get the next game changer through the draft.

I say this reasoning is false and division titles still mean something. And if there's a team out there that needs to win SOMETHING, it's my beloved Washington Wizards, a franchise without any sort of wins in the last 37 years. That's right: there have been no titles of any sort, not Division, not Conference and certainly not NBA that would cause the Washington Wizards (and before them the Bullets) to hoist a banner up to the rafters of the Capital Centre (later USAir Arena) or Verizon Center (formerly MCI Center). I think the Wizards should go for it and make sure they win the Southeast Division this year because there are fans out there who need to win something for all the metaphorical blood and real sweat and maybe even some tears and certainly some cold hard cash that we have poured into following this team year after year and decade after decade. I want a Wizards Division Champions t-shirt. And I want it this year.

I know some people will disagree with me on this. Yes, the Wizards should try at all costs this year (without sacrificing future success) to win the NBA Championship. Compared to winning a Championship, winning a Division means nothing. So what would that mean? Resting players? I'm not in favor of pushing any of our players so it causes them to be injured. Nor do I want to give up a playoff series because we played our stars too much in the closing weeks of the season. But there's enough time between games  in the postseason to allay most if not all fears about rest. If it means losing the Eastern Conference Finals in five games rather than in six (and nobody can predict that by the way), then I'm all in favor of grabbing a Division title. Because I believe it means something. If only to the fans. Let's get a banner raised to the rafters in 2017.

Washington Capitals banners; so many Division titles they had to consolidate.