Satoransky Socks

The Wizards changed things up on me. I'm usually all over the Wiz promotional schedule (which lately - meaning for years now - has been miserably pathetic) but they added one in on me. And I missed it.

Sort of. I knew about it. I just let my tickets sell on Ticketmaster to someone who wanted to see Dwyane Wade's last game in Washington more than I did. Because I didn't want to see and hear Capital One Arena treat Wade the way they treated Kobe in his last game in the District at all. No interest in that especially when I checked out of this season just about a month after the Wizards team checked out. So...like December.

So what was it? What was this giveaway the Wizards slid in between their first (on opening night) and second (for home game 40) true promotional nights of the year? It's actually pretty cool as a concept. The team handed out player socks featuring 1980s video game style knitted likenesses of John Wall, Bradley Beal and Tomas Satoransky. And yes, the Wizards did give away absolutely nothing at the door this year in games 2 through 39.

If I were rating this giveaway during my annual promotional schedule roundup at the beginning of the season, I would likely rate this as "essential". So of course I had to have some, even though I'd opted to sell all four of my tickets for the night for $86 of profit (which can offset oh so slightly the more than $1,000 lost during the first six games of March which I couldn't attend). And as usual for things I want that are in limited supply, I turned to eBay where lo and behold I found some Tomas Satoransky socks being offered for the low low price of less than $20. Sold!

They arrived yesterday and they are pretty sweet. Although admittedly they are not without their strangeness, and I don't mean the image on the socks.

I find it odd that the socks feature the Geico jersey patch but not the Nike swoosh.

First of all, I love these as an idea and I love that the team finally gave out something specific-player oriented that wasn't geared towards John Wall and Bradley Beal. Sato deserves a spot on the promotional schedule this year and he got it, albeit he is sharing it with Wall and Beal. Although not in my house he's not because I'm not going to hunt down Wall and Beal socks on eBay or anywhere else.

So here's the thing about free stuff handed out at NBA arenas: they are often low grade versions of things you would actually spend money on. If it's a bobblehead, the paint isn't always applied as precisely as it could be; if it's a poster, the paper's not quite as thick as it would be if it were being sold to people; and if it's a shirt, the quality is just not as good as something you would get at a store. These socks fit that mold. The texture is off. It's almost as if some cheap socks have been spray-painted with an image. And they probably feel like that because that's likely exactly what happened. They also feel like a cross between dress socks and the compression socks I wear on long haul airline flights. Maybe a little snug.

Does that spoil my enjoyment of these socks? Maybe a little. I may need to be pretty conservative about wearing these things and just roll them out for special occasions, like the first time Sato makes an All-Star Game or the Wizards make the Conference Finals. Does it make me feel like I wasted money on eBay? Absolutely not!

I tried them on. They fit. They didn't necessarily return to their original shape once I took them off after about maybe a total of five minutes. I'm not sure that bodes well for their long-term survival. For now, I dropped them in the back of my sock drawer near my Duff beer socks, which I also save for special occasions, like weddings. Not kidding. I wear Duff beer socks to weddings.

I'll end this post with a renewal of my message to the Wizards about the promotional schedule: more bobbleheads please! There is one on the slate for this Friday. No way am I missing that one.

Definitely a special occasion sock!

Summer League 2012

This past weekend I made my (almost) annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas to take in some NBA Summer League action. I managed to catch a 6:15 a.m. flight out of BWI last Friday which put me in Vegas in plenty of time to see the Wizards play the Atlanta Hawks in the first Summer League game of the year at 1 p.m. that afternoon. I also managed to take in our Saturday and Sunday night games before having to head back to DC Monday morning on a 6:10 a.m departure. Not loving the flight times but at least they were direct.

In case it wasn't obvious, I absolutely love Summer League. It's definitely a highlight of the basketball year and this trip reinforced all the reasons why I love this event. All three of our games Friday through Sunday were held at the Cox Pavilion, which is the more intimate of the two venues at the Thomas and Mack Center. The proximity to the court; the sounds of the game in what was sometimes at most a quarter-full arena; and the conversations with fans, players, general managers and coaches make this an anticipated annual experience for me.

Me and Chris Singleton.

Wins and losses in Summer League are completely inconsequential and that's a good thing considering the Wizards' on court perfomance during the long weekend. Our starting lineup featured three players with significant court time during their rookie years and the number three overall pick from the 2012 NBA Draft but you would never have known it from their performance in the Friday game against the Hawks and the second half of the Sunday game against the D-League Select team. Turnovers, inopportune fouls, lack of defense and poor rebounding sunk us. We were thoroughly outplayed by the Hawks, losing by 20 in a game that was over long before the final quarter and managed to fall behind to the D-League select team by 21 points in the fourth quarter after leading at the half, before realizing how embarrassed we should be and rallying for a seven point final margin of loss. The Saturday game against the Houston Rockets was a solid win where our guys executed well for the most part at both ends of the court.

On an individual level, our players experienced mixed results. Shelvin Mack, Jan Vesely and especially Chris Singleton played a lot in their rookie campaigns. All three logged double digits in minutes played per game last year with Singleton leading the three at over 21 minutes per game in 51 starts. In addition to those three, I was especially interested to see Bradley Beal and Tomas Satoransky, our recent draft picks, play.

Chris Singleton at the line. Not sure about the pink shoes. The arena is packed, right?

Of our three rookies from last year, Chris Singleton definitely fared the best. I thought his performance was aggressive in all three games, like Chris felt he had something to prove, but the results of that aggressive play were uneven. In Friday's game against Atlanta, he was called for a couple of turnovers, some fouls and an out of bounds screening violation in the first half before calming down in the second. I talked with Chris after that game and he talked about the officiating hampering his game. The team was obviously trying to experiment with him running the point and that had good and bad results, with Sam Cassell at one time telling him "Chris, you gotta pass the ball, man" after a turnover. The Saturday and Sunday games brought better results: he played tough defense, rebounded well and had an explosive dunk in the game against the D-League Select team. If you look carefully in the video, you can see me in the third row aisle seat.

Vesely really had a Summer League to forget. He struggled at the rim to score and rebound, missing several dunks and got really pushed around in the paint, especially by Houston's Royce White, who was just way too big for Jan to handle. On the positive side, he showed off a jumper which looked far more confident and effective than he showcased last season and his passing skills are still just incredible. He had a couple of gorgeous touch passes that barely touched his fingertips before being sent to the open man.

After this Summer League, I'm not sure Shelvin Mack is going to be around long as John Wall's backup at the point. He played solid defense over the weekend but didn't impress with his ball handling skills. When I compare Shelvin to Tomas Satoransky, our second round pick in this past draft, Tomas has better ball handling skills but has a good four or five inches of height on Shelvin. Satoransky, by the way, can distribute and he can get up there. He had a dunk in the Houston game that was impressive.

Singleton, Vesely, Mack and Beal: Future of the team? Shavlik Randolph is deliberately omitted.

Bradley Beal, our third overall pick from this past draft, was impressive but also even keeled no matter how the game went, which after the moping of JaVale McGee and Nick Young the past few years was comforting to see. Bradley was just solid and gained obvious confidence from game one to two and two to three. I thought he ran the floor well and handled the ball well when he had to. I think good things are in store for us from this rookie.

As usual, our players on the court weren't the only members of our team who showed up for Summer League. Trevor Ariza and Emeka Okafor, recently acquired in a trade with the New Orleans Hornets, arrived early to touch base with the coaching staff and offer encouragement to their new teammates. Jordan Crawford arrived in the second half of the Rockets game complete with gold-rimmed sunglasses and a bright orange shirt (it was dark outside, by the way) as did Trevor Booker. And just before tip off of the Sunday game, John Wall sat down courtside trying to maintain a low profile in thick rimmed glasses and wearing a towel around his neck. His low profile was busted by Sam Cassell and about five kids in minutes.

Emeka Okafor and John Wall sitting courtside.

Head coach Randy Wittman and general manager Ernie Grunfeld were also in attendance. I managed to talk with both Randy and Ernie about the status of James Singleton, whom I hope we bring back after his second partial-season stint with the team in the last three years. While both said they'd love to have him back and that he's still in play for the team, I wonder if the front court isn't just a little too crowded. I hope I'm wrong. I also asked Ernie if he would tell me which way he was leaning with Andray Blatche. He didn't, but after we released Andray via the amnesty provision in the CBA on Tuesday, I know the answer anyway.

One of the things I love about travel is the chance encounters with strangers and almost every basketball trip seems to have one. This trip's encounter was a cab ride from the arena to the strip we shared with Hosni Ali, a former basketball player at NAIA Division II Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. Hosni played last year in Egypt and talked about his efforts over the past week working out for various teams while in Las Vegas. He  turned down a contract offer to play in Egypt for three years for $3,000 a month. From what I have read about contracts overseas, it sounds like that was a smart move. He might make more than that in the NBDL which he was also exploring, having been offered an opportunity to try out for the Texas Legends by assistant coach David Wesley. A guy like Hosni is likely never making an NBA roster, but I love that he's still chasing his dream to play professional basketball. He's hoping to catch on with a team in China.

Oh...by the way the odds of the Wizards winning the NBA Championship: 100 to 1. I didn't place a bet.

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.