Algonquin For "The Good Land"

The first Saturday of this month saw me in Philadelphia watching the Wizards beat a hapless 76ers team (second worst record in the NBA) in a relatively new arena in front of a sellout crowd. OK, so the Allen Iverson jersey retirement ceremony might have had a little something to do with the uptick in attendance that night. The Sixers were a successful proud franchise in the late 1970s and early 1980s, winning an NBA title and falling short in a couple of more finals. For the last few years they have been toying with being a good team, grabbing a low playoff seed the past couple of years before tearing it all down and rebuilding behind new coach Brett Brown this season.

This past Saturday, just one week after being in Philly, I was in Milwaukee watching the Wizards squeak by a hapless Bucks team (worst record in the NBA but arguably way better than the Sixers at this point) in a not so attractive 25 year old arena in front of not many folks at all. The Bucks were a successful proud franchise in the 1970s and 1980s, winning an NBA title and dominating their division year after year in that span. For the last few years they too have toyed with being a good team, grabbing low playoff seed after low playoff seed before going all out and rebuilding behind new coach Larry Drew this season.

On the surface, these two Wizards rivals (using that term very loosely) would seem to be in pretty similar situations. But Milwaukee's got it way worse. Despite both teams being terrible this year and hoping for a miracle rebuild, the Bucks have the burden of an NBA mandate to get a new building. Like pronto. Like in three years. They also have an owner looking to sell the team to an investment group who will preferably keep the team in Milwaukee (that group doesn't seem to exist right now) while out of town investors are circling the city like sharks just waiting for the NBA's OK to have at it and take the team. Such is the state of professional basketball in Milwaukee these days. Sounded to me like I should head up to Wisconsin quickly in case the team disappears entirely in the next few years. So I did.

The first half, before things got ugly.

Saturday night's contest was the Wizards' third of the season against the Bucks. Despite the Bucks' sub-.200 record, the Wizards came away with only a split in those previous two games, preferring to play at, or I guess slightly below, Milwaukee's level at home in December and needing a last minute comeback to send it to overtime on the road before finally prevailing in the extra session a few weeks before that in Milwaukee. So Saturday's contest appeared to be an ideal trap game for the Wizards, especially with the Bucks' best player, Larry Sanders, sidelined for the season and their starting shooting guard, O.J. Mayo, serving a one game suspension for a punch to the Pelicans' Greg Stiemsma's throat the previous night in New Orleans.

Early on, it didn't appear there was any danger of a loss here at all. The Wizards came out in the first half like they seemed to be uninterested in making this a competitive game, building a 28 point lead and hitting the 70 point mark about four minutes before the end of the second quarter. Finally it seemed like we had avoided playing down to the level of inferior competition for one night at least. 

Not so fast. Our team's attitude towards playing the right way seemed to waiver with about two minutes to go in the first half. The atmosphere on the bench, at least from my seat about 10 feet away, seemed light, with players hamming it up, laughing and celebrating the Bucks' misfortunes. The play on the court, meanwhile, slowed down and degenerated into a one on one, time wasting exercise which for the Wizards this year has yielded not much success at all. I said at that time I'd feel lucky if we were up by 20 at the break. We survived and took a 22 point cushion to the locker room.

After a halftime show featuring a 50 something year old man standing atop a 15 foot or so high stack of chairs, the Wizards sauntered out of the locker room and proceeded to score zero points in the first seven minutes plus of the third quarter. It was the kind of letdown we can't afford against a halfway decent team with Nenê out with an injury and the Bucks quickly cut the lead to single digits. John Wall played quite honestly one of the worst games in recent weeks; he was absolutley dominated by Brandon Knight. And Bradley Beal continued the inconsistent play he's shown in the past few weeks.

Fortunately the Bucks are not a halfway decent team and the combination of 28 points from Trevor Ariza, a super valuable 13 from Drew Gooden off the bench and a strong fourth by Beal was enough to put the home team away by seven points. I've said it again and I'll say it again: the Wizards are just not good enough to take any minutes off right now. Scoring 10 points in the third quarter and yielding 33 in the fourth quarter of a game isn't going to cut it most days. 48 minutes, guys. I'm thankful for the 75 we poured in during the first 24 minutes. This brings my road record to 3-4. I definitely picked the right away games this year.

I'd feel remiss if I didn't spend a few sentences on the BMO Harris Bradley Center since I'd heard numerous sources describe the place as a dump. I didn't feel the interior of the arena was that bad, although it's clearly older and lacks amenities that the NBA loves, like tons and tons of luxury boxes. But the outside of the arena is a different story. This building has a complete lack of character. It's a scaleless, windowless box that doesn't engage the city or the street at all. The entries at either end of the building contain no sense of arrival at all. It honestly looks like the building was designed in the 1970s then shelved for a while and then finally built in the late 1980s on the cheap. It made me proud of the Verizon Center for it's ability to activate the streetscape. I guess the nine years between the construction of the two buildings make a lot of difference.

Liquid cheese eating contest. Go! Go! Go!

So given the state of the building and the record of the team, it's understandable that the Bucks are on the edge of begging fans to attend in person. We talked to a number of people in the city asking us why we were in town and the typical response when we said we were going to the Wizards-Bucks game was along the lines of "I'm sorry." But if there's one thing I can say that the Bucks did right it's the in game entertainment. They ran it like a meeting, presenting a quarter by quarter agenda for the fans so we knew exactly what to expect. They even covered the halftime show I guess so you could decide to stick around or bail. And this was the only game I've attended where there was a liquid cheese eating contest: two dudes sucking down canned artificial cheese for 45 seconds. Classic and somehow totally Wisconsin. I'm sure they didn't have doctors on hand doing a before and after cholesterol check, but it might have been prudent.

I got a lot out of my weekend in Milwaukee. Of course I'm glad the Wizards won. That was, after all, the reason I made the trip. Milwaukee is a classic midwestern city and I've loved the midwest ever since I spent four years at the University of Michigan. In between taking in downtown's eclectic mix of early 20th century and 1970s/80s buildings; checking out the statue of the Fonz (seriously); eating a late night snack of delicious fried cheese curds (translation: fat deep fried in fat oil with a side of fat ranch dressing); and gazing at the largest and scariest collection of Miller Lite and Coors Light at the Miller Brewery (totally worth the trip by the way), I had a very enjoyable weekend. Milwaukee is crossed off the NBA pilgrimage list. Next up: NBDL action in New England.

One Wit Whiz

So it's Sunday morning and I'm in Philadelphia about 10 or 11 hours after a great Wizards win over the home 76ers; I've watched Allen Iverson's jersey get hung in the rafters of the Wells Fargo Center at halftime of that same game; and I spent the previous day visiting iconic sights in the first capital city of the United States. Sounds like a full and complete weekend, right? Nothing more to take in before my early train back to D.C., right? Wrong! I couldn't leave Philly without a cheesesteak. It just wouldn't be right. So immediately after checking out of my hotel, I made my way over to the south side to get me one of Philadelphia's original and best contributions to the culinary world. And if it's Philly and cheesesteaks, it has to be Pat's King of Steaks.

According to a combination of fact and folklore, the cheesesteak sandwich as it is known today was invented by Pat Olivieri in Philadelphia sometime in early 1930. There seems to be some debate about exactly how the sandwich was first conceived but there seems to be no debate that Olivieri was the creator. Most stories have Pat owning a hot dog stand with his brother Harry when one day Pat decided to make himself a steak and onion sandwich on an Italian roll (no cheese yet; that comes later). A cab driver apparently smelled the sandwich, asked Pat to make him one and the next day the steak and onion sandwich went viral among cab drivers in Philly and the rest is history. I'm sure they used a term other than "went viral" in the '30s but whatever.

From those humble beginnings, Pat opened his legendary restaurant, Pat's King of Steaks, which now stands at 1237 East Passyunk Avenue and has been owned and operated by the Olivieri family for over 80 years. Who first added cheese to the steak and onion sandwich and just when that happened seems to be less clear, although the Olivieris claiming that one of their chefs added provolone cheese to their sandwiches in the 1940s seems to be the most plausible.

Today, Pat's is big business, managing to stay open 24 hours per day, seven days a week chopping steak and pushing out cheesesteaks with or without onions and slathered in provolone, American cheese or Cheez Whiz. Its only real competition sits right across the street at 1219 South 9th Street: Geno's Steaks. Geno's was opened by Joe Vento in 1966 and, like Pat's, has been family owned and operated since its first day of business and is also open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each place claims its cheesesteaks are the best in Philadelphia. The decision to make for the novice cheesesteak eater when visiting Philly is: Pat's or Geno's. Since Pat's is the original, I opted for their cheesesteak this time around. I'm a sucker for the genuine article.

Before I got to lunch, the walk from the hotel to Pat's alone was an experience: down Broad Street past vacant lots, left on Washington past Vietnam-town (is that the correct term?) and finally right onto the 9th Street barrio featuring plenty of colorful stores, including a live poultry market where you can get your bird of choice custom killed and I imagine plucked on the spot for you. I'm making it sound way sketchier than it really was. It was fine, although the smell coming out of the live poultry market was almost enough to put me off my cheesesteak. Almost.

After a mile and a half on foot, I was good and ready for some food and Pat's did not disappoint. I opted for a simple cheesesteak (no peppers or mushrooms for me) wit (south Philadelphia for "with") onions and Cheez Whiz. The time from ordering to receiving a hot sandwich was literally about 15 seconds. I'm not kidding. The meat wit onions was spatula-ed into a fresh warm roll and then the Cheez Whiz stick was pulled out of the Whiz tub and scraped across the top to complete my order. Fries and a water at the next window and a couple (OK, three) of hot cherry peppers on the side from the condiments bar opposite the ordering windows.

The only seating options are outside so I took what I could get despite the less than 40 degree temperature Sunday morning and ate. Pat's knows what they are doing. The meat was tender, the roll was fresh and the Cheez Whiz made it all come together. There's something so stereotypically and classically cheesy about the taste of fake cheese even though it really doesn't taste anything like any sort of real cheese at all. It's delicious. The only thing that made the experience even better was the two guys talking to the pickup driver next to us about how to avoid getting stopped by the cops on the highway in a broad Philadelphia dialect of English, if you can call it that.

Pat's was worth the trip for me. Everything about the whole morning had an authenticity to it that cannot be obtained by getting a cheesesteak from a sandwich shop in D.C., which I have done on many occasions. Maybe on my next trip to Philly, I'll check out Geno's. Although I honestly can't imagine it being any better.

Brotherly Love

Stop number one of my March 2014 NBA and NBDL barnstorming tour is complete. This past weekend I spent my Friday and Saturday nights a couple of hours north of D.C. in the heart of Philadelphia knocking another Wizards' opponent's arena off my seen-'em-in person-on-the-road list. Now I'm down to just three more basketball cities (one NBA / two NBDL) to visit this month before what I hope will be the start of spring. It's about time, I think.

This was not my first trip to Philadelphia. I'd been there at least a half a dozen times before for various reasons. Astonishingly (to me), I'd never actually been to see the Liberty Bell on one of my past trips to the city so I made that my first priority Saturday morning. It was pretty much what I thought it would be: a series of interpretive exhibits about the history of the cracked bell followed by a chance to take a few snapshots of the item itself before exiting the building. I did learn that the bell was not known by the Liberty Bell until it was given that name by the abolitionist movement, who coined that name to point out the injustice of slavery in our nation. Who knew?

I followed the Liberty Bell up with a trek to the Philadelphia Art Museum, prominently sited at the end of Benjamin Franklin Boulevard, to check out the statue of Rocky while listening to Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" on my iTouch before a couple of afternoon pints and a quick nap. Quite a contrast in tourist attractions, I know. One important touchstone of American history and a statue of someone who never existed for real. Go figure.

The main event for me in Philadelphia was the Wizards-76ers game that night and it turned out to be a good one. Despite an uneven performance that could be blamed on a triple overtime win in Toronto two days beforehand or the team missing Nenê and Kevin Seraphin with injury or just the Wizards' tendency to play at the level of their opponent every game, our team won this one going away and it was never really in doubt. The Wizards scored 41 in the first period including a monster 24 from Trevor Ariza on 6 for 6 from long distance and never looked back, even when Philly cut the deficit to six mid-way through the second quarter. Ariza ended up with 40 and John Wall ended up with 16 assists, all of which was enough to win by 19. This brings my Wizards road games record to 2-4, which is a damn sight better than 1-4 even though it's just one more win.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver at the mic during the halftime ceremony.

The win was great and I like Philadelphia enough to spend a weekend there every now and then. But the real highlight of the evening was the Allen Iverson jersey retirement ceremony that took place during the halftime break. Rarely will I acknowledge that anything will trump a Wizards game for me, let alone something that happened at halftime of a Wizards game, but clearly this ceremony was more important for more than 99% of the people in the building than what took place on the court and that made it just as special than the Wizards taking home the victory.

 

Just to be clear I made the trip to Philly strictly for a Wizards Saturday night game, not for the Iverson jersey retirement ceremony. I circled this game when the NBA season schedule came out in August as a potential road game and bought some tickets on StubHub about a month later for a little more than $140 per as soon as I found some that I thought I couldn't pass up. I figured $143 a seat for third row center court was pretty good, even against a team that pretty much everyone had tanking for as many lottery combinations as possible.

 

Then in November the Sixers announced that they would be retiring Iverson's number 3 jersey at halftime of the game I just bought. Bonus! It's a good thing I bought early. It doesn't always pay off for me but it definitely did here. As of the Sunday before the game, the cheapest tickets on StubHub in the building were $100 for upper deck end seats. Seats comparable to the ones I snagged were $442. I would have stayed at home for those prices.

 

Saturday's game was not the first jersey retirement ceremony I have attended. The Wizards retired Earl Monroe's number 10 jersey a few years back at halftime of a game I watched from the upper deck of Verizon Center. But Earl Monroe in D.C. in 2007 is not Allen Iverson in Philadelphia in 2014. I doubt most people in Verizon Center that night had ever seen the Pearl play and they certainly didn't see him play in Washington because he was traded from the Bullets to the Knicks before the team moved out of Baltimore. Allen Iverson was playing in the NBA just four years ago and most everyone in the Wells Fargo Center can probably remember seeing him play either in person or on national TV for the Sixers. I know I could.

 

Iverson represented Philadelphia 76er basketball for ten plus seasons and showed a grit, fight and determination that belied his size and endeared him to home fans. He also helped usher in the hip hop era in the NBA, being one of the first superstars with neck tattoos and cornrows. He took the Sixers to their only NBA Finals since 1983 after the 2000-2001 season, the same year he also won the league's Most Valuable Player trophy. It was clear standing in the arena Saturday night that AI represented something very special to the city of Philadelphia even though he didn't manage to deliver a title to the city.

I rarely place a lot of stock in speeches the likes of which Iverson was supposed to and did deliver. There's always a lot of love and thanks given out and past differences with those to be thanked are usually forgotten or glossed over and indeed AI proved he was not Michael Jordan making his Hall of Fame induction speech and followed the script he was supposed to follow. But I believed in Iverson's proclaimed love of the city, Philadelphia fans and especially Larry Brown, the coach who helped the franchise get back to the Finals on 2001. I was touched by the humility he displayed (not necessarily an attribute he possessed while playing) and I thought the line "Y'all have to show me the fool that says dreams don't come true, 'cause they do." was the perfect ending to what could have been a fairly ordinary speech.

 

There's no doubt the whole building Saturday night belonged to Iverson for those fans who stuck around for the whole game (not a lot in the place by the middle of the third quarter by any means). There were auctions of Iverson memorabila on the concourse, giveaways for all fans in attendance and even a dude rendering a likeness of Iverson into some kid's hair while a crowd watched, which is about the strangest sports entertainment I've ever seen at an NBA game and that's saying something. I somehow left the game with a replica retired jersey banner and an AI 2001 MVP bobblehead. Not sure what I'm going to do with those. I mean I can't put a Sixers bobblehead on the same shelf as my Wiz bobbles, right?

Anyone want an Allen Iverson portrait in their hair? Ooh! Ooh! Me! Me!

Throughout the game Saturday night, the scoreboard screen played video messages from current and former NBA players who had played with or against Iverson. All the Sixers legends got deserved ovations and the love shown by the crowd for former 76ers still playing in the league like Lou Williams and Kyle Korver was impressive. Only two players delivering video tributes got booed: Carmelo Anthony (just a little) and LeBron James (a LOT!). I kinda like Sixers fans now.

 

At one point during a Sixers run during the second quarter, a Philly fan in front of me turned around and declared "we're going to win this game, you know." I've been to enough basketball games in my life to know that this game is a game of runs and you don't react to small comebacks during the game too optimistically. I was right. By the time the third quarter was a few minutes old, about all the fight was gone from the home team in addition to the guy sitting in front of me. I guess he didn't much believe what he said either. I did tell him the Wizards had to win the game, that I couldn't go back to D.C. without a win. Fortunately the Wizards made sure that I didn't have to. Up next tonight: Memphis during a snowfall that is snarling traffic everywhere. Should be an interesting house tonight.

On The Road Again

I love traveling. I also love watching professional basketball. Therefore it should be no surprise that I love traveling to watch professional basketball. And honestly, it's just been too long since that happened. It's the end of February already and I haven't taken in a single game outside of Verizon Center this season. That will all change in a big way in March.

Last season I took a couple of basketball vacations: a six night trek through Texas in mid-February to watch a Dallas Mavericks game and three D-League games and then a long weekend in March down to Orlando to watch the Wizards take on the Magic. This year I'm taking three trips, a total of seven nights in four different cities to watch the Wizards play twice and then exploring more of the NBDL when the Wizards are on their March west coast swing.

It all starts tomorrow when I get on a train and head north a couple of hours to Philadelphia for a Saturday night game against the 76ers, a team that after last Thursday's trade deadline is in full tank mode, chasing as many NBA lottery combinations as they can with a depleted roster. The following weekend, I'm hopping on an AirTran flight Friday afternoon bound for Milwaukee for another Saturday Wizards game, this time against the home Bucks, who currently hold the worst record in the NBA.

These trips will be the sixth and seventh time I have seen the Wizards on the road as I continue my quest to see my team play in every NBA team's arena. My criteria for these trips in the past have been simple: try to find a weekend game against a team that is down on its luck a little bit (meaning good tickets on the secondary market will be available on the cheap and we might win) in a city which is accessible via non-stop transportation. I'm using the same kind of judgment in making travel plans this coming month.

This year from the other teams' performance standpoint, I couldn't have picked any better opponents: the Sixers and the Bucks currently hold the NBA's two worst records and have won fewer home games than any other teams. Seems like a couple of easy victories to me, although in my previous five Wizards road games using a similar game selection strategy, my team has come away with a single victory. Such is life as a Wizards fan. Even when the deck is stacked significantly in your favor, you sometimes lose horribly anyway.

Twelve days after I return from Milwaukee, I'm off to New England to see a couple of more games in the NBA's Development League. This is the second year in a row I'll be exploring the D-League scene. This year's trip will take me into an area of the country where I grew up in rather than in central and southern Texas like last year's trip. The D-League is a complete world apart from the NBA. Guys playing in this league are just scrapping to survive and keep their dreams of making it to the big leagues alive. I'll be seeing that action first in Springfield, Massachusetts where the game of basketball was invented and then heading north to Portland, Maine for a couple of nights.

Along the way to discovering basketball in each of these cities, I'll be trying to find the history and soul of each place I visit and I'll of course write it all down here so when I am old and my memory is failing, I can try to remember what it was like and what I did the weekend the Wizards beat the Sixers or Bucks or before or after I took in another D-League game. I am not visiting any of these places for the first time, although I've admittedly never spent a night in Springfield or Portland but I'll try very hard to uncover something new about each place. It all starts tomorrow in Philly. Go Wizards!

NBA Trade Deadline 2014

At 3 p.m. today, the annual NBA trade deadline came and went. Of course, instead of being hard at work making some bucks for my employer, I was sitting home watching Twitter for trade news. Yes you read that right, watching Twitter. I stayed at home today because I've learned from past experience that as this day gets closer to 3 p.m., I concentrate in my office less and less on work and more and more on internet trade rumors and gossip. So for the third year in a row, I elected to stay home and log eight hours of Paid Time Off rather than fight the battle to get some work done.

After last year's super slow trade deadline where the biggest deal was J.J. Redick to Milwaukee and the only Wizards action was sending Jordan Crawford to Boston for Jason Collins and Leandro Barbosa who was already done for the year with an injury, I was hoping for something more exciting this year. I mean how could it get any duller? I was not disappointed. There were a lot of Wizards and former Wizards on the move this year.

It all started last night when the Golden State Warriors, who earlier this season traded for former Wizards Jordan Crawford from the Boston Celtics, picked up former Wizard Steve Blake from the Lakers for essentially flotsam. Apparently Golden State is intent on picking up a collection of our former guards and it's working. Although I'm not sure it's helped their franchise yet.

It then continued this morning when the Miami Heat traded former Wizard Roger Mason, Jr. to the Sacramento Kings along with a bag of cash for a highly protected second round draft pick (or essentially absolutely nothing). Poor Roger. If there was one reason to be OK at all with Miami winning another NBA title this year, it was them having Roger Mason on their team. Now, I won't see any silver lining to a third Heat title. Let's go Pacers!!!

Then just before the 3 p.m. trade deadline (and it is possible for trades to be announced after the deadline), news came that the Los Angeles Clippers traded Antawn Jamison to the Atlanta Hawks for I'm still not sure what at the time of this writing. Just like with the Heat (although with less vitriol), there is now no reason for me to root for the Clippers to win it all this year.

But the biggest news Wizards-wise hit between noon and 1 p.m. this afternoon. I'd been reading rumors for a few weeks about the Wizards being interested in exiled Denver Nuggets' point guard Andre Miller but it didn't seem possible that we could grab Miller since he has a non-guaranteed contract next year and presumably the Wizards would want to send colossal disappointment off season signee Eric Maynor back in return. And honestly who the hell wants Maynor after his production this year?

But apparently lightning CAN strike twice. Two years ago, the Wizards sent away JaVale McGee to Denver in a trade deadline day deal for Nenê, a move that was decried as a huge mistake on Washington's part by a lot of people who watch the NBA but which anyone around the D.C. franchise saw as a first step in dramatically changing the culture here. This year, we did it again by taking Miller off the Nuggets' hands. Not only do we get a dependable backup point guard, but we traded him for two guys who rarely play (Maynor and Jan Vesely) while reducing our payroll this year, opening a roster spot and decreasing our guaranteed salary commitment next season (assuming Maynor would have picked up his option next year). How on Earth did we fleece the Nuggets twice in three years?

OK, so we gave up a New Orleans Pelicans' second round draft pick as part of the swap to the Philadelphia 76ers but who cares? Can anyone name a Wizards second round draft pick in the last 12 years that has had a positive impact on our franchise or the NBA in general? I realize that statement may be an indictment of our ability to draft and also may be a little unfair to Steve Blake who has had an astonishingly long career. And don't start with me on Andray Blatche. 

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Jan Vesely. I so badly wanted him to prove that Blake Griffin was in fact the American Jan Vesely. I'll be sorry to see him go, although I won't miss cringing any time he touches the ball on the offensive end or steps to the free throw line. I won't miss Maynor. I can't remember being more disappointed in an off season free agent signing. This trade should make the Wizards better this year without sacrificing any future flexibility whatsoever. I see it as completely positive. We'll see if Andre Miller can make any sort of difference.

A Sweet Deal

 
With the Wizards sitting in sixth place in the Eastern Conference and seemingly bound for the playoffs for the first time since 2008, and fresh off an All-Star weekend that saw John Wall become the first Wizard since that same year to play in the All-Star game and the first Wizard EVER to win the dunk contest, the team decided to choose this week to send out season ticket renewal information. Sell high, right? Isn't that what they always say? And despite their record sitting two games below .500, the Wizards' stock hasn't been this high since the team took game 5 in Cleveland during the first round of the 2008 playoffs. After five miserable years, it appears the Wizards are back to approaching respectability. In the Eastern Conference anyway.

 

Three years ago, in the midst of the 2010-2011 season, new owner Ted Leonsis told Wizards fans in no uncertain terms that the team was going to be pretty close to terrible for the next few years while management purged the horrible roster at the time and rebuilt the fortunes of the franchise. In exchange for what was about to happen, the Wizards offered season ticket holders a deal of sorts: buy tickets for the 2011-2012 season when the team had no realistic hope of competing and the team would slash ticket prices in most parts of Verizon Center and keep them low for the next three seasons by which time the players on the court representing Washington D. C. would provide a more palatable product.

 

The 2010-2011 season was my 11th as a Washington Wizards season ticket holder. By that time, I was fully committed to spend a long time suffering as a Wizards fan and would have renewed my full season in the 400 level and my 21 game plan in the 100 level of Verizon Center without much of a thought. But the team's commitment to be bad and keep costs low cut the price of my 100 level seats almost in half, from what I remember as $98 per game down to the low low price of just $50 per game. What that meant to me was that I could now purchase a full season upstairs and downstairs for less than what I paid for 63 games the year before (the team did not drop the $16 per game price for upper level tickets). Sold! The 2011-2012 season became the first year I had four full season tickets. I'll explain why I didn't ditch the uppers a little later.

 

The promise of a bad team made by management in the late winter of 2011 came true. The team's record the first two years of the rebuild was a less than mediocre 49-99 and the team didn't really come close to the playoffs in either year. But in the meantime, the bargain offered up by the franchise in exchange for being bad has proved to be one worth paying for considering this year the team has been firmly in playoff contention and I'm still only paying $50 per game to sit five rows behind the hockey boards on the side of the arena. I feel that this price is a great deal and I offer no counterargument to those out there that would say paying $50 per game to watch a team win less than a third of their games over two seasons is no sort of good deal at all. You are probably right.

 

Nonetheless, I feel season ticket prices have been insanely low the last three years. Among all the franchises that advertise the price of their season tickets to the general public (and there are some that do not) I found only the Charlotte Bobcats who could offer me seats for anything approaching the same price I paid for my lower level seats the past three years. And the Bobcats tickets cost more than mine did. I think the last three years have been an absolute bargain.

 

The current 2013-2014 season that is fast approaching its conclusion is the last of the three promised price frozen years and so I expected an increase in ticket prices for the next season, especially considering the playoff expectations this team holds. My biggest fear as a season ticket holder is that I will be priced out of the seats I have sat in for years, that essentially I will be offered the option to purchase my seats at a price I am not willing to pay. And when that happens I expect that some new "fan" who has not suffered through the lean years will pay top dollar to sit in my old seats and claim that he or she was always a die hard Wizards fan despite their years away from Verizon Center.

 

I think my fear is very well justified. I've seen it happen with other NBA franchises (Orlando priced tickets for what I consider my seats in their arena at an insane $175 per game last year) and I get that it's the market setting the price according to supply and demand. I've also seen it happen with the Washington Capitals in Verizon Center, which is owned by the same group, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, that now owns the Wizards. There are 32 different pricing groups for Capitals games and upper level sections are divided vertically into three separate pricing tiers. It's sort of nuts for a team that still hasn't made it past the second round of the playoffs.

 

The fear of being priced out of my seats is the reason I have kept my upper level tickets. I figure when (not if) I finally get presented with an invoice for my 100 level Wizards season tickets that makes my heart stop, I can retreat back to a full season upstairs in what I consider to be pretty good seats in the third row on the side. If I gave those up and tried to get them back later, I'm sure I'd be way further back and really unhappy with my decision. As it stands, I'm essentially paying $16 per game as an insurance policy against prices skyrocketing. 

 

If you had asked me my opinion about how the increase in pricing for next season, I would have said the lower level seats I have in Section 109 would go up from $50 a game to $75 a game and the upper level seats which cost me just $16 per contest this year would stay the same. Boy was I wrong! Our lower level seats went up a mere $5 per game although our upper level seats went up by 25% (albeit a mere $4 per ticket). That's an overall increase of $9 per game vs. the $25 price hike I was expecting. This pricing continues to make me happy as a season ticket holder and ensures I'll have my butt in my seats next year every game. It's still a bargain to be a Wizards fan (if you ignore the lack of recent success).

Thank you to the Wizards for making this reasonable. Don't worry. I'm braced for further increases. Go Wizards! Raptors up tonight!

Royce White

A year ago today, I watched a basketball game between the NBA D-League's Rio Grande Valley Vipers and Maine Red Claws in the tiny town of Hidalgo, Texas right on the Mexican border. That game was part of a four game in five nights NBA and NBDL vacation which proved to be one of the more enjoyable trips I have taken in the last few years. Of all the basketball I watched that week, I was most excited about the game in Hidalgo for a number of reasons. One of the more intriguing was that I would get to see Royce White play his first professional game in person. As it turned out I also got to chat with him for a few minutes while he tied his shoes.

Royce White was 16th overall pick of the Houston Rockets in the 2012 NBA Draft, a 6'-8" 260 pound forward who led his college team, the Iowa State Cyclones, in points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks per game in his one year there after transferring from the University of Minnesota. Royce also has general anxiety disorder, a condition which requires him to live his life in a very controlled, predictable fashion to avoid situations of high stress which typically cause him to shut down. A fear of flying, which many people have latched onto as Royce's only issue, is one of the high stress situations that Royce needs to carefully control. Flying is definitely something that is part of the job description as a member of an NBA team with a frequent and national travel schedule.

Royce's general anxiety disorder and the accommodations he sought to deal with that condition had caused contract negotiations with the Houston Rockets to be long and complicated. Central to satisfactory resolution of a contract with the Rockets was Royce having a qualified medical professional who would be able to evaluate his suitability to play on any day based on his mental condition that day. This type of contract condition is not something NBA teams historically have had to include in rookie deals and I thought (as did Royce, I believe) that his negotiation would serve as a watershed moment that might change how mental illness in professional sports is approached. After all, Royce can't be the only athlete dealing with mental health issues, right?

By the time I got to Hidalgo, Royce's story had been publicized well enough to land him in stories on ESPN's Outside The Lines and HBO's Real Sports. Unfortunately, his battle with the Rockets had also caused him to miss most of training camp while playing exactly zero regular season minutes for the Rockets. Along the way after contract negotiations were completed, there had been a refused assignment to the Vipers, a subsequent suspension and finally a reconciliation which caused him to be on the court for the first time last February 12. Not exactly the way to start your NBA career but likely worth it if it all worked out in the end, especially if it raised awareness of mental health issues in professional team sports and led to meaningful change. In my pre-game chat with Royce, I offered my support and told him not to give up.

The game Royce played for Rio Grande last February 12 was the first of 12 he would play before leaving the team on what he said was the advice of the Rockets' team physician. The Rockets, however, didn't agree with Royce and asked him to report back to the Vipers for an additional four games before he ended his season shy of the playoffs and eventual Vipers' championship. In July of last year, Royce was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers for essentially nothing. The Rockets actually sent cash to the Sixers to pay Royce's salary. After spending training camp and part of the preseason with Philadelphia, the team ultimately decided to part ways with Royce. He's currently not employed by an NBA team, although he's still taking home his slightly more than $1.7 million guaranteed with his rookie deal.

I can't imagine how difficult it is to live with any sort of anxiety disorder and I certainly can't begin to put myself in Royce White's situation. In addition to living with a condition that might shut his body down in the wrong environment, Royce is subjected daily to all sorts of disgraceful and hateful tweets from total strangers that appear to be making no effort to understand what it is he is dealing with. I know this because Royce replies to many of these on Twitter. Some of these messages like the one above which is pretty tame shake my faith in human nature.

But if Royce wanted to advance a cause to make the future better for guys with mental illnesses that come after him in the NBA, his lack of a job in that league is surely damaging his visibility enormously and I can't help thinking that Royce is in this situation partially of his own doing. His departure from the Vipers last year was clearly alarming to the Rockets and I have read reports that they found out about him leaving Hidalgo from Royce's Twitter account, a forum he has used relentlessly to embarrass and criticize the Rockets. He always had them on the defensive and for their part they refused to engage in a war of Tweets. It's easy for me to see that this type of behavior would be off putting to a potential employer.

When I first started following Royce White, I saw his message and his cause as important and I thought he did too. I don't believe he's done fighting but I believe he is done with professional basketball, which makes him eminently less important to the media and admittedly to NBA fans like me. He doesn't appear to be making efforts to re-enter the D-League and he recently gave what he called his last sports interview. My opinion is if he were willing to compromise a little more, he'd still be in the NBA fighting his fight in the spotlight of networks like ESPN and HBO; they are not so likely to give him any attention any more.

The Houston Rockets' General Manager, Daryl Morey, recently called Royce White the worst NBA first round pick ever. That seems a little harsh to me. Morey had to know selecting Royce carried great upside as well as great risk and I honestly don't believe he would have done that had he not had three first round picks in that draft. Having said that, I believe Royce is currently the only first round NBA pick who has signed a contract and not played a single minute in the regular season other than Nerlens Noel, who has been deliberately kept out of game action by the Philadelphia 76ers after last year's draft. I just think when I look back at what has happened between June of 2012 and now, Royce White seems to me to have missed an opportunity.

My Twitter account is dedicated to my love of the NBA and I'm unfortunately no longer following Royce White. No relevance to the NBA equals no following. I wish him all the luck in the world and I hope that one day he proves me as a doubter and comes back and plays in the NBA and makes a difference beyond that sport for future athletes.