Summer League Side Trip: The Boneyard

Neon Museum Sign: N from the original Golden Nugget; E from Caesar's Palace; O from Binion's Horseshoe and N from the Desert Inn.

For years, I have been insisting that the only reason I have left to visit Las Vegas is to see the Neon Museum's Boneyard. While this isn't really completely true, since I'll probably go back to Vegas as long as the NBA Summer League is held there, I have wanted to visit the Boneyard for years and decided 2012 was the year. In case you haven't heard of it, the Neon Museum was established in 1996 to collect and display neon signs which they describe as the classic Las Vegas art form. The museum doesn't yet have a traditional museum building but instead displays its signs in three locations: an open gallery at the Fremont Street Experience; a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard between Sahara Avenue and Washington Avenue; and the Boneyard, an open lot littered with about 150 old signs. My Saturday morning in Vegas was spent at the latter.

Sassy Sally's: While the casino is gone, Sassy Sally remains in place on Fremont Street.

When I go on vacation, I usually get to know as much as possible about my destination. I research history before departing; visit significant historical and architectural sites; learn about the local cuisine and music; and generally understand where I am going in depth so I can fully appreciate all that the place has to offer in the little time I am choosing to stay there. 2012 represented my 14th trip to Las Vegas and I have never, EVER done any of that. I typically just show up, wander around, gamble a little, maybe go to a show, eat and then leave. I suppose in a way that is what Vegas is all about but I've always felt a little guilty about not understanding more of the history of Las Vegas. I think my visit to the Boneyard starts to scratch that itch a little.

The original Binion's Horseshoe sign with some goofy guy in front of it.

If you are ever in Vegas and looking for something different to do, I'd recommend taking the trip up to the Boneyard. It's about a half a mile north of Fremont Street and takes an hour to tour and hear stories about the signs and the history of Las Vegas in general. It should be no surprise that the history is full of colorful characters. The tour guide will fill you in on Benny Binion, Howard Hughes and everyone else who had a hand in the early days of Las Vegas. The collection features some fairly significant signs from historic casinos in Vegas including the Desert Inn, Binion's Horseshoe and the Moulin Rouge. The Moulin Rouge was the first racially integrated casino in Vegas. Apparently other casinos used to spy on patrons in the Moulin Rouge and would terminate their own employees if caught in the place. Sad how the history of segregation affects even a place like Las Vegas.

The tour includes some great stories about casinos. I think my favorites were about the Stardust and the MGM Grand, probably because I have spent time in both those places over the prior 11 years since I first visited Las Vegas. The MGM Grand apparently used to have a theme park in the rear of the casino and featured a Wizard of Oz theme to the casino, which totally makes sense considering the shade of green (emerald?) which emanates from the hotel at night. The Stardust, though, had a more bizarre story. The casino name and sign was apparently inspired by the nuclear bomb testings that were being conducted in Nevada during the 1950s. The original sign was shaped like a mushroom cloud which you can see if you look closely at the picture at the bottom of this post. That's not the bizarre part. As one of their promotional packages, the hotel used to take guests on bus trips to watch the atomic bomb testings. I guess in those days you just washed away the fallout in the shower when you got back to the hotel??? I imagine that's one idea someone was regretting with the benefit of hindsight.



The way the neon is crafted to represent the flower in the yucca plant is a lost art.

There are other signs in the collection besides casino signs. Dry cleaners, restaurants, motels, trailer parks and wedding chapels are all featured at the Boneyard. Each one is bold, distinctive and for the most part instantly memorable, which is something I have always loved about commercial graphic art and signage in particular. I love things with clear content which are both simple and complex in their design.

The Stardust T with a series of other signs.

The artform displayed at the Boneyard is uniquely American in origin, which is something else about signs and neon signs that appeals to me. I remember emigrating to the United States as a kid and being struck by the neon signs that announced seemingly every business and storefront. We just didn't have that same kind of blatant and obvious commercialism in England in the 1970s. I've always loved how over the top America has been with its approach to commercialism and advertising.

LOVE the duck!

The Neon Museum hopes to move into a permanent facility later this year. They relocated the concrete shell from the old La Concha motel lobby to serve as their museum entrance. I'd love to go back when they open it. In the meantime, the Boneyard and the signs displayed in the median of Las Vegas Boulevard just south of the museum serve as the exhibits. The signs on Las Vegas Boulevard are fully illuminated and must look incredible at night. I imagine their display collection will grow as funding comes in. They told us it takes about $100,000 to restore a typical sign and get it ready for display.

Barbary Coast, Desert Inn, some Sahara letters and the Stardust cloud.

If you go, go early. There were several tour groups in the Boneyard by the time we finished our tour but as the first group, we had the place to ourselves initially, which made for some great pictures (I think) without having to deal with people in the way.



The original Stardust letters. Had to get a picture of me with these.



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.

Adios, Andray Blatche

As expected (hoped for?), today the Wizards released Andray Blatche via the Amnesty provision in the NBA's collective bargaining agreement. It brings a close to seven years of (mostly) unfulfilled promise and is another step in the right direction for the franchise. For what it's worth, below are my top 10 Andray Blatche memories, on and off the court, in chronological order.

September 26, 2005: Less than three months after being selected as the Wizards' sole pick in the 2005 NBA Draft, Andray is shot in a bungled carjacking attempt while returning home from a club in Alexandria. In the car with Dray is Peter John (or Party John, if you prefer) Ramos, the Wizards second round pick from the prior year's Draft. Apparently the two got set up by two women they met at the club. This would not be the last time Andray got into trouble because of a woman.

February 20, 2007: The Wizards beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 112-110 at Verizon Center. Andray dominates Kevin Garnett despite KG going for 26 points and 13 boards. Yes, I said dominate; check KG's other stats that night: two travels, a palming violation and a defensive three second violation. And this was not the 36 year old Garnett we just saw in the 2012 playoffs; this was Garnett in his prime. Dray got into KG's head that night and played some awesome D. When Garnett was asked about Andray's performance after the game, he replied simply "next question." Dominated! Finally we found our power forward of the future, right? Umm...maybe not. Keep reading.

Friday, August 2, 2007: Andray is arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a female officer in the prostitution enforcement unit of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. While Andray claims he was actually arrested for driving with a suspended license and it was his friend who was arrested for solicitation of prostitution, he is sentenced to a day long seminar for men who solicit prostitutes anyway. Dray is a restricted free agent at the time. His contract value suffers considerably as other teams stay away. 

August 3, 2007: In the wake of Andray's arrest the previous day, Ivan Carter of the Washington Post relates the following story:

I'm reminded of an episode from last season. We were in Miami. Pregame. [Antawn] Jamison walks into the lockeroom fresh from a round of lifting weights and getting up extra shots. He spots Andray sitting in front of his locker stall munching down a plate of nachos and generally sporting the look of a guy getting ready to watch a game rather than play in one.

Antawn, looking down at Andray: "You have a $16 million contract already or did I miss something?"

Andray offers a blank expression but knows where this is going.

Antawn: "You came over on the second bus right? I've never come over on the second bus. I'm a vet but I always come over on the first bus, don't I?" (Translation: Teams typically roll from the team hotel to the arena in two groups. The first group usually consists of guys who want to get settled early, take extra shots when the court isn't so full and lift weights. Jamison is always on the first bus)

Andray: "I got extra shots up at shootaround."

Antawn just shook his head and started getting ready for the game.

Three years later, I talked dietary habits with some of the Wizards scouts in a bar in Las Vegas. All they had to say about Dray was that he likes to eat. No kidding.

May 5, 2008: My friend Mike and I talk Wizards over beers at 51st State in northwest DC with Ivan Carter, who was then the Washington Post Wizards beat writer. Ivan offers up the following quote about Dray: "All Andray Blatche wants to do is party and f*ck whores." Enough said.

July 14, 2009: Andray wears number 7, rather than his number 32, for the first time as a Washington Wizard in a summer league game. Dray explains "I'm wearing 7, and that means 7 days [a week] of hard work, 7 days of being focused." So before the switch, he was not focused seven days a week? You're a professional athlete, for God's sake!!!! You are supposed to be about hard work every day. You're being paid millions of dollars and season ticket holders like me are counting on you working hard. I know he's a kid, but come on!

March 11, 2010: Dan Steinberg indirectly calls me a psycho for owning an Andray Blatche jersey (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2010/03/the_end_of_agent_zero.html). Thanks, Dan! As if I didn't feel bad enough about my decision already. Although he's probably correct; I don't know what I was thinking. Note Dan also calls my friend Mike, owner of a JaVale McGee jersey, a psycho.

March 23, 2010: Andray gets into an argument with head coach Flip Saunders on the bench during a game and refuses to participate when Saunders calls for him to go back into the game. Seriously, Dray? After the game, Saunders calls out Blatche for bailing on his teammates but in a move indicative of the enabling atmosphere on the team at the time, Dray is not suspended the next game. Seriously, Flip?

May 3, 2011: Andray hosts "Lapdance Tuesday" at the Cameo nightclub in Miami. I just don't have any explanation or elaboration for this one. Just shaking my head at this point.

March 21, 2012: Andray is listed on the official Nets - Wizards box score as "Not With Team - Conditioning." I am not aware of any other time a player has been listed on an NBA box score as being out of the game because he was out of shape. Andray would shortly thereafter be shut down for the season and never play for the Wizards again.

Obviously, there are not a lot of positive memories. And I even left out Andray being suspended for fighting with teammate JaVale McGee during the 2010-2011 season and him criticizing the play calling after the first game of the 2011-2012 season when he announced he was a team captain to the Verizon Center crowd before the game (he wasn't). I hope for his sake Dray has saved some money from his time with the Wizards. Let's move on.

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.

Rebuilding: 2010-2011 Through 2011-2012

The 2009-2010 Wizards season was pretty much an unmitigated disaster: the core of the team which had led the franchise to four straight playoff berths was traded away; our former superstar player, suspended for the majority of the prior season, was a shadow of his former self on the court; and our owner was dead. There was clearly a rebuilding period looming.

Despite all that had gone wrong, however, the team managed to finish with a better record than three other teams in the NBA. We pulled into a tie with the Golden State Warriors for the fourth worst record when Cedric Jackson hit a three point shot at the end of regulation in the final game of the season against the Indiana Pacers. The fourth worst finish meant the likelihood of securing a franchise-altering draft pick in the 2010 NBA Draft was fairly low. That likelihood decreased when we lost a coin flip with the Warriors and learned we would receive one fewer number combination in the upcoming Draft Lottery.

Ownership transition started immediately following the 2009-2010 season. For the first time since 1963, ownership of the team passed out of the hands of the Pollin family. The new ownership group headed by Ted Leonsis, which already owned the NHL's Washington Capitals, intended to rebuild through the NBA Draft, using a similar plan that had turned the Capitals from the worst team in the NHL to one of the top teams in the league. The upcoming 2010 Draft featured a consensus number one overall pick in lightning fast John Wall, the freshman point guard from the University of Kentucky, but not much more if you wanted to start rebuilding a franchise immediately. The Wizards chance of winning the Draft Lottery stood at only 10.3% based on their fourth worst finish and subsequent lost coin toss.

In theory, the Wizards could have chosen free agency to rebuild. The 2010 offseason featured one of the most anticipated free agent classes in NBA history: Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Amare Stoudamire, Paul Pierce, Dwyane Wade, Ray Allen, Dirk Nowitski, and the prize most teams coveted, LeBron James. Franchises had been maneuvering for years for this class. But the Wizards would not engage in bidding wars for any of these free agents. Ted made it quite clear that the way he wanted to rebuild was through the draft.

As it turned out, a 10.3% chance was good enough. The Wizards were lucky enough to win the Draft Lottery and on June 24, the Wizards selected John Wall with the number one overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. Maybe the good luck which the team needed to turn the franchise's fortunes around had just happened. Thank God Cedric Jackson hit that three pointer to beat Indiana. If he hadn't, we might be rebuilding around Ekpe Udoh, whom the Warriors drafted with their first round pick that year.

June 24, 2o1o produced two other building blocks for the Wizards. The team parlayed the number 23 pick, which they had obtained in the deal the prior season for Antawn Jamison, into Trevor Booker, a defensive power forward out of Clemson University who graded out the fastest man in the Draft, faster even than John Wall. They also picked up another pick from the Chicago Bulls, who were desperate to clear salary cap space so they would have enough money to sign either Dwyane Wade or LeBron James to pair with Derrick Rose. In what may be one of the great swindles in team history (although the jury is still out), the Wizards swapped Vladamir Veremeenko, their second round selection in the 2006 Draft, for Kirk Hinrich and the number 17 pick, who turned out to be Kevin Seraphin, a center from French Guiana with tremendous upside but little command of the English language. Three picks in the first round of one NBA Draft, including the number one overall selection; not bad for a first stab at rebuilding.

But there was other work to be done. The team clearly had a culture problem. The leadership and professionalism that Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler had brought to the locker room was gone and nobody seemed ready or willing to fill the leadership void. Arenas, the team's longest tenured player, had tried to decline the captaincy the first and only time the organization had asked. And there was no way the team could turn to Andray Blatche, Nick Young or JaVale McGee. So the team named John Wall and Kirk Hinrich captains and hoped for the best. As it turned out, the best included a franchise record 16 game losing streak and an almost NBA record 25 game road losing streak to start the season. Changes needed to be made to make the team into a credible franchise with aspirations toward consistent winning.

While the team ended up with a less than mediocre 23-59 record, which was three games worse than the prior season, they did manage to trade the seemingly untradeable contract of Gilbert Arenas to the Orlando Magic in exchange for Rashard Lewis, a player perhaps equally overpaid as Arenas but with one fewer year on his contract. They also managed to move Kirk Hinrich during the season to the Atlanta Hawks, in a deal which brought in return Jordan Crawford, the 27th pick in the 2010 Draft, along with Atlanta's first round pick in the 2011 Draft. Maybe four first round picks from the 2010 Draft and jettisoning  Arenas would be a good enough start to the rebuild.

After the 2010-2011 season, the franchise prepared for the 2011 NBA Draft and for the future. The 2011 Draft Lottery yielded the number six pick in the Draft, the worst possible result based on our finish the previous season. The 2011 Draft brought three new players: Jan Vesely, a forward from the Czech Republic whose nickname is the dunking ninja; Chris Singleton, a small forward from Florida State who was possibly the best all-around defender in the Draft (Atlanta's pick); and Shelvin Mack, a guard from Butler University, fresh off two consecutive appearances in the NCAA championship game.

Following the Draft, the franchise took another important step forward by unveiling new uniforms which freshened up the uniforms of the 1977-1978 Washington Bullets NBA championship team. But any enthusiasm gained from the draft or the re-brand was squashed by a labor dispute and ultimately a lockout. The lockout meant the team's players could not access team facilities or training staff, which could be especially tough on a young team. For veteran players, like Nick Young and JaVale McGee, the lockout gave them time to create home videos of cinnamon eating contests (I'm not kidding). I'm not sure which was more discouraging: the lockout or the cinnamon eating. The lockout lasted until Thanksgiving weekend, when the labor dispute was unofficially settled. Training camp would be abbreviated and the season would start on Christmas Day.

When the 2011-2012 season finally started, it was clear the Wizards just weren't going to be very good at all. The core of our team from the previous year (Blatche, McGee and Young) seemed to care more about personal statistics than winning and the effects of having to start the season quickly with a shortened training camp were obvious. The team had lost its first six, including blowing a 20 point lead on opening night against the New Jersey Nets, when the veterans on the team called a players only meeting. The results were not encouraging. Mo Evans publicly questioned the attitude of entitlement that existed on the team; clearly some of the players on a team that had averaged less than 23 wins in the previous three seasons felt playing time was given, not earned. About three weeks later, with the team's record sitting at 2-15, Flip Saunders was fired as head coach. Flip's overall record with the Wizards was 51-130 with zero playoff appearances. Things looked really bleak.

The team replaced Saunders with top assistant Randy Wittman, but only after Randy made sure he would have the last word on who played and who didn't. Randy coached the team as if he had nothing to lose, which was probably absolutely the case. He held players accountable for effort and performance and made changes and handed out discipline when required. He benched starters JaVale McGee and Nick Young for the entire second half in a game at Milwaukee on February 28 after a lackluster first half and then extended the benching for the start of the next game at home against Orlando. He apologized to the fans after an early March home loss to Golden State, vowing to make changes to ensure something like that would never happen again. And on March 21, he held Andray Blatche out of the game against the New Jersey Nets due to conditioning and then worked with the front office to send Andray home for the season to get in shape. I think there were two turning points in the 2011-2012 season that will pay dividends in future years. I believe putting Randy in charge of the team was the first. We'll see if I'm right.

The second turning point happened at the trade deadline on March 15 when the Wizards traded away JaVale McGee and Nick Young and got back Brazilian center Nenê from the Denver Nuggets. The trade was panned by some in the national media, saying the Wizards got fooled into accepting an oft-injured 29 year old center in exchange for a budding superstar in McGee. But to those closest to the team and to the DC media, the trade for Nenê was an obvious and instant upgrade. The trade brought a team player with a high basketball IQ and good leadership skills who understands how to play the game at both ends of the court. Trading away McGee and Young brought credibility to the franchise and signaled that the team was serious about winning. The team went 10-14 after the trade but in games when Nenê played, the team was 7-4 and the team finished the season 8-2 in their last ten games and won their last six. There seems to be a lot of hope heading into the offseason, despite the fact that we finished with the second worst record in the league. Again, we'll see if I'm right.

The Collapse: 2008-2009 Through 2009-2010

At the conclusion of the 2007-2008 season, Antawn Jamison's contract expired, making him an unrestricted free agent. Then, Gilbert Arenas, despite having played only 17 games in the one plus seasons since his knee injury in April 2007, exercised an early termination clause in his contract and also became an unrestricted free agent. All of a sudden, two of the Big Three were no longer under contract. Gilbert indicated he wanted to return to the Wizards, but only if the team took care of Antawn Jamison first. There was no doubt the team would have re-signed Jamison. Owner Abe Pollin had a soft spot for Jamison and he was coming off an All Star season as the team's leading scorer. But Gilbert's demand seemed entitled and set an ominous tone.

The team re-signed Jamison to a four year deal at an average salary of $12.5 million per year then turned their attention to Agent Zero. Gilbert was really looking for the maximum deal he could get under the NBA's collective bargaining agreement, but to create a little goodwill, he said he would agree to take less so the team could sign other free agents for a championship push. In the end, though, he only ended up taking about $1 million per year less than the maximum deal, effectively handcuffing the team for years to come with a deal that would pay him over $20 million each year. Bad decision. Really bad decision. Gilbert played a total of two games in the 2008-2009 season due to the same knee injury that ended his season two years prior.

Training camp started and the team received another injury blow: Brendan Haywood tore a ligament in his right wrist which caused him to miss all but the final six games of the season. Without Brendan, the team was lost at their own basket. Brendan called the defense and kept everyone in the right spots on the floor. His absence was obvious and the team struggled to a 19-63 record, matching the franchise worst record for an 82 game season first achieved in 2000-2001. I have only attended every Wizards home game in one season, and that season was it. I hope I never have to go through something like that again.

Our 19-63 record yielded us the number five overall pick in the 2009 draft and just like they did with the fifth pick in 2004, the team traded it, this time to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Randy Foye and Mike Miller, two veteran players who were in the last year of their contracts. Clearly the team was going for it, hoping that the trade along with the return of Arenas and Haywood combined with Jamison, Butler, Stevenson and young players Andray Blatche, Nick Young and JaVale McGee, would right the ship. Head coach Eddie Jordan had been relieved of his position during the previous season so the team went for a marquee coach, bringing in Flip Saunders, who had previously been the head coach in Minnesota and Detroit and had a string of playoff appearances with those two teams. It didn't work. If I thought a second 19 win season in nine years was bad, I had no concept of how awful things could get until the 2009-2010 season.

While the team won two of its first three games that year, including an impressive road victory over the Dallas Mavericks on opening night, they lost eight of the next nine to start the season 3-10. Then, owner Abe Pollin, who had been in deteriorating health due to a rare brain disease over the previous few years, died. Pollin had owned the team in part or in whole since 1963, the team's third year of existence and first as the Baltimore Bullets. The loss of Pollin meant a lot to players like Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison, whom Pollin had championed in the media as players with the kind of character  that he wanted to play for the Wizards.

Then it got worse. On the team flight back from Phoenix on December 19, JaVale McGee and Javaris Crittenton were playing a card game called Boo-Ray, a game similar to spades, when an argument broke out over money. Apparently, JaVale had borrowed money from teammate Earl Boykins and was not paying back Boykins as he won money from Crittenton. As Boykins continued to ask JaVale for money during the game, Crittenton demanded McGee hand over the money he had won to Boykins. Somehow, Arenas got involved with Crittenton and the two went at each other all the way to the airport terminal with Arenas ultimately threatening to set Crittenton's car on fire and Crittenton threatening to shoot Arenas in the knee in retaliation.

Two days later, Arenas brought four guns to Verizon Center, laid them in front of Crittenton's locker and wrote a note saying "Pick 1, so the day you want to shoot me let me know, I'll be ready to get shot." Gun possession is illegal in the District of Columbia so what Gilbert did was a felony offense, although I'm sure he didn't think about that at the time. When Crittenton arrived, he claimed he didn't need Arenas' guns and pulled out his own and pointed it at Gilbert. The incident died down from there but word got out through word of mouth and ultimately made it's way into the press. On January 10, NBA commissioner David Stern suspended Arenas and Crittenton for the season. Arenas was convicted of a felony and had to spend time in a halfway house. Crittenton would never play NBA basketball again and is currently free on bond after being charged with murder in the death of a 22 year old mother of four in his hometown of Atlanta.

The end of the Big Three era in DC was in sight. The team made it official just before the trading deadline. First, they sent Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson to the Dallas Mavericks for Josh Howard, James Singleton, Drew Gooden and Quinton Ross, the third major trade with the Mavericks in the last nine years. A few days later, they traded Antawn Jamison to Cleveland essentially for the Cavaliers 2010 first round draft pick. At the time it was thought the Cavaliers needed a scoring big man to take them back to the NBA Finals. I had the opportunity to talk to Jamison a few days before the trade, when it was already obvious the team was shopping him. I told him I hoped the team put him in a position where he could win a championship as long as it wasn't in Cleveland. He laughed but I think he was glad to leave Washington that year. As it turns out, he didn't win a title in Cleveland but Butler, Haywood and Stevenson did a year later in Dallas. The Wizards finished the 2009-2010 season with a 26-56 record, good for last place in our division, a full 18 games behind the fourth place Charlotte Bobcats. 45 wins total in two years. Not good.

Traveling

Minneapolis: Camera phones in 2007 just weren't what they are today.

When the television broadcast schedule was announced for the 2006-2007 NBA season, it appeared to me that I would have to miss the February 25, 2007 game at Minnesota because it just didn't look like it would be on TV. It was a Sunday afternoon game and ABC, who owned the national TV contract with the NBA that year, had the broadcast rights. That usually works out fine because the game would be shown on national TV, but this particular Sunday, ABC had the rights to several other games in that same time slot and would only be showing one based on the perceived popularity of the teams playing. Reviewing the schedule that day, it didn't look to me that the Wizards-Timberwolves game would be the one shown by ABC. When the NBA's national TV network owns the rights to a game, they prohibit the same game being shown on local cable television to eliminate competition. So on Sunday, February 25, our local cable network, Comcast SportsNet, had no plans to show the game.

Instead of resigning myself to missing the game, I decided to go to the game in person. I looked for airline tickets and it appeared we could leave Washington in the morning, see the game, and fly back the same day. My friend Mike checked for tickets on Ticketmaster and incredibly found two tickets in the second row at center court. Sold! We were going to Minnesota for the day to see the Wizards.

Sunday morning, February 25, came and it was snowing. Our flight out of National Airport was delayed. That was ok, we had some time for our connection in Chicago. As long as the flight wasn't too late, we'd be alright. And we were. We landed in Minnesota about an hour before tip-off, got off the plane with no luggage (we were just going for the day, after all), took a cab directly to the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis and walked to our second row seats wearing our gold Arenas and Butler road jerseys. Other than the loss, the game was great. We had great seats, had beverage service because we were essentially courtside, and the game was close. The Target Center is dark and quiet and the fact that the crowd is almost completely racially homogenous is strangely unnerving but everything went according to plan. After the game, we hopped in a cab back to the airport for our trip home. We would just make our flight and be back home in DC that night. Except that last part didn't happen.

After we left Washington, it had continued to snow and as it turned out, National Airport had closed. So had Dulles and BWI, so we were stuck in Minneapolis for the night and would have to miss work the next day. It was snowing in Minneapolis too; worse, in fact, than in DC, but they are equipped to deal with more than a few inches of snow. Washington  sometimes has difficulty with rain, let alone snow. I still struggle with this concept after nine years in upstate New York, by the way, but it is what it is. Fortunately, we were able to get a hotel downtown and found a bar with a friendly bartender and talked for a few hours about what it was like living in Minnesota. The next morning, we got up, put on the same clothes we had worn the previous day and went to the airport. We got lucky and managed to get a direct flight home, albeit to a different airport than we had flown out of. My trip home that day involved light rail from downtown Minneapolis to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport; a flight from Minneapolis to Dulles airport in northern Virginia; a bus from Dulles to the West Falls Church metro station; a metro ride to National Airport; and finally a trip home from National in my car. Still, it was worth the trip and we got home safe.

After that game in Minnesota, my dad said he recalled seeing an interview with Gilbert Arenas where Gilbert talked about the growing popularity of the Wizards and pointed to the fact that there were two fans in gold Wizards jerseys in the second row at the Target Center when the Wizards played the Timberwolves that year. I've never found that interview but it would be ironic if it were true.

Front row seat behind the Wizards bench in Atlanta. I LOVED these seats. The Wizards soonafter abandoned the gold names on the jerseys in favor of gold trimmed with white.

Despite the unplanned overnight stay, the missed day of work and the trip home, I was determined to take more Wizards road trips, perhaps even make it an annual event. I just resolved to make sure I didn't pick a game in a cold weather city in the dead of winter. So when the 2007-2008 season schedule was released, I looked for the next opportunity. That year, as it turned out, all the Wizards road games were on our local cable TV channel so the decision as to where to go see was not driven by anything other than personal preference. I decided on an early season game against the Atlanta Hawks and decided the trip should include an overnight stay and a little bit of an exploration of the city, rather than just going to see the game and leaving. I'd never been to Atlanta and had always wanted to see the High Museum of Art so it seemed like a good idea. That blueprint has formed the basis of all my road trips since.

The trip to Atlanta was notable from a basketball standpoint for a couple of reasons. First, the team won despite being 0-5 at the time and it got a winning streak of six straight started that got our season on track. It's the only time in four road trips that the Wizards have won a road game I have attended. Second, we managed to get some seats right behind the Wizards bench from a seller on StubHub. I have never sat courtside and I am sure my opinion will change if I ever do, but watching a game from right behind the team bench is definitely the way to go. Basketball is a game which changes as you get closer to the action. You can't see plays develop quite as well as you can from a seat in the upper deck of an arena, but you see and hear nuances of the game which are just not evident until you get up close. From our seats immediately behind the bench, we could hear pretty much everything that was being said by the players on the bench and by the coaches in the team huddles. It gave an insight into the game that we couldn't have had from anywhere else in the building.

Since it worked so well on the Atlanta trip, we sat in the same spot in 2009 at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indiana, a gorgeous facility which that November night hosted a terrible showing by the Wizards in what was supposed to be (but wasn't) a season when we made some serious noise in the playoffs. On that trip, we managed to talk to Wizards play by play announcer Steve Buckhantz and we were actually featured in the broadcast. I got an incredulous text message from my friend Chris during the game saying that the camera had just focused on me and Mike, they had mentioned us by name and talked about some of the trips we had taken. It was almost as if Chris couldn't figure out how Steve knew all this about us. To his credit, Chris captured it and you can see us on the broadcast here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgscnNbJ4GY. If I actually get 15 minutes of fame in my life, this is surely and sadly 1:03 of those 15 minutes. Yes, I am wearing an Andray Blatche jersey and no, that doesn't necessarily make me a loser. I was just misguided by Andray's enthusiasm at the beginning of that season. 

Caron Butler staring me down in Indianapolis. He's probably trying to figure out why I would spend money on the authentic Andray Blatche jersey I was wearing.

One of the great things about traveling is the people you meet, like our bartender in Minneapolis. For those who know me well, this may actually come as a surprise, but it's true. In our road trips, I have met some interesting people whose lives are nothing like mine but in some ways are connected. It's encouraging to me when those connections come from basketball, which sometimes they do. On our way to the United Center in Chicago in 2010, I got into an animated exchange with our cab driver about the Knicks-Bulls 1990s rivalry. Turns out he hated John Starks and I certainly hated Michael Jordan so we had a lot to discuss during our debate about the best dunk from that rivalry. I didn't convince him of my position, but Starks' dunk over Jordan was way better than Jordan's dunk on Patrick Ewing. Just hands down, it is.

So far, I've been to four NBA cities to see the Wizards play on the road. I'd better pick up the pace if I intend to make it to all 29 like we told Phil Chenier in Indianapolis. I wonder where the schedule will take me this year.