Off Season Priorities

It's conference finals time. My rooting against the teams and players I dislike the most has helped bump the Brookyn Nets, Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks from the postseason so far. I'm still delusionally hopeful that the NBA Finals this year will feature the Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs despite the current deficit the Pacers face in their Eastern Conference Finals. I like the way Indiana's team is built around a defense first, no star system. In my wildest imaginings, I could see the Wizards resembling that team in the next few years. 

In the meantime, there's been some good news for the Wizards in the form of a top three Lottery pick when the team could have stood still at the eight spot or, God forbid, moved down as far as 11th. That win gives the team a whole lot more options when approaching the off season. It's a lot easier to make deals with a number three overall draft pick than it is with the eighth pick.

When I look over the Wizards roster at the moment, I see some glaring holes that need to be addressed. However, for the first time in years, I feel pretty good about our top five guys under contract, which coincidentally can be fashioned into a credible NBA starting lineup of John Wall and Bradley Beal in the backcourt, Trevor Ariza and Nenê at the forward spots and Emeka Okafor in the middle. I think management has done a good job cobbling together a unit that can score and defend at a playoff caliber level in the NBA.

Beyond the "starting five" listed above, the team is thin. We have some free agents whom we may or may not try to re-sign and a bench of four guys on their rookie contract deals. It's definitely easy to understand how this team finished tied for seventh worst in the NBA last season. Despite that assessment though, we may actually not need to tweak our roster that much to slide into the seventh or eighth spot in the Eastern Conference. Sounds crazy but it might be true. Here's how I view our offseason priorities.

1. Draft The Best Available Player

For the first time in several NBA Drafts, the Wizards are in a position where they don't need to draft someone who has to start next season or even contribute in a major way right away. I am sure between now and draft night both the front office of the Wizards and most folks in the press who cover the team will debate whether the team should draft for need or take the best player available. Here's my message to everyone: the Wizards have needs at every position; select the best available player, even if that player is a guard and has to come off the bench behind John Wall or Bradley Beal for the next four years.

Fortunately, the Wizards this year moved up in draft order by winning the Draft Lottery and hold the third overall selection, rather than the eighth spot based on order of finish. The third overall pick allows the Wizards far more flexibility in making a draft choice and should allow them to not only get a quality player whether or not that player can contribute right away. If I were drafting for need for the Wizards, I'd select a center. The Wizards have young potential at every position except center (I'm putting Seraphin at the four for the purpose of this discussion). But if the right player isn't there, I'm picking the best available. Based on early projections, it appears Nerlens Noel (center), Ben McLemore (guard) and Otto Porter, Jr. (forward) are the top three talents in this year's draft. If that proves to be true, I'd take whichever one of those three wasn't selected in the top two and hope I made the right choice. To me, the draft is a total crap shoot anyway.

2. Re-Sign Martell Webster

The Wizards signed Martell Webster right before the start of the 2012-2013 season as a presumed sixth man at a pretty much bargain price of $1,600,000. Martell turned that opportunity into a season with career highs in points, rebounds, assists and three point field goal percentage while managing to shoot almost 85% from the free throw line. He replaced Trevor Ariza in the starting lineup when Ariza went down with an injury in December and never gave it back. He embraces coach Wittman's game philosophy and also seems to play off other players on the team, and particularly John Wall, very well.

So it looks like Martell has set himself up in a "contract year" to be paid really well or even overpaid. It seems like the Wizards are in a position where they have to pony up some dough to keep him or risk losing him to free agency like we have lost other players in the recent past. If I had a vote, I'd pay Martell. In fact, I'd probably pay him (assuming he would accept it) the full mid-level exception for a period of three years. That would allow us to bring back our starting five from last year plus sixth man Ariza and then start to incorporate other players into the mix, including our first round draft pick and whatever other free agents we retain or sign. And with a three year deal, Martell would be coming off the books in time for the team to throw a boatload of cash at Bradley Beal after his rookie contract expires.

I wonder what the offseason holds for Chris Singleton and his over life size billboard at VC.

3. Figure Out The Seraphin / Booker / Vesely / Singleton Thing

Over the past three seasons, the Wizards have drafted four small or power forwards in Kevin Seraphin, Trevor Booker, Jan Vesely and Chris Singleton. Other than the "starting five" mentioned earlier in this post, these four are the only players currently under contract for the 2013-2014 season. I believe the Wizards drafted so many players to fill potentially one position because they hoped one of the four would naturally rise to the top of the pile and become a regular rotation player (or even a starter) on their rookie deal. That hasn't exactly happened. If you could take Seraphin's offense with Booker's rebounding and defense and Vesely's passing, I think we'd get what I think we intended to get.

So it's probably time to part ways with one or more of this group but which and how? Over the past season and a half, Seraphin has clearly established himself as the most reliable of these four. Towards the end of last season, once he shook off injuries from the first half of the season, Booker emerged as the better of the other three primarily due to his ability to rebound consistently. Trading Vesely and Singleton for someone or some thing of value would be the best thing for the Wizards but to make a trade they need to find a partner willing to take a gamble on one of those two. It may be that we have to trade Booker to get a team to accept one of the other two and hope that whatever we get back is of greater value and that whomever we don't trade can contribute something of real value going forward.

4. Find Some Backcourt Help

During the 2012-2013 season, A.J. Price started 22 games for the Wizards and Garrett Temple started 36. Both guys were thrust into a starting role by injuries to either John Wall or Bradley Beal. I like both A.J. and Garrett as pieces on this team and as players. I love A.J.'s high assist-to-turnover ratio and his ability to play defense. I love Garrett's size and ability to defend both guard spots and toward the end of last season, I actually liked his ability to score in bursts. But if this team is going to succeed beyond maybe squeaking in to the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference, I'm confident when I say that these two guys cannot be our third and fourth guards next year.

If I were running the Wizards, I'd try to re-sign both A.J. and Garrett at the right (i.e minimum) price. I think they both did enough to earn a spot on the team next year. But I'd also go out and find some help to be a first backup at both guard spots. At the point guard, I'd love to find a former starter that had a good contract who is now willing to accept a role for less money backing up John Wall. A guy like Devin Harris would seem to be a good fit. He's coming off a 5 year, $43 million deal and last year was supplanted in the Atlanta Hawks' starting lineup by Jeff Teague. He's still a good point guard and he can defend. If we could wrap up someone like that for a couple of years, I think that would help tremendously.

At the shooting guard first and foremost, we need someone who can score in bunches and I'd even overpay a little or find someone traditionally not thought of as a defender to get that instant offense off the bench. I'm thinking someone like Nate Robinson here. Nate made the veteran minimum with the Chicago Bulls last season but clearly saved some games singlehandedly for that team in the Bulls' playoff run this past spring. If we could wrap up a guy like that for a year or two at a reasonable (less than $2 million per) price, I'd do it. 

5. Fill The Roster With Professional Veterans

During the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons, after it was clear the team wasn't competing for a playoff spot, the Wizards starting auditioning players from the D-League for a spot on the team. Larry Owens, Shaun Livingston, Cartier Martin, Othyus Jeffers, Mike Harris, Cedric Jackson, Mustafa Shakur and Alonzo Gee all made stops in D.C. during those two seasons. I believe the organization's hope was that one of these players would prove to be a diamond in the rough, and we'd be able to pick up a quality rotation player for very little investment. It didn't work. The Wizards couldn't or wouldn't afford to sign Shaun Livingston, who proved to be the most effective in his time in Washington, and they missed out on Alonzo Gee, who last season started all 82 games for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

During the off season last year, the Wizards traded Rashard Lewis and his $22 million plus salary to the New Orleans Hornets for Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza. While it first looked like the trade may have been a mistake because we took back another season's worth of salary when Lewis' expiring deal would have given us cap flexibility this summer, the veteran presence of Okafor and Ariza helped the team immeasurably. Both Emeka and Trevor are smart professionals and both understood and supported the plan to make this team into a playoff contender. Sure they cost more than someone on a rookie contract or a D-League call up, but their maturity and  experience was essential in allowing other players on the team to weather tougher times last season. When it comes to filling the rest of our 2013-2014 roster, I'd love to see the Wizards invest in high character, veteran players who provide leadership on the practice court, from the bench and in game situations in spot duty.

So that's how I see the Wizards' priorities for the 2013 off season. I'm looking forward to the NBA Draft on June 27 and the start of free agency three days later. Hopefully we can pull together something between now and the start of next season that will allow a playoff appearance in 2014.

Will the future ever get here for Dippin' Dots??

"Winning" The NBA Draft Lottery

I'll keep this post short and sweet. Short because it doesn't take much to say what I have to say tonight. Sweet because about an hour ago, that's what this Tuesday night became.

Tonight the NBA held its 29th Draft Lottery. The Washington Wizards have participated in an astonishingly low 17 of those 29 lotteries. I say astonishing because that previous sentence might imply the Wizards franchise has actually been good the other 12 of those years. In fact, the Wizards have been absent from the Draft Lottery process in that stretch more times due to poor trades than they have due to playoff appearances in the prior season. But make no mistake about it: the Wizards are the big winner in this year's NBA Draft Lottery!

I know...they didn't win the number one pick. That distinction went to the hated Cleveland Cavaliers for the second time in three years. The Cavs, assuming they use the pick, may start the 2013-2014 season with four top five picks in the last three years in their starting lineup. But it doesn't matter. Only the Cavs and Wizards moved up in the Draft order this year. And whereas the Cavs jumped from third to first, the Wizards jumped from eighth to third, a tremendous stroke of good luck for a team that has only moved up two times in its previous 16 Lottery chances.

The 2013 Draft is allegedly a draft class with few superstars, a lot of balance and some highly rated NBA ready guys. If there's one thing the Wizards DON'T need, it's another project from the Draft, meaning they need someone who is NBA ready now. Odds are they can get someone at the three spot who fits that bill (i.e. contributes off the bench immediately) at whatever position they choose. I believe the Wizards need to draft the best player available with the third pick; we lack depth across the whole roster and need backups at the one through five.

The third pick worked out pretty well for us last year. I think Bradley Beal, who represented the team at tonight's Lottery, has the talent and drive to be a significant player in the NBA for years to come. In a draft where the talent drop between the first and third picks may not be significant at all, I'll take the third pick. The difference in salary between the first pick (Anthony Davis) and third pick (Real Deal Beal) in last year's draft was a little more than $1,000,000. Now I'm not looking to penny pinch here but the salary cap is real and owners, including Ted Leonsis, are going to try to avoid exceeding the NBA's luxury tax. That million bucks may come in handy.

Early indications are that the Wiz will select Otto Porter, Jr. out of Georgetown University. I have no idea if that's the right pick to make but I know one thing: I'm excited for Summer League and I'm excited for the start of the 2013-2014 season already. The Cavs may have four top five picks in their starting lineup but I'm optimistic about adding this year's third pick to a lineup featuring John Wall and  Bradley Beal. I don't want to get ahead of myself but maybe our luck is turning.

This may be the most truthful statement written about the Wizards in the last 13 years!

My Wizards Wish List

We are now about four weeks beyond the end of the Wizards 2012-2013 campaign and the offseason is starting to hit me a little harder. The first round of the Wizards-less 2013 NBA Playoffs is over and I'm now well into watching second round action at nights and on weekends when I can stomach it. Former Wizards knuckleheads JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche and the rest of their Denver Nuggets and Brooklyn Nets teammates are at home watching hoops just like me so I feel pretty good about that. Hating, I know...whatever!

In between rooting against the Miami Heat and New York Knicks in the second round, I'm starting to imagine a 2013-2014 season for the Wizards that ends in a playoff appearance (not ready to ask for a run yet; just an appearance would be a start). If I had the power or ability to change some things about our team, I'd start with three things: improve our field goal percentage, drop our turnovers and have us rebound at the offensive end of the court a little better. Unfortunately, I have neither the power nor the ability and each of these improvements is going to take time and effort across the entire team. No one player is going to be able to affect these changes on the team by himself.

But I do have a small wish list of individual changes I'd like to see our guys make over the summer. Again, I have neither the power or the ability to make these adjustments to our players' games but I believe they are changes that each can make on his own without affecting team play or the performance of the individual in other areas. If nothing else, it makes me feel better to put this stuff down.

Did Vesely leave his free throw shot in Europe?

1. Jan Vesely: Improved Free Throw Shooting

There are so many things about the game of basketball that Jan Vesely does well that go completely unappreciated. He passes well (especially to start the fast break); runs the floor well; finishes in transition better than most everyone; can play defense well on his man or off the ball; and studies the game and shows coachability. But there are undoubtedly two areas of his game that are at best poor and which have become lightning rods for criticism of his game: shooting from the field and free throw shooting.

During the 2012-2013 season, Vesely's field goal percentage was 50.0%. He was the only Wizard to hit half of his shots from the field. But his percentage was only so high because most of his opportunities were dunks and, if he can do nothing else, Vesely can finish at the rim strong. It was his shots away from the basket that had fans cringing each time he hoisted one up.

But I'd take gradual improvement in his away-from-the-basket field goal percentage if he could fix his free throw shooting. His free throw percentage last season was a miserable 30.8%. That represents an incredible drop of 22.4 percentage points from his rookie year. It's a nightmare each time he gets fouled in a shooting situation. The best you can realistically hope for is that he hits 1 of 2 when he steps to the line and that is just not good enough. It's killing our chances to score easy points and he absolutely can't play in crunch time at all.

During his rookie year, there were stories about Vesely having to wear a special template during free throw shooting practice to get him to space his fingers properly. But then at the end of this past season, A.J. Price suggested that Vesely's struggles from the charity stripe might be more mental than anything else and that the pressure of all those people watching and knowing he's going to fail are affecting him more than anything else. 

So here's my offer to Ves. Come back from Europe early this summer; I'll take a couple of weeks off work and get some people assembled every day to watch you free throw shooting on the practice court; and we'll heckle the crap out of you while you practice. We'll tell you how bad you are; insult your manhood and your family; and whatever else you need us to do to get you concentrating on putting the ball through the hoop and not on the pressure of the situation. I want Vesely to succeed and I appreciate the little things he does on the court. But if he can't raise his free throw percentage, he's going to be done in the NBA when his rookie contract expires.

2. Kevin Seraphin: More Physical Play

I love Kevin Seraphin. I love his approach to the game and improving his play. I love that he wants to be coached by Randy Wittman. And I love his use of social media to let fans into his life and that he clearly loves being a celebrity and loves interfacing with his fans. At the beginning of last season he was hands down my favorite Wizard (pre-Martell Webster, that is). And because I love Kevin Seraphin, I can say this: Kevin is a finesse player. And he shouldn't be.

The Wizards' media guide lists Kevin at 6'-9" and 275 pounds. He is a little bit of a throwback big man, preferring to play with his back to the basket rather than shooting from the perimeter. He's a big guy with a wide butt and he should be tough to move. Former teammate Kirk Hinrich named Kevin as the person who set the toughest screens when the two played together during the 2010-2011 season.

But despite improvements in his post game, Kevin still plays with too much finesse. He should be throwing his weight around and getting to the hoop a lot more than he does. This lack of aggression is reflected in last season's 46.1% field goal percentage and 9.6 rebounds per 48 minutes. For perspective, DaAndre Jordan led the league in field goal percentage at 64.3% and Reggie Evans led in rebounding per 48 minutes at 21.7. Kevin's a decent free throw shooter at a tad below 70%. If he can take it inside more without turning it over, I have to believe his field goal percentage, rebounding rate and number of trips to the foul line will improve. Get more aggressive, Kevin!!

I'm not looking for Superman, just a little more physicality.

3. John Wall: Stop Jumping and Passing

The 2012-2013 season was a validation season of sorts for John Wall. He spent the first 33 games of the season in street clothes due to a knee injury during which time he was written off by most of the league as either a forgotten man or a first overall pick draft bust. But when he started playing, the Wizards started winning regularly (albeit mostly at home). He proved himself a difference maker in the team game and, once he got his legs under him, he showed the improvement in his own jump shot, scoring an astounding 47 points against the Memphis Grizzlies on March 25.

John still has a long way to go in a number of phases of the game. He's started slowing down at the rim enabling him to score more regularly but he could improve his fast break conversion percentages; he still turns the ball over far too regularly for an elite point guard; and he is still an emotional, moody guy in games which sometimes leads to too much one on one play and, in its worst manifestation, game ejections like the one he had at Golden State the game before he lit up the Grizzlies for 47. I believe John will work these kinks out and become an elite point guard in the NBA. Remember, he's only 22 years old despite his three years of experience.

But the one small adjustment I'd love to see John make right away is not leaving his feet before passing. If there were a short list of basketball no-no's, jumping in the air before passing would have to be pretty high up that list. Leaving your feet compromises your ability to make sound decisions. Once you jump in the air there are three possible outcomes: shoot, pass or turn the ball over. I understand John may know exactly where he wants to throw the ball before he jumps but defensive adjustments may change his mind and once in the air, he has little choice but to let the ball go. To me this is important because I really think one of the big problems with the Wizards' offense is turnovers and this behavior has to lead to more turnovers. Keep your feet, John and make sound decisions from the ground.

4. Trevor Booker: Rebound With Two Hands

During the 2012-2013 season, coach Randy Wittman settled into a rotation where Jan Vesely, Chris Singleton and Trevor Booker took turns being the team's reserve power forward. It appeared to me as a fan that coach played Singleton as the guy for a while until his performance suffered, then he would switch to Vesely and then to Booker before just starting over with Singleton again. Towards the end of the season, though, Book got more than his fair share of playing time based on his production on the court.

Booker has one more year of NBA experience than Vesely and Singleton and is clearly the superior rebounder of that trio. He posted an average of 5.0 rebounds per game in about 18.5 minutes average game time. That rate puts him with more than 30% higher than either Ves or Singleton if those two had spent as much time on the court in an average game as Book.

But there is one thing I'd like to see improved in his rebounding. Book has a tendency to rebound the ball with one hand or sometimes even one arm. He rebounds this way despite there being no opponent holding his other arm or even any where in the vicinity. Every so often, a rebound gets away from him, which results in a turnover. This is not a big issue game after game, but every turnover adds up, especially for a team that has to work on getting their turnover number down. God gave you two hands for a reason, Trevor. In your case, it might just be to grab the ball with two hands and secure it. Use them! Please.

5. Nenê: More Passion

At the 2011-2012 trade deadline, the Wizards sent away perennial knucklehead JaVale McGee and his immense potentially never fulfilled potential in exchange for Nenê. The trade instantly reset the franchise's moral compass and signaled that management was serious about building a winning team around a team first concept. JaVale McGee is serious about his eating cinnamon and creating cartoon alter egos; Nenê is serious about making his team better and winning basketball games.

Nenê is so good at all phases of the game. He can score, rebound, defend and is possibly the best passer on our team. He makes everyone on the court better and makes the team way better. And so it's difficult for me to criticize any aspect of Nenê's game. But I do have one wish: I wish he would be more passionate about playing. And that wish may be totally unfair.

During the 2012-2013 season, Nenê sat out games for a variety of reasons, mostly due to plantar fasciatis, and at the end of the season there were reports of him considering retirement instead of playing in pain. I have no real idea how much pain Nenê plays through and I probably shouldn't question his toughness in any way but it seems to me that there are a lot of guys playing in the NBA in way more pain than Nenê does. I just have to look at Joakim Noah playing for the Bulls in the first round of this year's playoffs. Noah could barely drag his body up and down the court some possessions but he was out there battling.

The Washington press criticizes the McGee-Nenê trade every so often because the skinny on Nenê is that he gets hurt regularly, which isn't really true all the time. But he does sit a lot and the first report of him sitting the last few games on last season came from Nenê himself and not from the team which leads me to wonder is Nenê hurt regularly (even though he's not) because he's actually hurt or because he has a low threshold for pain. I guess I'll never know but I'd love him to suck it up more and play more. No doubt we are way better with him on the court.

I know none of these guys will ever read this and I really honestly don't want them making adjustments to their games based on fan input. But that's my Wizards wish list for this summer. Maybe I'll go bug them about it during Summer League.

Up Next: Off Season Priorities

Encouraging Signs / Discouraging Signs

Pulling the schedule magnet off the refrigerator: unfortunately an April ritual.

It has been two weeks now since the final game of the Wizards 2012-2013 season and there's no doubt I've been in a bit of a post season funk, not willing to think about another lost season in too much detail. But while I am extremely displeased by my team's 0-6 finish, I realize it's just time to get over it and get on with the off season. And yes, I know the Wizards-less NBA playoffs are in full swing but it's the off season for fans like me who live, breathe and eat Wizards basketball from at least October through June (OK...mid-April lately) and beyond.

The 2012-2013 season was a feast or famine kind of season in so many ways for me as a Wizards fan. The highs were pretty high and the lows were pretty low and it seemed like the reasons for the highs were the exact opposite of the reasons for the lows. As a result, I'm left with a list of encouraging signs and discouraging signs to ponder in the off season. Here's how I would summarize the hope (encouraging signs) and doubt (discouraging signs) coming out of last season as I watch the first round of this year's NBA playoffs.

Beating Good Teams (Encouraging) vs. Losing To Bad Teams (Discouraging)

The Wizards had memorable wins during the 2012-2013 season. They beat each Division champion except the San Antonio Spurs at least once. They also beat each playoff team except the Boston Celtics, the Spurs and the Golden State Warriors at least once. They beat the Denver Nuggets, the team with the best home record in the NBA at 38-3, in Denver to complete the season sweep against that franchise. And they beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the Staples Center for the first time since December 17, 2006 when Gilbert Arenas scored a franchise record 60 points in a double overtime thriller.

All those victories are quality wins against good opponents. Considering the fact that in most all of those games the Wizards were missing either John Wall, Nenê or Bradley Beal, the results are downright stunning. I just wonder how many more games against quality opponents we could have won with those three on the court together more regularly.

Those quality wins, plus some other assorted victories, were good for a tie with the Detroit Pistons for 11th place finish in the Eastern Conference with 29 wins; the Cleveland Cavaliers, Charlotte Bobcats and Orlando Magic all finished with fewer wins than the Wizards. Yet despite all the success against the elite teams in the league, the Wizards managed only a 3-12 record against the Piston, Cavs, 'Cats and Magic, including going 0-for against the Pistons and Cavs. So while the wins against playoff teams are fun, there's no way this team will be close to the playoffs without at least holding serve at home against the worst teams in our conference. At home, the Wizards were an unimpressive 2-5 against this bunch.

Overall: Encouraging. The team culture seems serious enough that given a healthy set of players from the start of the season, we ought to be able to get up for the bad teams.

Home Record (Encouraging) vs. Road Record (Discouraging)

This past season, the Wizards posted a 22-19 home record, their best home mark since the 2007-2008 season, the last year the franchise made a playoff appearance. That home record was better than the playoff bound Milwaukee Bucks and all the non-playoff teams in the Eastern Conference except the Philadelphia 76ers. The second half of the season featured a week with consecutive Monday-Wednesday-Friday victories over the Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets and a nine game home winning streak that lasted more than a month. Overall, the Wizards outscored their opponents by 121 points at Verizon Center this season, a 3.0 point average margin of victory. That's good. With a little better home record and a decent road record, we would likely be a playoff team.

On the flip side, the Wizards managed only seven victories on the road, good for second worst in the NBA, ahead of only the Charlotte Bobcats. And therein lies the problem. In our 41 games away from home, the Wizards managed to defeat only the New Orleans Hornets, Denver Nuggets, Portland Trail Blazers, Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors, Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers. I'd take our 4-11 road record against the Western Conference some years but posting a miserable 3-26 on the road against Eastern Conference opponents won't get it done. This year is the third time in the last five years the Wizards have failed to win at least 10 games on the road, including a season two years ago with only three road wins. Just not good enough. We don't have to be a spectacular road team to make the playoffs. The Boston Celtics made the postseason this year as the seventh seed in the East with only 14 road wins. But any fewer than that likely won't cut it.

Overall: Discouraging. The Wizards' ability to win away from home is critical to short term and long term success. This is not an isolated incident in the past three years. There's work to be done here. A lot of work.

Wall/Beal (Encouraging) vs. Vesely/Singleton (Discouraging)

Of the 11 players who spent their entire NBA season on the Wizards' roster this year, six were on rookie contracts. All six (John Wall, Kevin Seraphin, Trevor Booker, Jan Vesely, Chris Singleton and Bradley Beal) were effectively drafted by the Wizards either through one of our own draft choices or by acquiring another team's choice on draft day and, barring a trade between now and opening day, all six will be on the roster when the 2013-2014 season commences.

The Wizards' recent track record in drafting quality players and/or developing young players into stars or even serviceable ones is not good. The Wizards' first round draft picks since I became a season ticket holder reads like a casualty list: Kwame Brown, Juan Dixon, Jared Jeffries, Jarvis Hayes, Oleksiy Pecherov, Nick Young, JaVale McGee. None of these players is either currently with the Wizards or starting for another NBA franchise. No doubt the selections were poor but the Wizards' staff also seemed incapable of molding them into NBA players. Is it the players or the system? Did the Wizards just get unlucky or is there something wrong here?

Of the six rookie contract players on our roster this year drafted by the team, it looks like we have finally struck a small measure of gold in our first picks of the 2010 and 2012 NBA Drafts, John Wall and Bradley Beal. Those two seem to honestly have star potential and could solidify the team's starting backcourt for years to come. They seem not only to possess the skill to play at a high level, but also the drive and determination to win games.

Sandwiched between those two years in 2011 were first round picks Jan Vesely and Chris Singleton. Both had fairly productive rookie years, admittedly due to a slew of injuries to other players that thrust this pair into heavy action. But this past season, each took major steps backwards. Both played in fewer games this year than last despite the season being 16 games longer and both saw diminished numbers, mostly due to reduced minutes. But Vesely's field goal percentage dropped from 53.7% to 50.0% and his free throw percentage dropped from an awful 53.2% to an abhorrent 30.8%. Singleton's numbers were eerily similar: his three point field goal percentage dropped from a respectable 34.6% to a please don't shoot 19.4% and his free throw shooting dropped a little more than 10 points. 

So is it the players or the system? Did the Wizards get lucky with Wall and Beal and unlucky with Vesely and Singleton or is there something wrong here?

Overall: Discouraging. I believe there are significant issues with the Wizards ability to select quality NBA players and develop them into stars. I believe Wall and Beal are succeeding despite the Wizards' system.

Hanging up the Chris Singleton jersey for the season.

Defense (Encouraging) vs. Offense (Discouraging)

In what has to be the happiest news of the season, the Wizards are actually a good defensive team. Their defensive efficiency (which measures the number of points an opponent scores per 100 possessions) ranked 8th this season at 100.6 points per 100 possessions. This is without question a big improvement. In the 10 seasons prior to last season, the Wizards ranked anywhere from 14th to 29th (out of 30) in defensive efficiency and I have to believe the change is a result of Randy Wittman's coaching style and his insistence on management finding players who can play solid defense.

Of the top 19 teams in defensive efficiency in the NBA this season, only three failed to qualify for the postseason  so defensive efficiency is a pretty good indicator of team success. None of the three who didn't qualify were in the top 10 other than the Wizards. And for the Wizards this year, this was truly a team effort: Trevor Ariza was the only Wizard to receive a vote for Defensive Player of the Year award and he only received one. My speculation in my mid-season post that the Okafor/Ariza for Lewis trade may have been a mistake appears to be the very reason our defensive efficiency jumped 15 spots and 3.2 points in a single year.

So why did the defensively efficient 8th ranked Wizards not make the playoffs along with the 7th ranked Miami Heat and 9th ranked Los Angeles Clippers? In a word: offense. The Wizards finished dead last in offensive efficiency in the NBA this year, a far cry from the 1st ranked Heat and 4th ranked Clippers. In 100 possessions, the Wizards managed only 97.8 points, a full 12.5 points per 100 possessions behind the Heat.

When I think about the offensive struggles of the Wizards this year, my thoughts go immediately to shooting and turnovers. The Wizards were 27th in the league in field goal percentage this year and 23rd in turnovers. The shooting percentage in the backcourt is understandable considering our backup or starting shooting guard for much of the second half of the season was Garrett Temple. Nothing against Garrett here (I think he contributed mightily in the second half of the season) but he's a guy that should be the third option at point or shooting guard, not the guy at the starting two.

But the turnover number is perhaps a little more counterintuitive. After all, our starting point guard is supposed to be one of the best point guards in the game, right? I could argue John Wall is one of the best point guards in the game in a number of areas, but I can't argue that in the turnover department. John didn't play enough this year to be ranked in the turnover per game statistic but if he had, his 3.2 turnovers per game average this year would leave him tied for 6th worst in the league (tied with Kyrie Irving, interestingly enough). His 2.4 assist to turnover ratio would have placed him 30th best. Not exactly bad, but not elite point guard numbers. Chris Paul led this statistical category with a 4.26 mark. A.J. Price, John's backup, was 4th in the league this year. No doubt John's not the only culprit in our 23rd ranking in the league but I'd start here for improvement.

Digging a little deeper, it looks like the Wizards could stand some improvement in two other offensive areas: free throw shooting and offensive rebounding. We have some very good free throw shooters on our team; we also have some very poor free throw shooters who need some work. But we are very deficient in offensive rebounding. Our offensive rebounding rate was 25th and only one of our players (Emeka Okafor) ranked in the top 38 players in offensive rebounds per game this year.

Overall: Encouraging. The Wizards' ability to suddenly play quality defense means something. Good defensive teams succeed in the NBA. The offense needs work no doubt but the defensive side of the ball is more important.

At the end of all this, I'm not sure I'm any more out of my post season funk than I was at the beginning of this post, but there's enough encouragement here that if we hang on to all the good things, which seems possible considering the personnel under contract next year, and correct some of the discouraging things, we might squeak into the playoffs next year. I'm always hopeful.

Next Up: My Wizards Wish List

Who The Hell Is Paul Willis?

The home portion of the Washington Wizards 2012-2013 schedule came to an unceremonious ending last night with a lackluster 97-86 loss to the also struggling Philadelphia 76ers. After reeling off nine consecutive wins at Verizon Center, the team dropped its last two to New York and Philly to end the season with a 22-19 home record. Not bad, but not great.

There's no doubt in my mind when the Wizards season comes to a close on Wednesday on the road against the Chicago Bulls that this wasn't the season I'd hoped for back in October. But injuries to John Wall and Nenê early in the year and then struggles with chemistry and getting John back into playing shape just dug us too deep an early season hole that we couldn't recover from. But while my team's performance on the court may have been below my expectations, there's one part of the game experience this year that far exceeded my pre-season expectations: the Chipotle Burrito Dash!

There is no shortage of in game entertainment at an NBA game. The league is definitely erring on the side of caution when it comes to crowd engagement, whether it be the kiss cam, t-shirt toss, halftime shows, dunking, audience contests or anything else they have going on during timeouts and other stoppages in play. There's no way they are going to let a minute pass without something to distract you. And most of this stuff I absolutely hate. But not the Burrito Dash, for one simple reason: if it works out correctly for me, I end up with a free Chipotle meal.

Oooh! Oooh! Me! Me! Me! The beginning of the Burrito Dash.

I can't remember when the Burrito Dash first appeared at Verizon Center but it's been years and years now. Back when they started this promotion, they used to hand (and sometimes toss which could be messy) actual burritos to people in the crowd. I believe, based on the reaction of one guy in front of us many years ago, that the burritos they gave away contained only beans and rice so if you "won" the Burrito Dash you ended up with a very filling, probably not as tasty as a personally ordered Chipotle meal in your hands when you likely weren't hungry anyway.

But then a few years ago, they changed the contest. Instead of an actual burrito, you got handed or tossed (way easier to toss these) a shrink wrapped Chipotle t-shirt compressed into the shape and size of a burrito and wrapped in foil. The t-shirt is OK, but the real prize in underneath the rubber band around the t-shirt: a coupon (in farmer trading card form which is awesome) for a free meal at Chipotle. There are a lot of opportunities each game for me to wave my arms, jump in the air or dance during a Wizards game and I decline to participate in all these opportunities except for the Burrito Dash. That coupon is worth yelling, screaming and waving my arms to get one tossed my way.

The farmer trading card (aka coupon) is the real prize here.

With Friday night's loss, I closed the book on 39 Wizards home games this season at Verizon Center. 29 of those games were witnessed from my season seats in Section 109 just five rows behind the hockey boards (I spent the other ten games elsewhere in VC far out of the reach of t-shirts tossed into the crowd). Of those 29 contests, I walked out of six of those games with a Chipotle coupon which I consider to be an excellent success rate. Better than one out of every five games I came away from a Wizards game with a free delicious Chipotle burrito. That alone is worth the price of admission to those six games.

The reward for me is consistent: a burrito with cilantro-lime rice, black beans, either chicken or carnitas, tomatillo-red chile salsa, sour cream and cheese.  I always get the same thing and I absolutely LOVE it every time. I don't know how they make some of this stuff taste so good. I wish they would publish their cilantro-lime rice and tomatillo-red chile salsa recipes. I've tried and failed at duplicating the salsa a couple of times; that sweet and spicy stuff alone is well worth the block and half walk from my home. I'd probably crawl for that salsa if I had to.

I just finished my last meal redemption about an hour ago and I'm now all out of coupons and I just have to say thank God for this place! I'll be back at Verizon Center next fall jumping up and down to get more t-shirts and coupons tossed my way.  In the meantime, I'll be gladly paying for my meals.

The payoff! I'd eat these every day if I thought it was healthy.

Oh, I almost forgot the subject of this post. Paul Willis is a hog farmer (sorry...hog farming crusader) and supplier of pork for Chipotle to turn into delicious carnitas. I think it's fantastic that Chipotle recognizes their suppliers and puts them on coupons masquerading as trading cards complete with foil accents. I'd keep these as part of my Wizards card collection if they weren't tradable for food.

Ravenous Pigs And Rusty Spoons

The trip to Orlando that I took last weekend to watch the Wizards and kick back for a few days was one of the least planned trips in recent memory for me. There was minimal research completed; the only maps I took were four letter size printouts from Google Maps; and I didn't really understand when the places I wanted to visit were open until I checked on my iPad the day before. I just figured vacationing in Orlando wouldn't be that complicated and wouldn't require the down-to-the-minute scheduling that I usually employ when traveling.

The lack of planning theme for this trip extended to picking restaurants, but for a totally different reason. My memories of Orlando food from my last vacation there in 1999 involved chain sit-down restaurants similar to Applebee's and Chili's or unspectacular one off establishments like the places in downtown Celebration. Call me cynical on this one, but my expectations of dining in the Orlando area was that I would do well to steer clear of Sizzler and Ponderosa type steakhouses and just take my chances with whatever I could find.

Planning where to eat on vacation is important to me, mostly because I have high expectations for restaurant food. When I first started traveling on my own after college, I sought out brewpubs or breweries that served food since the food didn't matter much to me, but the beer was really important. Now that I can cook fairly good food on a regular basis, I try to find restuarants which will serve food equal to or better than what I can make at home. This has proved to be a tall order on some trips and lately I've turned more and more to food critics and food bloggers for guidance. But on this trip I didn't do any of that; I just took my chances. So imagine my surprise when I found not one, but two, really excellent restaurants on back to back days, making this quick trip down south a culinary trip to remember.

Right before the Wizards game Friday night, we ate at The Rusty Spoon, which was literally the first restaurant we saw after exiting the parking garage we found. Total random choice. Dinner consisted of stuffed eggs, a lamb sandwich and a couple (ok...three) Bell's Oberon ales. The eggs were a nice starter, filled with herbs, pickles and sundried tomatoes. Not a deviled egg  per se but a nice salty and sweet twist on a deviled egg dish.

The lamb sandwich was one of the best sandwiches I've had in a while, served with an onion-golden raisin jam and homemade ricotta salata on a toasted Moroccan roll. It was sweet and buttery without being greasy, the jam added some wonderful sweetness and the ricotta lightened the whole dish up. I was completely not prepared to blog about this meal so didn't take any pictures but trust me, the sandwich looked as good as it tasted. If I lived in Orlando, I'd hit this place up a lot before basketball games. Better than anything around Verizon Center that I have been to. If you are ever in downtown Orlando, I recommend you head over here for a meal.

The Ravenous Pig's open kitchen.

But before and after we found The Rusty Spoon, we found The Ravenous Pig. I literally picked this place off a double sided list of restaurant names we were handed by our hotel's front desk. Another total random choice. The list had me at "ravenous", "pig" and "gastropub". After walking for a little while and discovering it wasn't within walking distance, we headed back to the hotel, got in the car and drove to Winter Park, finally finding the place in a nondescript sort of strip mall type building close to the road. Not inspiring on the outside.

The interior, however, is well designed and light filled so it looked like a good spot to have lunch once we got inside. The menu had some interesting choices and the beer list had some great brews. Because the starters seemed more appetizing than the main dishes, we went with four of those: deviled eggs, house-made soft pretzels, rock shrimp tacos and smoked oyster hushpuppies. The eggs were a good start, although not as good in my opinion as the eggs we would have the next day at The Rusty Spoon; a little more salumi bits would have added more pork and salt and more taste. The pretzels were tasty but overall probably the least impressive dish we ordered; the taleggio-porter fondue served with the pretzels went really well with the shoestring fries we would order later.

The Ravenous Pig's beer list. Take a wild guess what I went for here. Hard to pass up Ommegang beers.

But the tacos and hushpuppies were real stars. Both struck a wonderful balance between sweet, creamy, fatty, acidic and spicy. The rock shrimp were battered but not too much to stop the sweetness of the shrimp shining through. The avocado creme fraiche drizzled on top was creamy and the cabbage slaw and pickled jalapenos added crunch and heat.

I've always been a little fascinated with hushpuppies and so have had them almost every chance I get and I've always been disappointed; I even made some disappointing ones at home once. They are completely American; there's no way we have anything like these things in my homeland of England although I probably first had hushpuppies ironically at Arthur Treacher's. The Ravenous Pig's hushpuppies justified my years of eating bad deep fried balls of cornmeal. They were moist, not dry, and sweet from kernels of corn in the mix. The orange-ghost chile aioli and hot sauce gastrique added some heat but didn't kill your palate, like anything with ghost chiles can do, and the pickled green tomatoes added some acidity and lightened the dish.

Our four starters were delicious enough that we actually ordered a lamb B.L.T. (a little bread heavy) with shoestring fries to top the meal off before we waddled back to our hotel with that lunch as the last meal of the day.

Shrimp and grits! With Ommegang's Rare Vos, of course.

As if lunch wasn't enough (and it wasn't), we decided a second Ravenous Pig trip on our three day trip was totally appropriate so we returned Saturday night for a quick dinner at their back bar in front of the restaurant's open kitchen. The octopus appetizer with hints of chorizo, harrisa and chile was a perfect lead in to a creamy and sweet shrimp and grits dish with a twist. Smaller royal red shrimp were used rather than larger head on jumbo shrimp I'm used to and the tomato chutney and chorizo oil made the dish different enough that I was glad I had it.

And to top the meal off, I had dessert: a cold coconut rice pudding with blueberry compote in the bottom of the dish with a scoop of chantilly cream resting on caramelized sugar cap (a la creme brûlée). Just incredible!

I'm not sure that I've been more pleasantly surprised with my choice of eats on a trip ever. When I get back to Orlando next, I'll definitely find my way back to one or both of these places for a second or third go-round. My opinion of the culinary scene in central Florida is changed forever and for the better. If anybody reading this is in the area, please check out one of these places. You won't be disappointed.

The remains of lunch (from left to right): empty hushpuppies bowl, Ommegang Rare Vos, orange-ghost chile aioli (behind the Ommegang), empty rock shrimp tacos plate, hushpuppy ready to be eaten, taleggio-porter fondue metal ramekin, whole grain mustard ramekin, shoestring fries.

Orlando Tourist Alert!

The first time I went on a road trip to watch my beloved Washington Wizards play ball was 2007 when I went to Minnesota to watch the Wiz play the Timberwolves on a Sunday in February. That trip was supposed to be a one day affair, flying into Minneapolis just before tip off and getting out of town a few hours later. But mother nature had other ideas and sent heavy snows to the D.C. area which closed all the local airports and forced an unplanned overnight stay up north for me and my friend Mike.

The night we got stranded found us at a bar talking to our bartender about living in Minnesota. The next morning we explored Minneapolis on foot, walking down the Mississippi River, checking out the Mall of America and discovering the wonderful art deco Minneapolis Post Office. That walk around town got me thinking that maybe trips to see the Wizards would be better if they featured a little exploration of whatever city we were visiting and a night or two stay rather just getting into and out of town as soon as possible. Since that 2007 trip, I've made four other trips to see the Wizards on the road and I've stayed overnight on all four, with the most recent being last weekend when I took a four day trip to Orlando to watch the Wizards take on (and lose to) the home Magic.

The entrance to Kennedy Space Center, with the Atlas and Redstone rockets used in the Mercury program on the right.

Of all the places in the United States, Orlando has to be THE tourist mecca, doesn't it? I can't imagine the place existing anywhere close to the way it does without all the tourist attractions that have been built there. As such, we had no problem filling a couple of days being tourists like everyone else down there. While it was really really tough to pass up The Holy Land Experience, we decided to spend our two whole days in central Florida at Disney's Animal Kingdom and the Kennedy Space Center. And I'm serious about The Holy Land Experience. I think it would be fantastic to see what that's all about, although let's face it, there's no way I'm getting my money's worth there.

While I was excited to go back to Animal Kingdom, which I had visited shortly after it opened in 1999, I was really looking forward to a return trip to Kennedy Space Center (abbreviated as KSC, which just sounds too much like KFC). I was last there in 1980 with my family on what was probably our first real fancy vacation after we moved to the United States. According to my mom, it cost $800 for all four of us to travel to and stay in the Orlando area including passes to Disney World (at that time they didn't have any of the other parks) and transportation to Kennedy airport in New York. I was a lot younger then and have very little memory of that trip (other than sitting on the Dumbo ride for my sister's birthday fireworks on July 4 - random, I know) and none at all of going to Kennedy Space Center. At that time in my life my understanding of the space exploration program was that at some point men had landed on the moon but pretty much every kid is fascinated by space travel and astronauts, right? The one thing I know for sure happened last time I visited Kennedy Space Center is that I picked a very stylish t-shirt, shown below on me at Niagara Falls the following summer. Love the shorts, socks, hair and digital watch; they all complement my brown sneakers beautifully.

I'd like to think that I understand a lot more about the United States' space program now than I did in the early 1980s, although admittedly most of my knowledge is based on watching the movies The Right Stuff about 50 times (my favorite movie of all time) and Apollo 13 about five times. I thought it would be interesting to flesh out my knowledge of the Gemini and Apollo programs a little and try to get those on par with what The Right Stuff taught me about the Mercury program. As an aside, I only agreed to go with my dad to see The Right Stuff if he would take me to see The Osterman Weekend; he definitely picked the better of the two movies to go see.

Kennedy Space Center today features museum buildings, an outdoor rockets display, two IMAX theaters, a shuttle simulator ride and some sort of Angry Birds attraction (which we skipped). But the highlight for me was the bus tour of the entire facility. The tour takes you around the Vehicle Assembly Building (where they build the rockets), down the path that the mobile crawler uses to transport the rockets to the launch pads and over to an observation gantry where you can get a distant view of the launch pads and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where the Mercury and Gemini launches took place. Kennedy was built specifically for the Apollo program because the launch pads at Cape Canaveral couldn't accommodate the Saturn V rockets that would be needed for lunar missions. We also saw a lot of alligators along the way hanging out in the water along the sides of the roads. I'm not sure I'd be thrilled about working at a place where they have wild animals that can eat a person just hanging out.

Halfway through the bus tour, there is a stop at the Apollo / Saturn V Center, which contains the control room used during the Apollo 8 launch, the mission that first orbited the moon, and a life size Saturn V rocket, all thirty plus stories in height on its side. The exhibits articulate pretty effectively the process of a lunar mission and the sheer size of the Saturn V rocket is impressive. It's just amazing to me that man could conceive of and execute sending someone to the moon and back, especially considering what crude (compared to today) equipment they had available to them in the 1960s. It's interesting to note that every section of the Saturn V rocket appeared to be manufactured by a different defense contractor. Our government at work, I guess.

If I had another opportunity to go back to Kennedy Space Center, I think I'd take the Vehicle Assembly Building tour. I think it would be amazing to see the space they assemble the rockets prior to launch. But the basic bus tour gave so much information, it was definitely the way to go for an almost first time visitor.

Of course no trip to Kennedy Space Center would be complete without some freeze dried ice cream. I can't remember how I got my hands on my first freeze dried ice cream all those years ago (it may have been at Kennedy) but there's something about it which is both awful and awesome at the same time. So before heading out of the park and back to Orlando I treated myself to a cookies and cream freeze dried ice cream sandwich. Delicious. Actually not all that delicious but it brought back memories so it was totally worth it.

And in memory of my trip here in the early 1980s and that awesome photo of me at Niagara Falls, I felt I needed to pick up a new Kennedy Space Center t-shirt and strike the pose in front of the Mercury program rockets. I'm a little bigger and have a little less hair on my head, but I'm thinking I look a little more stylish today, although I'm probably way off base here. It's probably just the Ray-Bans. Anyway, I'm glad I'm around thirty some years later to do this again.