O Canada

I'm guessing there are folks out there somewhere in this wide world of ours that are considered experts in countries' national anthems, either through their own claims or by endorsement of others. If there are (and I'm really totally guessing here; I actually have no clue), I'm not one of them. I think my only real contact with national anthems these days is sadly enough through watching sports. And since I gave up watching the Olympics years ago, I'm left with pro basketball and the FIFA World Cup to keep my anthem recognizing skills sharp.

If you asked me to sing or hum some national anthems, I could get to those of four countries and that's it: my original home country of the United Kingdom, my current home of the United States, Canada and France. I could maybe loosely describe Germany's or Italy's anthem as some sort of dour military march music from watching those teams play soccer, probably because that's exactly what those tunes are, but I'd struggle with anything else. Of the four I know, I'm not particularly a big fan of God Bless the Queen/King (too much royalty), The Star Spangled Banner (too old) or La Marseillaise (too French), but I absolutely love O Canada. While I have a limited canon to choose from, I can without a shadow of a doubt declare O Canada is my favorite national anthem of all time.

The thing I love about O Canada is that it represents a sort of timeless love ("true patriot love in all thy sons command") and protection ("we stand on guard for thee") for the nation, including the land that makes up the country ("our home and native land"). It is not about a moment in time when a battle was won, like The Star Spangled Banner. Nor for that matter is about a person who just happens to be the head of state like the United Kingdom's anthem. And it's simple with not too many words so rock stars are less liable to screw it up during prominent sporting events.

In many ways, I see it as the Canadian counterpart to America the Beautiful, which I think is a way better choice for our own national anthem than The Star Spangled Banner. America the Beautiful to me celebrates a love of the land that is the United States in all its variety and wonder. And the places that make up our country are some of the most beautiful and amazing in the world, at least from my eyes based on the 41 states I've seen so far. It also celebrates the values that make this country what it is (liberty, brotherhood, law, etc.) just like O Canada does.

O Canada has been Canada's official national anthem since 1980, which is not very long at all, but it served essentially as the national anthem for decades before that because Canada hadn't adopted one. O Canada comes in both English and French versions; I naturally assumed from my self-centered personal viewpoint that it was written in English first and then translated into French. Not true. The song was written by Adolphe-Basile Routhier and Calixa Lavallee (yeah, they are of French descent) and was first performed in 1880. It was not until 28 years later that the current English version of O Canada was written. Since then, it has been tweaked a few times as these things tend to be when they get into the public domain and, more particularly, parliament.

Each NBA season, I get to hear O Canada at least once and most seasons twice when the Toronto Raptors (worst nickname in basketball) come play the Wizards at Verizon Center. The NBA schedule consists of two games against every non-conference opponent, four games against each divisional opponent and three or four games against all the other teams in the league. So basically four out of every five years, you miss a home game against one of those "other" teams. Also, for some reason when the Raptors come to town, the anthems, which are usually played right after the warmup session, are played about halfway through. I've never been able to figure this out.

This year happens to be the fifth out of five years for the Wizards hosting the Raptors and the Toronto franchise will only be in town once (on January 31 which is also Marcin Gortat Action Figure Day) during the 2014-2015 season. That means I only get to hear O Canada once this year at Verizon Center, so I'm glad I took in the Wizards-Raptors game north of the border this past weekend to hear O Canada once more this year. The game was terrible for the Wizards but at least I got the Canadian national anthem out of it. I'm jealous of Raptors fans in this regard. They get to hear O Canada every game. Of course, they also have to listen to the Star Spangled Banner every game because there are no more Canadian teams so they play an American team each time they step on the court. Can't have everything I guess.

The Great White North

In case it wasn't obvious from some of my recent posts on this blog, I am just a little more than happy about the 2014-2015 NBA season being underway. It helps a ton that the Wizards got off to a 4-1 start in their first five games, their best start to a season since the 2005-2006 season. But the Wizards' fan-friendly schedule is also fueling my enthusiasm: seven of the first nine weekends of the Wizards season (so...the weekends in calendar year 2014) feature either a Friday or a Saturday home game, which means I get to see the Wiz in person at the Verizon Center every weekend but two before the new year. How awesome is that? "It's very awesome" is the answer.

This past weekend, however, was one of the two 2014 weekends without a home game; the Wizards played in Toronto Friday night and then in Indianapolis Saturday night. Now the second weekend of the season is a tough one to go without a home game, so the schedule this past weekend left me with basically two options: stay in D.C. (or Arlington actually) and watch on TV, or head out of town and see my team live. Rather than mope around our nation's capital, I chose to head to Canada for my first ever basketball game north of the border.

If my memory is at all correct, I believe it had been more than 20 years since I had last visited Toronto. Attending school in Michigan and upstate New York meant Canada was really close and Toronto was the closest (and really only) major Canadian city you could drive to so I think I visited three or four times in the seven and half years I spent in school. I was excited to go back to see how much the place had changed and how the city looked from a basketball fan's perspective. The last time I visited after all, Toronto didn't even have a basketball team.

My hope for this past weekend was to fly in Friday afternoon (which I did); see the Wizards either beat the Raptors or at least play a very competitive game Friday night; play tourist in Toronto on Saturday  and find somewhere to watch the Wizards-Pacers game despite the Maple Leafs playing that night (which I did); and come home Sunday (which I did) with a couple of more wins under the Wizards' belt, sitting comfortably at 6-1 and occupying the top spot in the Eastern Conference. Wow! That previous sentence was long. Let's move on.

Getting ready for the opening tip. The game was competitive to this point.

The plan worked perfectly. Except for the Wizards-Raptors part, which was the whole reason I went to Canada in the first place. It was a complete disaster and by far the worst performance of the young season. The game wasn't competitive at all; not even the opening tip was in doubt. The Raptors got off to a 14-2 lead and never looked back from there. They thoroughly dominated the Wizards in every facet of the game; we looked like a lottery team playing the best team in the league. And Kyle Lowry by the way is super impressive up close in a game watched from the first row behind the hockey boards. He was quicker and faster and on most plays a couple of steps ahead of everyone on our team (he ended up with a triple double). I know it was one game of 82 but this was the first real test of the season for the Wizards and they failed. Miserably.

So because the game was so terrible, the preceding paragraph is all I'm going to write about the actual action on the court. But I think there's a lot more that was interesting about the game experience in Toronto, starting with the Air Canada Centre. 

Historically, sports arenas in cities have occupied a significant place in the city's fabric. Sport is a public spectacle and the sporting arena, be it for basketball, baseball, hockey, football or any other sort of sport, essentially becomes a public space within the city on game day. These days, the actual building of course is restricted to paying customers, but the event is for the city really, not for the small percentage of the city's residents who happen to be attending on any given night. 

Given the public nature of what goes on there, the arena as a public building has historically been sited  in some important manner within the city, usually adjoining some grand public space or occupying a site with important relationships to other key structures within the city fabric. Most NBA arenas I have visited over the last 20 or so years follow this model, be it Madison Square Garden in New York or the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Even the US Airways Arena in Phoenix, which I find to be a city almost wholly lacking in urban planning, has significant plaza space outside some of its entrances.

The Air Canada Centre as seen from the CN Tower.

I have to say that the Air Canada Centre completely breaks the traditional mold of the sports arena being sited in a publicly important way. And I don't think that's a positive. The building is located in a tight urban neighborhood just south of the current Union Station in Toronto and it is packed up against the elevated Gardiner Expressway to the south, which limits an identifiable presence for the building from that side within the city, except to automobile traffic on the Expressway. The building is actually difficult to recognize, mostly because it is so close to other buildings and the signage on the arena is so reserved. You could use "difficult to see". I'm being nice with "reserved".

But the biggest reason the arena is hard to spot is probably the most admirable feature of the design, which is completely and totally ironic. And I'm talking actual ironic, not Alanis Morissette ironic (I figured that was appropriate since she's Canadian and any shot I can take against that stupid song is worth it). Before the construction of the Air Canada Centre, the site where the building is located was occupied by the Toronto Postal Delivery Building, an Art Deco building built in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The building, or more accurately the building's facades since the majority of the building is gone, was protected by the Ontario Heritage Act, which meant that the skin of the original building needed to be incorporated into the exterior walls of the Air Canada Centre.

This requirement to keep the majority of the exterior walls of the Postal Delivery Building causes two problems. First, the entire east facade and a significant portion of the north and south facades of the ACC are defined by the Art Deco remains of the Postal Delivery Building. This makes the arena look decidedly un-arena-like. Despite the preservation of the wonderful reliefs depicting the delivery of mail via all sorts of transportation, it doesn't scream public assembly space, which I think it sort of needs to.

The south facade of the Air Canada Centre. The roof of the arena can be seen at the top of the photo.

The second issue I have with the design is the original Postal Delivery Building is not large enough to hold a basketball and hockey arena so the envelope of the building is not confined to the original structure; it ends up way west of the original building and pokes up above to accommodate the main space within. The design of this part of the building is deliberately deferential to the historic fabric of the preserved city fabric and ends up having little character at all in my opinion. The issue with this is that the west side of the building, which is most visible from within the city, ends up just being blah. It could be a commercial building of some sort it's that nondescript.

While I'm in general not a fan of the building, I will say that the north side of it is mostly a success. That side of the building is a combination of new and old fabric but it is all completely enclosed and connected to Union Station to the north, creating a grand promenade and main entrance. It's really a pretty cool interior space once you find it. The issue is finding it because it's not easy to do. I suppose an interior gathering space outside an arena this far north on the globe is something we don't have to deal with in Washington. It's a good solution. I just don't like it considering the way the rest of the building is designed.

The other thing I'll say about the building (and this is really not about the building at all) is that it's loud! The game I attended last Friday was the Raptors' sixth overall and third home game of the year and it sounded like a playoff game in D.C. I know the game was a rout, but the crowd was into the game in a serious way from the opening tip and loud chants of "DE-FENSE" (or "DE-FENCE" I guess) were heard just five minutes into the game when the rout was already on. This atmosphere is both a credit to the Toronto fans and an indictment of the crowd at Verizon Center. Here I was in a city which is supposed to be about hockey watching a team with five winning seasons in its first 19 and I was impressed by the noise in the first week and a half of the season. And this was actual crowd noise, not some stupid piped in sound like they have in Miami or Boston. I'm going to make a personal commitment to make more noise at Verizon Center from now on.

Fourth quarter: me, TV and a tall glass of Molson Canadian.

While Friday night in Toronto was a total loss in every sense of the word (I ended up watching the fourth quarter in the bar below the arena while nursing a glass of Molson Canadian), my experience in Toronto had its bright spots. I managed to find some great food at the Queen and Beaver Public House and Bier Markt (try the poutine, I mean why would you not?) which came with some great Canadian beer. I also managed to walk on the Glass Floor at the CN Tower, which is literally a transparent floor 1,122 feet above the plaza around the Tower below. Its pretty freaky looking down at your feet and seeing the ground more than a thousand feet beyond the surface you are standing on but ultimately the Wizards' performance the night before was a whole lot more scary. Plus, I "held on" to the walls of the building, like that's going to do me any good if the glass, which was vibrating I swear, actually collapsed.

So the first weekend without a home game in Washington was a disaster. There's one more before 2015 in mid-December. That weekend we play a Friday night game in Miami. I'll be there for that one too. Hopefully it goes a little better than this past weekend.

On the CN Tower's Glass Floor. The glow behind me is the light from below. iPod camera is only so good.

My feet on the Glass Floor. Freaky stuff!

Playoffs Redux

During the 2012-2013 NBA season, I started exploring the hobby of collecting basketball cards. I used this blog as both an excuse and a justification to shell out some dough for a few rectangles of cardboard which I thought would occupy my attention for a few minutes.  I didn't think this was anything new for me. When I was a kid in England, I used to collect football (soccer, that is) cards and then when I moved to this country in the late '70s I got hooked on football (NFL, that is), baseball and hockey cards and kept that going in part as late as sophomore year of college. Since the mid 1980s though, the landscape of sports card collecting has changed drastically and I learned that pretty quickly. This hobby is now big business. During the 2012-2013 season, Panini America, who owns the NBA trading card rights, produced 26 different lines of basketball cards including some series that retailed for over $1,000 for a pack of 10. Insane, right?

I declined to pick up the box of 10 cards for over $1,000 ($1,250 to be precise) that year but ended up spending a significant amount of money anyway and accumulating a pretty good collection of Wizards cards. Some of these things are absolutely gorgeous and perfect for collecting signatures but I knew I couldn't continue at the pace I went at in my first year; it was just too much. So last year I cut back a lot and spent less than half of what I spent the first season, choosing to concentrate on specific series of cards. This year, I vowed to cut back even more. My intent was to ignore the first few issues of cards entirely and just make sure I collected what I really thought was worth collecting.

Unfortunately, Panini America made a series of insert cards in their Hoops cards that were just too good to resist; I fell for it and I'm glad I did. This year's Hoops collection includes a "Road to the Finals" set of cards which features a card for each playoff game in the 2014 NBA playoffs. The front of the card features the star of the winning team for each particular game; the back of the card shows the final score and a quick narrative about the game. As a point of clarification, most sets of sports cards these days feature a base set of cards which is pretty easy to collect and then a series of insert cards that are aligned against a number of themes which are rarer and take a little more hunting to gather a full set.

Last year's Wizards team made the franchise's deepest playoff run in 35 years, moving out of the first round of the playoffs for the third time since 1979 and then securing two wins in the second round before ultimately collapsing in the second half of game four against the Indiana Pacers and succumbing for good two games later. These cards are the perfect way to remember each game in that couple of weeks' period so I decided to get a hold of the cards for all eleven playoff games to add to my collection. I know these will stir memories every time I pull them out and look at them.

Our first round playoff series last year was against the Chicago Bulls. It lasted just five games with the good guys winning four games to one so Panini's set features four Wizards cards and one Bulls card, each one numbered to an edition of 2014. The notable thing about this five card set for me is that the Wizards cards feature four different players in Nenê, Bradley Beal, Trevor Ariza and John Wall. That series was truly a team effort with no one player from our side dominating for more than a game. That balanced attack allowed us to completely overwhelm the Bulls and make them look like an offensively challenged, overworked-in-the-regular-season squad, starting with the 2-0 lead we took in Chicago.

Coming home for one game at least wasn't so sweet; we lost game three behind 35 points from Mike Dunleavy, who is featured on the one Bulls card in this series. That was the same game that Nenê was ejected (and subsequently suspended) for holding his head against Jimmy Butler's (there's really no other way to put what he did) for a few seconds. Game four featured a 17-2 game opening run, a dominant performance from Trevor Ariza and some late game "Free Nenê!" chants from the sellout crowd at Verizon Center. We never saw the Bulls that year again in Washington, finishing them off in game five in the windy city. John Wall was the star that night.

Unfortunately, game four in the first round was the only win the Washington home crowd would see in those playoffs. The second round against the Pacers was a six game affair with each team winning more than losing on each others' floor but the Pacers managed a win at home in game two (when Roy Hibbert who had been invisible for the entire playoffs decided to acknowledge he actually knew how to play basketball) for the edge in the series. Because the Pacers won, the second round series of cards feature four Pacers cards and just two Wizards cards, this time numbers to an edition of 999.

This series is not so much fun to remember. Trevor Ariza was perfect from three point range in game one and the win in Indiana that night seemed like it foreshadowed a repeat of the Chicago series. Some folks around Washington even started punching the Wizards' tickets for the Eastern Conference Finals. Not so fast. There was a reason the Pacers were the best team in the east in the regular season and Roy Hibbert, David West and Paul George proved it in the next three games. George killed us in game four when it looked like we were on our way to an easy victory, up 17 with less than nine minutes to go in the third quarter.

Marcin Gortat stemmed the tide a bit in game five with a career game (and thus he's on the game five card) in Indiana, scoring 31 and grabbing 16 boards before David West and the rest of the Pacers put us away for good in the next game. That series featured only two games where the winning team scored over 100 points and it was the two games the Wizards won. But ultimately, it seemed that our team wasn't ready for that sort of stage quite yet. Hopefully it's something we can build on this year. We started to exorcise some of those demons last night when we defeated the Pacers in an ugly all too close overtime affair at Verizon Center.

If I had my druthers, I'd love for Panini to produce a set like this every year. I think it's a great way to celebrate teams' playoff runs. I know these things will serve as a memory jogger every time I want to take a trip to past Wizards success. Thanks, Panini. I've got a ways to go to get through the rest of your card issues this year. Looking forward to each one.

Daikaya Izakaya

It's November 1, the first day of the Wizards home slate for the 2014-2015 season. Thank God! I've been struggling the last three months with hoops withdrawal. There's only so much that the schedule release, making travel plans for road games and training camp can hold me over. The three preseason games offered a brief respite but now the season's here for real I'm going to think that all is right with the world again. And now that the season's starting (and the Wizards have actually won a game already), I can start thinking about food again. That's right, food.

One of the best parts of going to games (especially given the Wizards' win-loss history) is sampling cuisine at the innumerable restaurants around Verizon Center. Last fall, I wrote a blog post about my three favorite Penn Quarter food spots. Since I wrote that post, I've been to two of those places (Graffiato and Luke's Lobster) a combined one time. I know, I'm not really living up to what I'm writing. Some of that was the Wizards' fault; they allowed savvy fans like me to cash in Monumental Rewards points at an insanely low price for access to free food and drinks via VIP tickets which resulted in me eating at VC a lot during the season. The main reason that I shied away from those two places, though, was simpler. I found somewhere better: Daikaya Izakaya.

Daikaya Izakaya is located on the east side of Verizon Center, which for those of us who are Orange-liners is the far side. My natural tendency for years was not to explore restaurants on that side of the arena because (a) I'm sort of lazy and just naturally wouldn't go over there and (b) there was pretty much nothing except Burger King over there. Now I love Burger King, but it's not worth walking around the building most days. But lately the re-development around Verizon Center has stretched east towards Judiciary Square and there's some good stuff on the other side including what has become hands down my favorite restaurant in that part of town.

Daikaya Izakaya is, as one might think from the name, a Japanese place. The name of the restaurant is actually Daikaya. Izakaya refers to the format of the experience and traditionally meant a drinking establishment (specifically sake) which also offered customers the ability to stay and drink and eat. Today, the word izakaya most often refers  in the United States to a restaurant that serves small plates which are ordered throughout the meal; brought to the table when ready; and then shared. Think tapas, but Japanese style.

Daikaya is located at 705 6th Street NW. The restaurant has two parts: a ramen place downstairs and the izakaya place on the second floor. I've never been to the ramen part of the restaurant. The upstairs suits me so well that I'm not sure I'm ever going to visit. Entering the izakaya restaurant involves ascending a steep set of stairs to a room that is really not particularly large. There is a small bar to the immediate right with seemingly mismatched bar stools (there are actually just three different types I believe) which dominates the place despite its relatively modest size. The tables in the restaurant fill out the space on either side of the bar toward and away from the street.

If I were to create my ideal restaurant, it would have a bar as the front and center element of the design, serve really good food and beer and be dark-ish without being dank. Daikaya checks all these boxes off perfectly. The place has some light from the street windows on 6th Street and a little more from a skylight over the bar but the supplemental lighting that might really make the place bright is just not there. Instead, they have preferred to use sparse wall sconces and a series of hanging low-light-emitting Japanese paper lantern type fixtures that border on the kitschy. There's plenty of wood in the bar which helps absorb the light and makes you feel like the place has been just that way for ages.

Daikaya of course serves a variety of sake. But I like to drink beer when I'm sitting in a dark bar and they offer a well put together variety, stocking some of the standard Japanese beers  (Sapporo is $3 during happy hour!) but mixing in some lesser known local brews, including some Three Stars beer, a keg-only microbrew in D.C. that offers some interesting flavor combinations (go over there one weekend for an inspiring tour) and which is not that easy to find. Three Stars is now brewing a custom saison beer made with sansho peppers and yuzu peel specially for Daikaya which I think is just awesome. I checked the menu while writing this post and they are currently featuring two Maryland beers that I have never even heard of in addition to the Three Stars product. Any place serving local beers I've never heard of is alright with me.

But a restaurant isn't memorable without it's food and despite all the positive atmosphere and great beer, the place wouldn't be worth anything if its food wasn't memorable. And Daikaya's is. Usually when I like a restaurant, I find one dish that I really love and I keep ordering that again and again. Daikaya isn't like that. There are so many good things on their menu that it's actually difficult to order. Every time I look over the offerings, I want six or seven or eight dishes not including some of the specials, which are often the best part of the meal.

Enoki mushrooms in the foreground, chicken skin (left) and thigh (right) skewers towards the back.

Fortunately, the izakaya are bite sized and with small prices (unlike some other small plates places around VC - think Jaleo) so eating a great variety is possible on every trip. It's difficult for me to articulate what is best but the seared enoki mushroom, smashed pee wee potatoes and beef tenderloin skewers are must haves on every trip. I know the price of the enoki mushrooms seems high at $9 but it's totally worth it. Get it. Trust me. If you need to compensate by getting something cheaper as well, get some of the cheaper skewers like the chicken thighs ($3) or the really cheap chicken skin ($2) which was marinated in something incredibly delicious last time I was there.

I think if I were forced to eat at Daikaya before every Wizards game I'd be OK. I don't think I'd ever get bored. I've been there eight or ten times in the last year or so and I've only gone through about half the menu. I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually but it's showing no signs of doing so. I'm heading there tonight of course and I'm hoping they have the dynamite wings on the specials menu because they are absolutely, well, dynamite. 5:45 tonight so I can be in seats for the home opener 75 minutes later. Can't wait. This is a good time of year.

Ticketmaster Strikes Back

The Washington Wizards 2014-2015 home opener is scheduled for one week from today. The opponent is the Milwaukee Bucks, which seems like the easiest home opener opponent we could have been handed, and that's a good thing. Of course, it looked that way last year when we drew the Philadelphia 76ers in this same spot and that didn't work out so well at all. If there are two relatively easy things the Wizards could do to improve their record over last season, it would be getting off to a better start (like better than last year's 2-7 record over the first nine) and stop losing games to clearly inferior teams at home (think Philly, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Boston and Cleveland again).

The start of pro basketball in the District again means it's time for the secondary market for Wizards tickets to start heating up again. Last year, I tracked the price of seats similar to my season tickets in the upper and lower decks of Verizon Center vs. prices on StubHub. I priced equivalent tickets one week ahead of time and then the day of the game to see how the cost of the tickets I have bought from the team for the last 14 years compared to a la carte buying on the open secondary market. The results, which I thought were interesting but lacking of any sort of long term trending data, were posted on this blog in July of this year.

I'm intending to track similar data this year using pricing on both StubHub and nbatickets.com. StubHub's pricing is easy to track; the price shown on their website is the price you pay. I'm not sure how I will track pricing on nbatickets.com because there are a series of hidden fees you can only see upon checkout. Not surprisingly, since the words "hidden fees" were used, nbatickets.com is a Ticketmaster enterprise. I've decided to track prices on both sites this year because I perceive a change in market share away from StubHub and towards nbatickets.com. I'm not tracking pricing anywhere else because my perception is these two sites get the lion's share of the NBA secondary market business.

Big picture-wise, there are some small but potentially significant differences between the two sites. As of the beginning of the 2013-2014 NBA season, StubHub charged sellers 15% commission, whereas nbatickets.com charged only 5%. I assume most of the commission difference was collected by nbatickets.com from the buyer, although I could be wrong. I'm not sure it matters. StubHub this summer decided to change the seller commission to just 10% but then make it up on the buyer side. My belief on this change is that it will not lead to more money for the seller because the market won't tolerate prices going up and will self correct itself when sellers realize they are just going to have to cut their prices (and thus lower their commission) to last year's prices.

The bigger difference between the two sites is on the risk side. Ticketmaster owns the tickets that are being re-sold so they have the ability to cancel the original tickets and re-issue new tickets to the buyer, meaning there is no chance of the buyer's tickets being fake or having been re-sold multiple times on multiple outlets. There is less risk for the seller also; there's no way the buyer can come back to the seller and claim the tickets are invalid. StubHub can't offer this assurance; they put measures in place to combat this sort of risk but it's not guaranteed. Few things in life are, I guess.

I have bought and sold tickets on both sites and while I have always been nervous about the tickets I bought on StubHub working, I have never (repeat, NEVER) had tickets fail. There has never ever been a problem. On the seller side, though, I have had issues. One was my fault: I accidentally uploaded the wrong tickets once and the buyer didn't notice until they got to the gate. I lost a sale on that one but to StubHub's credit, they didn't punish me financially like they could have. The other was strictly a false claim by the purchaser. I sold some New York Jets - New England Patriots tickets a couple of years ago and received an email from StubHub that the buyer claimed my tickets didn't work just as the Jets went down 35-0 in the second quarter. Once again the customer service from StubHub was exemplary and they resolved the claim without my input after looking at the facts (I assume they told the buyer that they didn't believe him). I love StubHub. Their customer service is fantastic and they aren't a sort of inherently evil monopoly sort of thing like Ticketmaster but the guarantee isn't there. Just saying.

During the 2013-2014 NBA season, both StubHub and nbatickets.com offered buyer instant access to their ticket purchase. This year, that has all changed. Ticketmaster, it seems has a new policy that is affecting ticket availability on the market (and not just the secondary market). Instead of offering Wizards season ticket holders the ability to download and print the tickets they have spent their hard earned money on, this year we can only download three days before the event. While Ticketmaster's stated reason for this is to control the number of copies of tickets out there and increase security for ticket purchasers. I have to speculate this is in part or in whole aimed at producing a re-selling advantage over StubHub.

When purchasing tickets on StubHub, there is sort of a reassurance behind the "Instant Download" note next to the tickets you are buying. Maybe it's an instant gratification thing but I think it's more related to the fact that if I buy something, it's mine right there and then. I think that kind of emotional connection is important and positively affects purchases on StubHub. This year, you can't get that unless it's 72 hours or fewer before the event. If you buy or sell earlier than that, the Wizards season ticket holder has to remember to upload three days before the event time. That has to, in my opinion, affect sales on StubHub.

Just a couple of other notes about this policy. First it's clearly not NBA wide. I bought some tickets for the Wizards - Raptors November 7 game on StubHub and have had the pdf tickets for weeks now. Secondly, it appears this policy is being applied to the primary market in some areas. I am planning a trip to south Florida in mid-December and bought tickets to see the Wiz play the LeBron-less Heat while I'm in Miami. I paid my money, but Ticketmaster says I can't have my tickets until 72 hours before the event. That is surely going to inconvenience me because I will be in a hotel for a couple of nights before the game and I'll likely have to get my tickets printed some other way. That for sure doesn't increase my ticket security because I'm asking someone else to print them for me.

So why do I care about all this? There are a couple of reasons. First, I am very concerned about the Wizards one day pricing me out of my seats. There is a trend in sports ticket selling toward market driven pricing (the team calls it "dynamic pricing" which adjusts the price of tickets up or down depending on market demand and which sounds way cooler than it really is) and I think that is dangerous for the season ticket holder if applied the wrong way. I have sat through many many many bad Wizards seasons in the 14 years I have bought season tickets and dutifully shown up game after game to watch my team win or (mostly) lose while spending far above market value to do so. I think that's worth something. I am not a guy who just bails on the team when they start losing. I show up.

If we move to a clearly market driven pricing structure, that means that when the team is really good (if we ever get that far), the price of tickets could skyrocket and that could potentially hurt the season ticket holder. There are people out there willing to spend all their basketball dollars for years just to see one important game. I believe it's important to see every game, so I have less money to spend on just one game. I'm hoping we never get there; I love the season ticket holder discount based on buying an entire season at once. But if we do, I'd really like to see how my tickets' worth measures up to the market.

Secondly, Ted Leonsis has talked a few times in meetings with season ticket holders about the value of our tickets on the secondary market as a benefit to the season ticket holder. As the team gets better, the cost of tickets should increase (I agree with this) and therefore will be worth more on the secondary market. There is much about this statement that is true but if the value of my tickets is ever less than the market value of the tickets, then I think the team and our owner should know. I'm hoping he reads My Swag Was Phenomenal in his spare time before he goes to bed at night or something.

I'm hoping me tracking ticket prices this year results in the same findings as last season, namely that buying season tickets offers a 15% or so discount over market value. The cost of my lower level seats rose 10% in the offseason and the cost of my upper level tickets increased by 25%. That's a lot of escalation to overcome but our team may just be good enough to do it. I'll let everyone know the results in about July or so next year.

Free Stuff! 2014-2015 Edition

It's mid-October, so it's about time for the Wizards' promotional schedule to be released for the upcoming season. This is one of the most anticipated milestones leading up to the season for the hardcore, have-no-other-sort-of-life Wizards fan. Just to be clear, in chronological order, the excitement for the current season builds with the NBA schedule release in early August; followed by the start of training camp in late September/early October; followed by the start of preseason games about 10 days later; then delivery of the season ticket package somewhere in there; almost finally the release of the giveaway schedule in mid-October; and finally the season itself starting a couple of days before Halloween.

Search on Google for the Wizards 2014-2015 promotional schedule and you won't find it anywhere on the internet. The Wizards haven't announced the schedule yet on their webpage. But they have printed them on the little fold out schedules that are scattered around Verizon Center and since yesterday was preseason gameday, I managed to pick up one of those to get the scoop in advance of the team officially releasing it on their site. So  actually now I've posted this, maybe you will find it when you search on Google. Read on...

For those of you (and I'm among your number) who look forward to accumulating Wizards swag for your shelves at home, get ready to be disappointed. I'm sorry, there's just no other way to spin it. The number of promotional nights is incredibly small. Like four. Total. Not for any one month. There are eight dates on the schedule but four of these are Kids Day, Singles Night and Military Career Fair which are total ruses. Unless you actually give something away, in my opinion these do not belong on the promotional schedule. No way, no how.

Two years ago, there were six items on the schedule, last year it was five, this year it's four. Four years from now, it's going to be nothing at that rate. I'm not happy about it in the least. The Milwaukee Bucks, who I consider the gold standard of NBA giveaways after my visit to a Bucks-Wizards game last March, have 24 nights where they give stuff away. 24!!! We get four.

But before I provide a (somewhat) exclusive preview of the coming season's loot, let's address the elephant in the room and talk about what's not on the schedule. That's right, spoiler alert, there is not a single bobblehead on the slate. Not one. For the dozen or so people who regularly read this blog, you know I consider the bobblehead to be the primo, a-one, top dog NBA promotional giveaway. Nothing else comes close. I know I'm not alone in this opinion. For the last two years, Wizards fans have had to be satisfied with one gameday bobblehead giveaway per year. This year, we can expect less.

The Bucks (again...the gold standard of NBA giveaways) have four. FOUR!  That's as many bobbleheads as the Wizards have giveaways in total this season. Now I know, you may be saying to yourself that the Bucks need to entice people to their games more than any other team, and you might be right. But the Chicago Bulls have three bobblehead days this season and the Golden State Warriors have two preseason bobblehead giveaways. Preseason! Wow! And I'm talking Andre Iguodala and Stephen Curry, not the 14th and 15th guys on the roster. If the Bulls and Warriors can do this, so can the Wiz. But they are not.

So, with all that said, let's get to the very unexciting (with one very notable exception) 2014-2015 Wizards promotional night preview post. Once again, I offer my expert analysis and long term significance to each item. (with my quick recommendation in parentheses for those of you with attention spans too short to read the whole thing). All for the cost of nothing. Let's go!

Last year's schedule magnet is still on my refrigerator today. My Elvis in gold lame suit magnet is on the other side and not pictured.

Schedule Magnet (Essential)

November 1 vs. Milwaukee

I've said it before and I'm saying it again, I can't live through the fall and winter and early spring without my Wizards schedule magnet on the refrigerator. It's the essential tool for checking when the next game is. We all visit the refrigerator every day, right? Whether it's grabbing some milk, eggs, cold cuts or the very occasional beer, the schedule magnet is always there to orient my day or week to the Wizards calendar. An opening day tradition! Can't miss this giveaway.

Marcin Gortat Action Figure (OMG Seriously! Very Essential)

January 31 vs. Toronto

How awesome is this? I'm still stung by the lack of bobbleheads (in shock even!) but a Marcin Gortat Action Figure??? I've never been more enthusiastic about getting to January 31 than any other year I have lived. This giveaway is perfect for Marcin given his love of Steven Seagal and him driving tanks this summer with the Polish military. I can't wait for the preview of this in late January probably on Dan Steinberg's DC Sports Bog. Two things have to happen here. First, it has to have the mohawk. The mohawk alone will make this thing super authentic. And second, I can't wait to see what it comes with. All action figures come with something, right? A weapon, shield, hat, accessories, whatever. It makes sense that Marcin's action figure would come with a basketball. I'm hoping for a pig, personally.

Team Poster (PASS!)

March 29 vs. Houston

This is at least the third year in a row that the Wizards have handed out a team poster in the last month or so of the year. This is an item I just don't even pick up. It's not even worth the effort to carry it around the arena. Just a poor quality piece of paper with the Wizards team printed on it. It's a kids' thing. Of course, you might make an argument that all of this stuff is kids' stuff. I'm still passing on the poster. Next!

Fan Appreciation Night Water Bottle (Pick it up but likely discard)

April 12 vs. Atlanta

Whether this giveaway stays in my possession after the Wizards pummel the Hawks will depend on a few factors. The appearance, quality and whether the thing looks like it will be useful are some, but the Wizards' overall record and if there's a kid sitting next to me without one might just as easily factor in to my decision to carry this thing back to Metro Center and beyond with me or just leave it under my seat in Section 109. I have news for the Wizards: if they want to really appreciate the fans, they'd hand out bobbleheads at this game. If they need ideas, I have plenty, but I'd start with a Randy Wittman bobble. how amazing would that be?

So that's it! I know…short, right? Like unbelievably I must have missed something on the list short. Sorry, but I didn't miss anything. I'm obviously disappointed in my team here but honestly, this year's lineup is a Wizards cooler shy of being as good as last year. The bar is just so low here. I guess my trip to Milwaukee spoiled me last year. Those guys know how to do it right.

Proof I'm not lying. SMH...

Where's Bradley Beal?

Earlier today, the Wizards finished their first of three straight pre-season games at Verizon Center. This season features the greatest number of preseason games at VC since I've been a season ticket holder. The other two are later this same week, which means I'll be making two more trips down to F Street before the end of the day Friday.

I generally spend very little time around Verizon Center in the summer months since I stopped working downtown seven years or so ago, so the first Wizards game of the season, be it preseason or regular season, brings an opportunity to see how the neighborhood has changed since the previous Wizards season was over. The most dramatic change was some years ago when they finally took the construction scaffolding off the front or south face of the Smithsonian American Art Museum which allowed an uninterrupted view down F Street all the way to Union Station; after years of seeing the American Art Museum under renovation, the change was striking. This year, the only changes I noticed were that the FroZen Yo store on F Street has moved to Chinatown and Souvenir World at the corner of 10th and F has closed. It seems like that place has been there forever.

In addition to changes outside the arena, it's exciting to see what's happened to the inside of Verizon Center over the summer. The most obvious changes this year were the repainted main entrance to the building and a brand new basketball court (shown above) with the Unity Hand logo replacing the Wizards wordmark at center court and solid red lanes beneath the basket. In past seasons, the lanes have generally been striped for the professional game (at 16 feet wide) and the college game (at 12 feet wide); this year, it's just one lane for the NBA game. I love the lane change but I'm a big fan of the Wizards wordmark so I'd rather they just stick with that. I realize I'll be in the minority on that one.

But there's still work to do inside Verizon Center to get ready for opening night on November 1. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago, the team installed a series of photograph panels or billboards, if you will, on the lower concourse of the building. These billboards feature Wizards, Mystics, Capitals and Georgetown University basketball players, in addition to some other acts who play Verizon Center frequently. A little over a year ago, I had a picture of myself taken in front of the picture of Martell Webster for my "About This Blog" page. I was curious to see who would be up on these panels this year, so before the game, I took a quick stroll around the 100 Level of Verizon Center. Here's what I found, starting at the north entrance to the building and walking counterclockwise.

Marcin Gortat

Marcin's our starting center and just signed a new five year, $60 million deal. During the 2013-2014 season he played in all but one of our regular season games and averaged 13.2 points and 9.5 rebounds per game. He poured in 31 points and snagged 16 rebounds in game five of our playoff matchup against the Indiana Pacers, the last playoff game we would win before being eliminated by the Pacers. It makes a ton of sense to have Marcin up on the wall. I believe he was placed there after we traded Jan Vesely to the Denver Nuggets for Andre Miller at the trading deadline last season. It would be nice for Marcin if the Wizards ticket sales table were not blocking most of his picture but whatever.

Nenê

Nenê was the first real building block in the Wizards' culture change that started at the trading deadline of the 2011-2012 season with the team trading goofball center JaVale McGee for a legitimate professional NBA player, in this case Nenê. Critics decried the trade when we made it; most felt the Wizards had traded a player with tremendous upside for a broken down, overpaid, undersized center. A year and a half later, it looks like the Wizards fleeced the Nuggets. Nenê not only brought a sense of professionalism and seriousness to the Wizards, he's actually played in way more games than McGee has since the trade (124 regular season games plus 10 playoff games to McGee's 104 and 13). How could a big picture of Nenê not be on display at VC?

Josh Groban

OK, so Josh Groban doesn't play for the Wizards and never has. Verizon Center has two musicians on display in its lower concourse. One is Bruce Springsteen. I find it curious that Groban is the other.

John Wall

I'll be brief here talking about Wall. Franchise player. Number one overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft. 2014 NBA All-Star. 2014 NBA All-Star Weekend Dunk Contest winner. Led the NBA in total assists during the 2013-2014 NBA season. John is the only player on the team with a maximum contract and the unquestioned leader of the team. As he goes, quite often, the team goes. The best player deserves his picture up in the building.

Martell Webster

Martell's first season with the Wizards two years ago was his best as a pro as he averaged 11.4 points per game with a 42.2% success rate from beyond the three point arc in 76 games. He parlayed that season into a four year deal for the full mid-level exception or between $5 million and $6 million per year. Coincidentally, the Wizards put his picture up near Section 102 just before he re-signed. Martell's production dropped off last year as a sixth man. I'd love to see him back in the starting lineup with John Wall this year. I feel he really prospers with Wall on the court. You can debate the merits of Martell getting a billboard but the fact that he's my favorite player is good enough for me to keep him there.

Chris Singleton

I like Chris Singleton a lot. I love the interview he gave to ESPN during the lockout before the 2011-2012 season, we've hung out in Vegas together (OK, maybe not so much) and I've always found him one of the most approachable Wizards players in his three years in Washington. But…he doesn't play for the Wizards anymore (he's currently playing as a training camp invitee on a non-guaranteed contract with the Indiana Pacers). 

Now I'm not sure what the Wizards' attitude toward retaining Chris in the off season was but I'm pretty confident considering they didn't pick up his contract option and really made no significant strides to retain him that they probably knew by the end of last season that they had no plans to retain him. So why is his picture in our gorgeous white home uni still up in the building?

I can't imagine how much money it costs to replace the graphics on one of these panels but Chris can't stay here more than like another week, right? And if the Wizards can't think of someone to replace him, I'd suggest they try Bradley Beal because this is the last Wizards related graphic on the lower level of Verizon Center starting at the north entrance and walking counterclockwise. I think Bradley's earned it. The real deadline to get this fixed is November 1 when we open our home slate against the Milwaukee Bucks. Verizon Center spent a bunch of money this summer installing a Capitals hat trick display which is just awesome. They need to fix this next. It's on the east end of the building in case this is just an oversight.