John Wall Bobblehead No. 5

For the past couple of years, I've been somewhat less than kind to the Washington Wizards when reviewing their giveaway offerings each fall. It's an exercise that's turned into a strategy (if you can call it that) of handing out a schedule magnet, a bobblehead and a team poster and calling it a year. No imagination, no outside the box thinking, no multiple bobbleheads. It's like they think that fans don't care about useless things being handed out at the doors of Capital One Arena on game night. News flash: we do care!

Most of my ire in the last several years about the freebie schedule has revolved around the Wizards' tired and true (not a typo) approach to bobbleheads, meaning they only give away one each year. Yes, that's right...while the Golden State Warriors, Dallas Mavericks, Milwaukee Bucks or some other franchise is handing out multiple bobbles in any given season, the Wiz are determined to stick with one. Sure, sure, there have been years where there's an extra bobblehead available through the Kids' Club for a fee or through Monumental Rewards (R.I.P.) but there's a cost associated with those above and beyond a game ticket and they appear to have stopped all that anyway. I have no idea why this team doesn't set its sights higher with the promotional schedule.

So given all that, April 5 was likely the most bittersweet Wizards game of the season. First, it was the last game I attended his year which brought the frustration which was this season to an end. I should never be welcoming the end of basketball season, not with a team allegedly this talented. Second, it was bobblehead night which simultaneously made me happy and also pointed out that the Wizards had pretty much only made me this happy on this one night this season, either with their play or due to the fact that no other games had bobblehead giveaways.

Now, one of the perils of just having one bobblehead handed out per year is that the team pretty much creates a no win choice for themselves: make a bobblehead of a popular player or go unconventional and give a role player a shot. The former choice risks the ardent fan having multiple bobbleheads of the same player over and over again; the latter risks nobody bothering to show up explicitly for the bobblehead because nobody knows who the heck the player even is. Of course, this year by the second to last home game of the season, there weren't many Wizards fans there; the San Antonio Spurs fans were way more vocal.

The Wizards, to nobody's surprise, over the years have opted for the first tact, whereby they give away the same players in bobblehead form over and over again. At the beginning of this season, I had on my bobblehead shelves (yes, shelves) four John Wall bobbles, three of Bradley Beal, two Ottos and a Kelly Oubre bobblehead and no other active players on the roster. When the Wizards announced the promotional schedule this year, they didn't name who was on the schedule for April 5, preferring to go with the enigmatic "bobblehead". In all my stupidity I first assumed it would be Dwight Howard but then got my hopes up for Tomas Satoransky or Thomas Bryant.

Of course, it ended up being John Wall. I now have five Wizards-issued John Wall bobbleheads.

So the first and obvious question here is: WHY? Why give us another John Wall bobblehead? If the decision was made at the beginning of the season, why schedule an end-of-season bobblehead for a dude that missed half of last season? If the decision was made during the season, it's even more puzzling with Wall missing more of this season than last season. I know I've already answered these questions earlier in this post (he's the most popular player) but I still don't get it.

Complaining won't do me any good. Let's talk about how I feel about my new bobblehead shall we?

First off, let's deal with the scale of this bobblehead because it's unique in my collection. While it's as tall as a standard sized bobblehead, it's standing on a plinth, which has forced the artist to scale the bobblehead itself down to sort of a three quarters scale model. I don't know that this is necessarily good or bad, it just it what it is.

The plinth has been painted in an attempt to make it resemble marble to match the spirit of Nike's City Edition uniforms which feature a stylized Washington Monument along the side of the uniform to right below the armhole. The plinth also has a Capital One sign (because Capital One sponsored every one of the three giveaways this year), some holes and a button for pressing. We'll come back to that.

Of course, John Wall is sporting the 2018-2019 Wizards City Edition in black with the aforementioned Washington Monument below the armpit and the District of Columbia logo across the chest.  As they have with other recent bobbleheads, the Wiz have opted to do with decals for the detailed wordmark, numbers and nameplate on the uniform in lieu of casting these details into the model and relying on the Chinese workers to skillfully execute the paint job. This strategy generally yields a better product, although it loses some of that unskilled paint application free bobblehead appeal.

If you are worried about the last sentence of the previous paragraph, don't be. There's still plenty of spots on this bobblehead for a sloppy paint job, namely the Washington Monument / stripe down the side of the uniform which looks like someone painted the red and white and then aggressively colored with a grey or silver marker which I assume is supposed to simulate the marble veining on the white part of the stripe. They definitely didn't stay within the lines; the red is covered with grey/silver color.

One of the big tests of the value of a bobblehead is whether the head of the thing actually looks like the player. Sometimes I feel that teams just select any old representative black man's head and hope that works. The 2011-2012 season John Wall bobblehead looks like some kind of crazed elf (second from left in the 5 John Walls pic above).

In this case, I'm going with the likeness being pretty good. The smile is a little off and the chin seems oversized, particularly on the left side of John's face. I guess it becomes inherently a little easier with a beard but John's is rendered so minimally here that it doesn't really contribute to making the head look more or less like John's actual face. But the overall effect is one of John Wall. I can buy it. There are definitely bobbleheads out there that are better but its not the worst of the bunch.

So about that plinth...as you may have guessed, the height, holes and button mean one thing: talking bobblehead. This is not the first time the Wizards have issued a bobblehead with a sound system. The one and only team-issued Gilbert Arenas has a custom recorded message from Agent Zero himself. A couple of years later the team gave away a Phil Chenier / Steve Buckhantz featuring a "Dagger!" call from Steve.

So what's this one? Some words of wisdom from John Wall? Nope. Some kind of confidence-laden statement about D.C. being his city? Not that either, although that would be awesome. In fact, there are no words from John at all on the recording. Instead it's the "Welcome to D.C." song that they play at the games. Kind of lame? Sort of but for me, it's not what bobbleheads are about. I don't press the play button on my Arenas or Phil/Buck bobbleheads too often so it doesn't matter to me. 

Of course, as all Wiz bobbleheads do these days, this one comes in a box covered with stats. OK, so one half of one side has a few stats. Important to me: franchise leader in assists and steals, 2014 Slam Dunk Contest champion and one each All-NBA and All-Defensive team nods. Interesting to me: All-Star point guard. No number of times. Makes me guess this was decided at the beginning of the year.

Also interesting to me: the accurate representation of the Nike jersey template reflected in the seams on the back of the bobblehead. That shows me how far bobbleheads of come. It used to be that you would struggle to recognize the player. Now the jersey seams are accurate. This is also the first bobblehead with the Geico advertising patch on it which I obviously hate. I find it curious the team had to (I'm assuming they did "have to") put that on the bobblehead but didn't have to (or were forbidden from?) putting the Nike swoosh on it. 

Overall, I'm giving this bobblehead a B. This one looks pretty good. It's clearly John Wall and I'm OK having this on my shelf. I just wish it was someone else. And not Bradley Beal either. If there was a reason to mark this down (and I did) it was because the choice of player shows absolutely no imagination whatsoever. Here's hoping next year the Wizards will get things right in the bobblehead department and hand out more than one next year. 

Spoiler alert: they won't. Just a hunch.

Season Tickets vs. StubHub? 2019 Report

It's been over a month since I've posted anything on this blog. And while I'm still trying to recover from what has to be one of the most disappointing seasons of my 19 year run as a season ticket holder, I have some things to say to wrap up this season and move on to the next, which hopefully starts with a lucky result in next Tuesday's draft lottery. We can always hope, right?

For the past five years on this blog, I've written an end of season post comparing the cost of Wizards season tickets to the cost of tickets on the secondary market based on my weekly tracking of season ticket prices on StubHub. This year I'm not doing that. Instead I'm just going to write about my own personal experience owning and selling Wizards season tickets in two locations in the building (Sections 109 and 415). And yes, I know the title of this post is now wrong.

I'm changing my reporting here for two reasons. First, I just couldn't be bothered to track this data every month or every week. It's just too much effort for a team that didn't exhibit much effort out on the court. Or in other words, I just don't have the data. Second, this is the first season since I've been tracking the value of my tickets that I've been underwater, where what I paid yielded less than the value of the dollars shelled out.

How do I measure that, you might ask? Here's how:

Let's say I have two pairs of tickets to a Wizards game: one in Section 109 which cost me $192 (2 tickets at $96 each) and one in Section 415 which cost me $80 (2 tickets at $40 each). Let's say I manage to sell my upper deck tickets for $28 and use the other two to go to the game. The value of that game for me is $192 because that's the cost of the seats that I am actually sitting in. I only recovered $56 on the two tickets I sold so therefore my cost for $192 of value is $216, meaning I took a $24 loss. 

I track every game like that for the entire year and then measure whether I won or lost money on the season. Every season I have tracked this, my value has been equal to or slightly greater than my cost, except this year when I took a loss of $307.

The month of March 2019. Possibly the most disastrous month ever from a Wizards value standpoint.

How did this happen, you might ask? Well broadly speaking and without citing any specific facts for now, the bottom fell out of the Wizards ticket market this year when the bottom fell out of the season, which happened in like November. Honestly, unless you wanted to go see the Warriors or Lakers games, this season's tickets were available for cheap (and certainly less than season ticket holders paid for them) on the secondary market. Too much supply and little demand. Folks lost interest in this season pretty quickly when the team started underperforming worse than they usually do to start a season. No winning, no attendance. Not this year.

Now for some specifics:

• This year I sat in my Section 415 seats just four times, meaning I sold or tried to sell 36 regular season games (the Wiz only had 40 home games this year due to the Londan game being a home game) and three preseason games. My total cost for those 39 games was $3,320. My return on trying to sell those tickets got me $1,492. These things have no value most games. The team selling them at $40 per regular season seat is far, far above market value. 


• There were just eight games this year where I sold tickets for more than I paid in Section 109 (Houston, Boston, the Lakers, Philadelphia, Golden State, Milwaukee, Miami and San Antonio). In the upper deck, that number dropped to five (the Lakers, Toronto, Golden State, Miami and Boston).  


• There were six games in the upper deck that I couldn't sell at all, not even for $5 to me and a cost of $7 to the buyer. That means that there was nobody willing to buy my seats for a lousy $7. $7!!!! The six games by the way were Orlando, the Clippers, Charlotte, Sacramento, Orlando again and Utah.


• I took a trip out of the country in March and had to miss the first six games of that month which unfortunately for me were not very sell-able. My cost for these six games? $1,632. My return via selling on the secondary market? $594.50. That's a loss of $1,037.50 over a two week period.


• I sold my lower level seats to the Orlando game on March 13 (which was one of the six games in the bullet above) for $25 each, a loss of $71 per seat.


• The overall numbers would have been way worse if it wasn't for the Miami game on March 23 and the Boston game on April 9. I actually made money on the Miami game just because (in all likelihood) it was Dwyane Wade's last game in D.C. In all likelihood refers to the reason I likely sold at a profit, not the likelihood it was Wade's last game in Washington. And the Boston game? Some fool paid me $60 per ticket for my upper deck seats only to be at a game where the entire roster of the Celtics sat out to rest for the postseason.

This is not a good set of stats for the Wizards season ticket holder.

To the Wizards' credit, I guess, they elected not to raise season ticket prices this year. I am sure the team has a lot of data similar to what I've presented above and I'm pretty positive they had lots of anecdotal information about how angry a good portion of the season ticket holder base was and is about the state of the franchise. Raising ticket prices would have been suicide, even with the firing of Ernie Grunfeld out there.

I also appreciate the fact that the team allowed me to renew my lower level tickets, which all things considered could sell pretty well (except in March of 2019) most nights, and not renew my seats in Section 415 which are nothing short of extortion on the part of the team. Unless the team goes deep into the playoffs for the next few seasons (which is unlikely) I see no way those seats returning the value to the people who buy them. They should drop the prices on those things. And fast.

I've had some pretty good years getting value out of my season tickets. The discount provided to season tickets have helped some years tremendously but the real value has come through season ticket holder benefits like the Monumental Rewards Program (now gone) and the Fluid Tickets Program (not gone but completely useless). I renewed my season tickets for three reasons this year: (1) next year is my 20th season and it's a nice round number, (2) some seasons I've attended a lot of games pretty cheaply so I'm OK overpaying for a couple of years at the end (that's such a terrible attitude by the way) and (3) maybe the team will win the draft lottery and tickets will become valuable again. I'll be watching next week for sure.

400 Level Farewell

This post is short and stupidly (and I really mean STUPIDLY!) sentimental.

In the fall of 2000 I decided (along with a coworker) to buy Washington Wizards season tickets. The tickets cost $10 per game or $410 for the whole season (I can't remember if our package included preseason games or if we just bought right before the season but the $410 number sticks in my head). We got some tickets in Section 402, Row G near the end of the row away from center court. One year later, Michael Jordan returned to the court to play for the Wizards. Cool.

A few years after the Jordan era (and with per game prices now boosted to a whole $15), I moved my season ticket seats in 402 right to the other end of the same row, closer to center court. I had also by this time switched (or upgraded if you prefer) the co-worker I was sharing games with. I used to love mid-week games against non-popular opponents up in Section 402. There were some games where there was literally nobody higher up in the section that us so we could stand if we wanted or walk around during a tense part of a game during timeout. We also had some great memories taunting opposing fans when they came in to the building to see their team beat the Wiz only to be disappointed. It was most fun against Celtics fans and our seats were perfectly positioned to wave and say goodbye to the other team's "faithful" on their way out of the building before the end of the game.

Then one year I bought a 10 game package down in Section 103 right near the tunnel where the Wizards enter and exit the court. That 10 game package grew to a 21 game package then to a full season along with a move across the arena to Section 109 where I have seats today. While I was doing that, I kept my upper deck seats, although we moved across the building upstairs too to Section 415 right on the end in Row C. I think I can get to the bathroom at Capital One Arena faster than anyone else from those seats. It's the secret charm of those seats.

Over time, the $10 per game seats in the 400 level have increased up to $40 per game, which is a complete swindle. No way should those seats cost that much. So next season for the first time since the 1999-2000 season, I will not hold Wizards season tickets in the 400 level at 601 F Street NW. And I likely never will ever again. I'm not going backwards from my lower level seats.

Last night I sat in Seat 13 in Row C of Section 415 for the last time as a season ticket holder. It's been a good ride upstairs, although let's face it the team accomplished pretty much nothing. Somehow it's just not as fun when the cost is 3-4 times as much as it should be. I'm not saying I'll never sit in the upper deck at Capital One Arena ever again for a Wizards game, but I won't do it as a season ticket holder. It's time for someone else to take over that real estate.

In Memorium: Ernie Grunfeld

So I'm halfway through a pair of posts about Ernie Grunfeld and the Wizards up and let him go this week. My timing sucks sometimes. I figured they would wait until the end of the season. I was wrong. So I've abandoned those two posts that were under construction in favor of this one.

Like most Wizards fans out there, I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was time for President of Basketball Operations Ernie Grunfeld to leave the team. No other team executive had stayed in place as long as Ernie had with so few good results. It was time to move on and give someone else a shot. I only hoped Ted would do it in plenty of time to get someone else in place before the NBA Draft in late June. It appears he's done that.

The Ernie Grunfeld era in Washington wasn't all bad although as I hope I'll demonstrate below, most all of his successful moves came in his early years on the job. Measure Ernie against his immediate predecessors in Wes Unseld and Michael Jordan and he looks quite successful: one division title and eight playoff appearances, including four trips to the second round of the playoffs. But in a league where there are just five teams in a division and more than half of the teams in the league make the postseason each year, achieving those results in 16 seasons on the job is not good enough. Not by far. Just being better than the people before you who were lousy at their jobs don't cut it.

The posts I was working on were Ernie's greatest triumphs and his greatest failures (one post for each) as the Wizards' head basketball decision maker. I made a top 10 list for each category and I'm posting the lists I assembled for this exercise anyway, although I'm just going to provide a little less explanation than I planned.

Let's start with the top 10 successes. I'm placing the date of each in parentheses because I think that's important.

Ernie's Top 10 Hits 

10. Signing Shaun Livingston to a 10 Day Contract (2010)

9. Drafting John Wall (2010) and Bradley Beal (2012) 

8. Signing Paul Pierce to a Free Agent Contract (2014)

7. Trading for Marcin Gortat (2013)

6. Swapping Kwame Brown for Caron Butler (2005)

5. Trading Rashard Lewis for Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza (2012)

4. Signing Gilbert Arenas to a Free Agent Contract (2003)

3. Trading for Nenê (2012)

2. Trading for Antawn Jamison (2004)

1. Bringing Credibility to the Position (2003)

A few notes on the above list before we get to the misses / disasters list. 

There are three awesome deals in the top six used to assemble the Arenas / Butler / Jamison team that could have been something; each of those deals were masterful. The Butler deal with the Lakers was outright robbery. All three of these transactions occurred in his first two years on the job which is why my number 1 is number 1. He transformed that team into a contender instantly as soon as he started. MJ and Wes couldn't compare.

Drafting Wall and Beal is so low on the list because he had to get these right; these were no excuses type decisions. Bringing Nenê, Okafor and Ariza into the locker room (the first time for Ariza, not the second time) are so high because what the team needed more than anything else was adult supervision. Nenê is in the three spot because a lot of people saw that deal as good for everyone except the Wizards when the opposite turned out to be true. The Okafor / Ariza trade is ahead of the Butler deal because he gave up a second round pick to get them. Can you imagine 2018 Ernie using second round picks to acquire talent rather than erase mistakes? 

You can argue with any of the above items if you want. I'm up for it, especially the Livingston one, which is admittedly a completely emotional decision for me. I'm happy Shaun made it the way he did after that knee injury.

So now that I've made everyone angry by actually maintaining Ernie did as many as 10 good things in his time in Washington, let's take a look at my top 10 non-successes.

Ernie's Top 10 Misses

10. Drafting Oleksiy Pecherov (2006)

9. Extending Andray Blatche's Contract (2010)

8. Not Re-Signing Garrett Temple (2016)

7. Player Options (2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018)

6. Trading Tons of Second Round Picks (2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019)

5. Coaching Hires (2009 and 2016)

4. Trading the 5 Pick for Mike Miller and Randy Foye (2009)

3. Trading Tons of First Round Picks (2013, 2016 and 2017)

2. Failing to Anticipate the Reality of 2016 (2016)

1. The Record (2003-2019)

A few notes on this list. I'll try to be brief. I may not succeed. 

Some of these decisions defy explanation. Extending Andray Blatche three years when already had two years remaining on his deal (the Wiz amnesty-ed Blatche before the extension kicked in but still paid out $35M); choosing Andrew Nicholson, Jason Smith or Ian Mahinmi (let alone all three) over a high character role player and locker room leader like Garrett Temple in 2016; and envisioning Mike Miller and Randy Foye as the guys who were going to put the team over the top and get us a championship instead of drafting Steph Curry or DeMar DeRozan. 

There's clearly a lack of respect for the Draft. Do you realize that from 2014 to 2017 the Wizards held only one first round pick? Ernie even managed to circumvent the rule that a franchise can't trade it's first round draft pick two years in a row by trading the first rounder at the trading deadline in two consecutive years. That rule was designed to save franchises from their own stupidity and Ernie found a way around it. And don't get me started on second round picks which the Wiz don't have for sure until 2024. 2024!!! 

In case you are wondering...2019 pick traded to sweeten the Kelly Oubre deal in 2015; 2020 pick traded to conditionally to acquire Jared Dudley in 2015 and made unconditional to make Jodie Meeks go away in 2018; 2021 pick traded for Trey Burke in 2016; 2022 pick traded to make Jodie Meeks go away (not a typo; it took two second rounders to get rid of Meeks); and 2023 traded to make Markieff Morris go away.

What's the story with player options? How about Paul Pierce (who declined his to leave when we needed him to stay), Jason Smith, Jodie Meeks and Dwight Howard (all of who have or will accept all theirs to stay when they needed or need to leave). And the coaches? How about hiring Flip Saunders and Scott Brooks without talking to any other candidates.

But the biggest thing for me (other than the losing record and no 50 win seasons) was the 2016 offseason. Not because he signed Ian Mahimni, Andrew Nicholson and Jason Smith to multi-year deals but because he failed to realize what was happening in the NBA with the salary cap. By that I mean the Wizards' strategy for that summer was to clear enough space to sign a max free agent (hopefully Kevin Durant) and that realistically they would be one of maybe four or five teams that would have that much cap room. But he failed to see the impact of the new TV deal, which turned almost every team into a max free agent destination. Instead of competing with two or three other teams for the best free agents, they were competing with like 25. And he failed to realize this and failed to adjust. Cap management and long term vision has to be part of the job description, right??

Sorry for being so long winded on that.

Ask 10 Wizards fans for these lists and I'm sure you would get 10 different answers, although some might not get to 10 items on the hits list. 

When I look back at these lists, I see a few things. First, Ernie used to be a good deal maker. Some of those deals he made were just awesome. But there's nothing that I can point to trade-wise in the last five years that's been any good. Second, he has not attracted quality free agents to Washington and he's run screaming from the Draft any time he can. Drafting, trading and signing free agents are three core parts of the job and he's only ever really been good at one of those. And he's not even any good at the one he used to be good at.

Third, and most important, there's an astonishing lack of medium or long term planning with a lot of these moves. 2016 was a complete disaster. I mean one of the total and unmitigated variety. How someone is allowed to dole out that kind of money after whiffing on his top three targets and then use that many future assets (draft picks) to erase his mistakes and then keep his job so long is incredible. And 2016 is not the only one. Sometimes, even when Ernie made a good decision there's a but associated with it. 

What do I mean by that? He made the right move by signing Gilbert Arenas after he won the Most Improved Player Award but give him an albatross of a contract later on. He plucked Shaun Livingston off the NBA scrap heap but then failed to develop him and lock him up long term. He signed Paul Pierce when Trevor Ariza walked (or the team let him walk) but gave him a player option which let him leave the next year. He drafted John Wall over Evan Turner but gave Wall a supermax contract as soon as he humanly could.

Where does that leave the Wizards? Honestly with a lot of messes to sort out. As I detailed a couple of months ago, the cap situation for this team going forward is going to take some real creativity to get a competitive team on the floor. Throw in an injured John Wall making north of $40 million, Dwight Howard with a $5 million plus player option and no second round picks for the next half decade and things look even worse. Despite all that, this team does have some talent and with the right free agent signings, a smart draft and a creative coach who can develop players...who knows.

For now, Ernie's gone. And it's about time.

I know Randy's thinking how long does it take to get this guy out of here.

Satoransky Socks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely a special occasion sock!

Renewed!

Well, I did it. Last Monday I made my way to the Wizards renewal suite and committed to another year of Wizards basketball as a season ticket holder. I know a lot of people who are making a different decision.

This season has been more difficult for me as a season ticket holder than any other. This may not have been the first season I've written this about but this one truly tested my patience and dedication as a fan. I attended fewer games than I have ever attended as a season ticket holder since maybe my first or second year when I was flying solo and genuinely had a difficult time getting people to go with me to games for free. I wavered as recently as last weekend on this decision and almost packed the whole thing in and decided to walk away.

Ultimately, four things kept me in the club.

First, the decision by the team to not raise prices this coming season was important. I get that prices of tickets are probably lower in some areas of the building than in corresponding arenas around the league but you so is historical performance. I think was an important gesture although ultimately, I probably would have renewed if there were a slight increase in price. Like a couple of bucks or maybe four at most per game.

Second, I ditched my upper deck tickets which at $40 per seat per game are way above market value. There's no way the team should be charging season ticket holders this much for this product. If the Wizards would not have let me sever those tickets from my package, I would not have renewed. I've been carrying two sets of tickets for a number of years now and the reason I first started doing this is no longer valid. Took me a while to cut the cord but ultimately, this reduced my cost by more than $3,000. Next year will be the first season I will not have upper deck season tickets. 

Third, I made a season ticket referral under the team's Sixth Man Referral program which cut $800 or so off the cost of my tickets. This, along with the ability to lose the 400 level seats, was huge. I've been sharing my ticket plan with a friend for the past 17 years and he decided the Wizards' performance this year was too much to take. This cost savings along with the deletion of upper deck tickets actually allows my first cost next year to be lower than this current season. I won't have this discount next year.

Finally, next year is season 20 for me and to make it that far is an emotional milestone. Next year, just like the $800 discount, this won't apply. The team performance better soar next year. I have absolutely no faith it will, meaning there's a good chance I won't be back for number 21. New management and a new head coach would do wonders for my mindset here.

I waited longer than usual to make this decision this year, primarily because I was out of town on the other side of the globe for two weeks. The emails from my account representative during that time were interesting. The standing offer of $200 of concession credit was supplemented by an on court free throw opportunity after a game, then by a pre-game happy hour with two free drinks then the concession credit offer got upped to $300. Waiting helps, I guess. I won't renew early ever again.

These little paper bands make me so happy. Give me a couple of these a year and I'll be way happy.

Finally, if there are season ticket holders who have not yet renewed, your deadline is March 29 which is this Friday, although I would anticipate that date being flexible. I don't see this renewal period coming anywhere close to 100% renewals.

I know it's too late to offer this advice but don't ever renew on line if you can make it to a game during the renewal period. There's always an opportunity to pick an envelope with a prize in it after you hand over your credit card to the team. Like we have a few times in the past, we managed to get wristbands allowing us access to the Etihad Lounge, which if you know me at all, you know I love. I'm a moocher at heart and free food and especially free beer always goes over well with me. It was the first and only time I had access this year. Thanks to my friend Mike for picking the right envelope. The photos on this post are courtesy of that access.

I also was offered the opportunity to become a human bobblehead during a timeout for an opportunity  to win a trip to an away game next year. I declined. I already had the free beer offer and it's likely a trip to Philly which I've already done. And yes, I know a little alcohol would have helped me in the contest but I figured someone else would get more out of it than me so I passed. 

Just a couple more games this year then it's on to season 20 even though more than half of the rest of the NBA will still be playing.

Human bobblehead contest. The dude on the left won. Congrats, buddy! Enjoy Philly!

Excuses

Before the 2018-2019 NBA season began, Wizards owner Ted Leonsis gave an interview where he offered some very interesting soundbites about the then upcoming Wizards campaign. Let's check a few of them out.

"We need to raise the expectations. We have to make the playoffs. I'd like us to win 50 games. I'd like us to go to the Eastern Conference Finals."

"We have one of the highest payrolls in the league with the Wizards. They have a beautiful, world-class practice facility. They're healthy entering the year."

"If you have this practice facility and one of the highest payrolls in the league and you're getting well-tended for your health, nutrition and the like. No excuses."

So, let's see where we are after tonight's loss to the Chicago Bulls, leaving our beloved team 5 games out of the playoffs with just 10 games to play (Miami is still playing as I write this post so it will either be 5.5 or 4.5 by the end of the night). 50 wins? Nope; can't win more than 40 at this point. Eastern Conference Finals? Nope. How do I know that last one when the Eastern Conference Finals aren't here for at least another couple of months yet? Well because quite simply if you don't make the playoffs, you can't make the Eastern Conference Finals. "No playoffs?" I say? when Ted said we have to make them and the team isn't mathematically eliminated yet? That's right, no playoffs. No 50 wins. No Eastern Conference Finals. No playoffs.

So assuming I'm right, what now? Ted said no excuses, right? What will that mean? Defining a vision for the club for the future? Firing the coach? Firing our President of Basketball Operations for life Ernie Grunfeld? 

I'm guessing no on all three. I'm usually a glass half full type of guy but when it comes to these Wizards and the management structure in place, I'm seeing the glass half empty or less than that every time. It helps me to not be so disappointed. My prediction? We're getting a whole pile of excuses. Here's my top 10 list of excuses Ted might roll out at the end of the season. Call this a pre-emptive shot across the bow. Maybe Ted will be too embarrassed to use any of these when the team officially gets eliminated from the postseason.

1. John Wall got injured. Twice. So did Dwight Howard and Markieff Morris.

This is the obvious, number one excuse. I guarantee this one is going to be used to explain why the team didn't make the playoffs. Heck, Ted even said the team was healthy entering the year (they weren't!). Here's the thing about no excuses. Any reason you offer for not achieving your one goal ("we have to make the playoffs") is an excuse. There's no parsing of language to go on here. A reason is an excuse. Getting hurt is an excuse. Is getting hurt a legitimate reason to underperform? Sure. But he said no excuses. 

Who out there feels that even without John Wall and Dwight Howard that the Wizards are a playoff team? My hand is up on this one. The fact that a team with this much healthy talent can't make the postseason or finish with a winning record comes down to the fit between players being terrible or coaching just not working. Take your pick! Pick both, if you want. But it's one of those, unless you believe a Bradley Beal-led team is actually worse than the Orlando Magic.

2. We traded Otto Porter.

He can't really use this one as an excuse, right? I mean the week before this trade happened Ted said he wasn't going to trade Otto. And he was under no obligation to do so. If this is offered as an excuse (and honestly, I don't expect anyone to do that) then this is for sure of the team's own making.

3. Kelly Oubre wasn't going to re-sign with the team.

Ahh...the Kelly Oubre for Trevor Remember-How-Good-He-Was-Last-Time-He-Played-Here Ariza trade. Moving on from a player who showed flashes of brilliance along with a long way to go in exchange for a savvy vet who is a defensive stopper.

Or was, prior to this year. The theory here was that Ariza was going to be the compass to guide this directionless team forward into the future and that the team would woo him into staying in that savior role all the way deep into the playoffs of the future via a generous multi-year deal with a player option on the last year. After all, Oubre wasn't going to sign for the kind of money the Wiz would have available, right? Doesn't matter I guess. Another swing and a miss by our front office here. Don't think Oubre would re-sign? Nobody can say for sure can they? My guess is Ariza walks or the Wiz hand him a way too rich contract that will take multiple second round draft pick sweeteners to unload.

4. We didn't know what we had in Tomas Satoransky.

By we, this excuse means Wizards management, Ernie Grunfeld but most especially head coach Scott Brooks, who also didn't know what he had in Thomas Bryant or Troy Brown or Wes Johnson or Devin Robinson (who?) or Ron Baker. The list could go on and on and on. And yes, some of those players listed (hi, Wes Johnson and Ron Baker!) are those who got playing time and shouldn't have. You can't use the excuse that your head coach who works for you won't recognize talent and basketball IQ. Get rid of him! It's gotten so bad that if I could only choose one to get fired, I'd probably choose Scotty.

5. We had to get below the luxury tax line.

Yeah, I know. Believe me, I know. It's all about the money with you guys. The object of owning a basketball team isn't to save money. It's to win games. Or it would be if I owned a team. Make some smart investments instead of trusting the same decision makers that have gotten you nowhere for the last decade and a half. 

At least I don't have to stay up on draft night beyond the first round for the next five years because moving the next five years of second round picks has been the cost of getting out of the tax the last few years.

Word. Mantra. Excuse. Take your pick.

6. We thought it would be easy with LeBron in the Western Conference.
Yeah, so did everyone else, especially the Celtics who were punching their ticket to the NBA Finals before even stepping on the court this season. Building a winning team requires more than just patience and sticking with the plan. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. To win at anything you have to be nimble and adjust based on the moves of others. The Wiz aren't, which is why they stubbornly try the same thing over and over again and make statements like "we have to figure out what's wrong" after losses to teams that shouldn't beat you.

7. I gave the players generous contracts. What else do you want me to do?

Is that how it works? How about player development? How about coaching? How about not doing the same thing every year and being surprised when the results are about the same. Although let's face it, this year the results are just worse.

8. The Raptors traded for Kawhi Leonard and the Sixers traded for Jimmy Butler.

Yeah, they did. They saw an opportunity to swing for the fences and they took it. Maybe it won't work. But both franchises saw that standing pat with the same roster that hadn't won it all the last few years wasn't going to cut it, even with LeBron in the west (see excuse number 6 above). Opportunities to contend for a Finals spot (and I mean really contend, not the Wizards standard pre-season declaration that we want to contend but then don't) only come along so often. The Wiz let it pass them by. And so they are in the lottery. Again.

Will we be making fun of the Sixers and Raps next year when their newly acquired stars sign elsewhere? Maybe. But my team can't even make the playoffs and has no definable plan for next year that doesn't involve making commitments over the luxury tax line to field a credible team. And we know what happened with that sort of strategy this year, right?

9. Who saw the Nets being this good?

You know what? I can buy this. I mean, honestly, who saw that team in Brooklyn with that roster being a playoff team. Good for the Nets. It's still an excuse though.

10. We decided next year is the year of no excuses when we have Bobby Portis, Jabari Parker, Jeff Green and Trevor Ariza for the whole year.

Of course it is. It's always the next year with the Wizards. It's always that we are happy with our roster and feel we have a chance to contend and are giving our front office an A for our offseason moves. Every. Year. In my worst nightmare I see the Wizards spending way too much on all four of these guys for two year deals all with player options. Please please. No more player options on deals.

I hope to God we don't get excuses, but that's what I'm prepared for. Heck, it looks like Ernie Grunfeld has already started on excuse number 1 from some remarks he made just last month about the Otto Porter trade (see also excuse number 2 above and the image below). We're doomed. Look forward to at least one more year of the Ernie and Scotty show, unless Ted can live up to his promise of no excuses. And remember, any reason offered for non-performance is an excuse when you say no excuses.