boutons
01-28-2005, 06:50 AM
It will be one very sky-high opponent and one very hostile, probably sellout crowd.
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Wizards Are The Cheer Leaders
Local Fans Rallying Around NBA Team
By Mike Wise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2005; Page A01
Off-camera at the Washington studios of CNN, Wolf Blitzer and New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh recently put the subjects of war and world politics on the back burner to discuss their favorite National Basketball Association team, the Wizards.
Hersh asked whether the CNN anchor had kept his season tickets for the once woeful club, which this season is astonishingly off to its best start in 25 years. Blitzer nodded, yes, he had.
"I should have kept mine, too," Hersh said, as recounted by Blitzer.
For the first time in the post-Michael Jordan era, there's real excitement surrounding Washington's once woebegone basketball team. Actual athletic contests, not marketing schemes, are bringing people to MCI Center. Singles Nights, College Nights, Retro Nights and Tax Nights have given way to genuinely good basketball.
Whether the Wizards have become a genuine water cooler team, worthy of work-time argument and gossip, is still up for debate. Attendance at games is up modestly from a year ago. The courtside luminaries pale by New York or Los Angeles standards -- or even those in Jack Kent Cooke's box at RFK Stadium during the Redskins' heyday.
But the team is in second place in the Eastern Conference, winning more games (26) at the midway point of this season than the Wizards had all of last season. And crowds are enthusiastic. The grace of their star players and the grit of their role players have led to a turnaround even the team's longtime fans could not have foreseen.
"There's a lot of buzz," Blitzer said. "It's actually cool now to be a Wizards fan."
The crowd runs the gamut, from longtime season ticket holder Tim Russert, the host of NBC's "Meet the Press," to the singer-sitcom star Brandy. Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen and current Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington were among the local luminaries at a recent game.
But more importantly, the Wizards have begun to fulfill an informal contract with a city clamoring for a winning team.
"For a team that has struggled for years, to see them come together and rely each other to win is just wonderful," said Glenda Stewart, a District resident who proclaims herself the Wizards' No. 1 fan.
Stewart's torso on Wednesday night -- when she watched the Wizards beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 117-107, to record their 11th win in the past 13 games -- was covered by a retro orange Bullets jersey, featuring the number 0, worn by the team's starting point guard, Gilbert Arenas. She wore a matching orange hat, wrist bands and fluorescent orange running shoes. In one of Stewart's more transcendent moments in her relationship with the team, she said, Arenas removed his sweaty jersey, balled it up after a game -- a nightly routine at MCI Center -- and handed it to her.
"I think they're more dedicated this year," she said of this season's Wizards. "Not saying the other players didn't love the game, but you can see them coming together as a team as opposed to, 'I want to be the big star.' "
The Wizards' bruising mix of bad play and off-the-court misconduct has played out over parts of three decades. During the particularly disheartening 1997-98 season, several of the team's star players, which included Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Rod Strickland, were either arrested or ordered into alcohol rehabilitation. They had fistfights among themselves. The atmosphere at the recently opened MCI Center became so bad during the spring of 1998 that Strickland, the team's point guard, was pelted with garbage from the stands as he and a team of underachievers left the court during a late-season loss.
Washingtonians' longing for an NBA team they can be proud of seems to have intensified the interest in the Wizards' renaissance. Fans have indeed waited long. The Wizards have not made the playoffs since 1997 and last won a playoff series in 1982. After their victory on Wednesday night, they have the second-best record in the Eastern Conference at 26-15. It took Washington 41 games -- the season's halfway point -- to surpass its 25-victory total for all of last season.
The team's three stars, Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Larry Hughes, are on pace to become the first NBA trio in more than a decade to average 20 points per game for a full season.
Their success is directly tied to Ernie Grunfeld, the team's president of basketball operations, who acquired Jamison in the offseason from Dallas for a grousing Jerry Stackhouse, and supplemented the roster with experienced veterans, such as Anthony Peeler and Michael Ruffin. Both players have made big contributions and helped humor and police a locker room full of young, impressionable players.
Coach Eddie Jordan and his staff are also responsible for the turnaround. They not only convinced talented, one-on-one players to buy into the old-fangled, move-and-pass, team-oriented Princeton offense, but also created an even-tempered environment. The team became obsessed with compiling a body of work and wins, rather than dissecting each step forward and backward.
The results have helped the franchise reconnect with its once jaded fan base.
Jurgensen was chomping on an unlit cigar on Jan. 15, watching with his sons Gunnar and Erik, as the Wizards came back from 10 points down in the final four minutes to defeat Phoenix, which then had the NBA's best record. "I really do like this team," Jurgensen said. "They play defense. They get their hands on a lot of balls. To me, more than anything else, I think it's a team atmosphere."
"I look at Arenas, Jamison and Hughes and I see three players who actually like each other," Russert said from his center-court seats.
At a time when the NBA is trying to rehabilitate its image after a player-fan brawl at a Detroit-Indiana game in November, it's by no coincidence the Wizards have arrived as one of the league's feel-good tales.
"They're happy with the way we play but I think they also see us as young guys who don't have attitudes or problems," said Hughes, who was having an all-star caliber season before fracturing his thumb. He is expected to be out of action for a month. "When you don't have to worry about off-the-court things -- a guy not being with the team, a guy being kicked out of the league -- the focus becomes basketball. Fans watch the TV and definitely see what's going on. When they don't see negative stuff, they only have one option: to cheer for us."
Arenas has noticed the upsurge in interest, too. "It's been crazy. I went to Best Buy the other day and had to sign at least 15 autographs and take 15 pictures," the point guard said. "People are proud. They're glad to take their city back. They just want a winner in this city in any sport. You can feel the buzz."
Abe Pollin, the NBA's senior owner, recently walked by a hotel concierge desk prior to a business meeting. The clerk made a point to congratulate the owner for hiring Eddie Jordan, a native of the D.C. area who starred at Carroll High School.
"You didn't get that interaction as you moved through the city the last couple of years," said Susan O'Malley, president of Washington Sports and Entertainment.
The average attendance through 20 home games is 16,453 -- about 300 more fans per game than this same point last season. The Wizards have sold out three home games, the same as last year at this time. By comparison, the team sold out every game at the 20,173-seat MCI Center during Michael Jordan's last two seasons as a player.
To attract the casual fan, the Wizards came up with a College Night promotion -- plus Family Night, Singles Night and Tax Day, in which the first person to sink a half-court shot has his or her taxes paid, or refund doubled, by the team. But an almost foreign concept has dawned: People are actually coming to watch the team.
"It's a nice phenomenon," O'Malley said.
"I like how the Wizards play," said Brandy, the entertainer perhaps best known for playing the title role in the sitcom "Moesha." "They're fast-paced and exciting. And I'm a big fan of Larry Hughes."
It helped that Brandy's fiance, Quentin Richardson, was playing for the visiting Phoenix Suns that night. Still, the Wizards were undeterred by the attractive woman across the court from them, practically blinding the bench with her 11-carat diamond engagement ring. They persevered and pulled out the win.
Unlike years past at MCI Center, everybody cheering for the home team left the arena happy.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
===========================
Wizards Are The Cheer Leaders
Local Fans Rallying Around NBA Team
By Mike Wise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2005; Page A01
Off-camera at the Washington studios of CNN, Wolf Blitzer and New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh recently put the subjects of war and world politics on the back burner to discuss their favorite National Basketball Association team, the Wizards.
Hersh asked whether the CNN anchor had kept his season tickets for the once woeful club, which this season is astonishingly off to its best start in 25 years. Blitzer nodded, yes, he had.
"I should have kept mine, too," Hersh said, as recounted by Blitzer.
For the first time in the post-Michael Jordan era, there's real excitement surrounding Washington's once woebegone basketball team. Actual athletic contests, not marketing schemes, are bringing people to MCI Center. Singles Nights, College Nights, Retro Nights and Tax Nights have given way to genuinely good basketball.
Whether the Wizards have become a genuine water cooler team, worthy of work-time argument and gossip, is still up for debate. Attendance at games is up modestly from a year ago. The courtside luminaries pale by New York or Los Angeles standards -- or even those in Jack Kent Cooke's box at RFK Stadium during the Redskins' heyday.
But the team is in second place in the Eastern Conference, winning more games (26) at the midway point of this season than the Wizards had all of last season. And crowds are enthusiastic. The grace of their star players and the grit of their role players have led to a turnaround even the team's longtime fans could not have foreseen.
"There's a lot of buzz," Blitzer said. "It's actually cool now to be a Wizards fan."
The crowd runs the gamut, from longtime season ticket holder Tim Russert, the host of NBC's "Meet the Press," to the singer-sitcom star Brandy. Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen and current Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington were among the local luminaries at a recent game.
But more importantly, the Wizards have begun to fulfill an informal contract with a city clamoring for a winning team.
"For a team that has struggled for years, to see them come together and rely each other to win is just wonderful," said Glenda Stewart, a District resident who proclaims herself the Wizards' No. 1 fan.
Stewart's torso on Wednesday night -- when she watched the Wizards beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 117-107, to record their 11th win in the past 13 games -- was covered by a retro orange Bullets jersey, featuring the number 0, worn by the team's starting point guard, Gilbert Arenas. She wore a matching orange hat, wrist bands and fluorescent orange running shoes. In one of Stewart's more transcendent moments in her relationship with the team, she said, Arenas removed his sweaty jersey, balled it up after a game -- a nightly routine at MCI Center -- and handed it to her.
"I think they're more dedicated this year," she said of this season's Wizards. "Not saying the other players didn't love the game, but you can see them coming together as a team as opposed to, 'I want to be the big star.' "
The Wizards' bruising mix of bad play and off-the-court misconduct has played out over parts of three decades. During the particularly disheartening 1997-98 season, several of the team's star players, which included Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Rod Strickland, were either arrested or ordered into alcohol rehabilitation. They had fistfights among themselves. The atmosphere at the recently opened MCI Center became so bad during the spring of 1998 that Strickland, the team's point guard, was pelted with garbage from the stands as he and a team of underachievers left the court during a late-season loss.
Washingtonians' longing for an NBA team they can be proud of seems to have intensified the interest in the Wizards' renaissance. Fans have indeed waited long. The Wizards have not made the playoffs since 1997 and last won a playoff series in 1982. After their victory on Wednesday night, they have the second-best record in the Eastern Conference at 26-15. It took Washington 41 games -- the season's halfway point -- to surpass its 25-victory total for all of last season.
The team's three stars, Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Larry Hughes, are on pace to become the first NBA trio in more than a decade to average 20 points per game for a full season.
Their success is directly tied to Ernie Grunfeld, the team's president of basketball operations, who acquired Jamison in the offseason from Dallas for a grousing Jerry Stackhouse, and supplemented the roster with experienced veterans, such as Anthony Peeler and Michael Ruffin. Both players have made big contributions and helped humor and police a locker room full of young, impressionable players.
Coach Eddie Jordan and his staff are also responsible for the turnaround. They not only convinced talented, one-on-one players to buy into the old-fangled, move-and-pass, team-oriented Princeton offense, but also created an even-tempered environment. The team became obsessed with compiling a body of work and wins, rather than dissecting each step forward and backward.
The results have helped the franchise reconnect with its once jaded fan base.
Jurgensen was chomping on an unlit cigar on Jan. 15, watching with his sons Gunnar and Erik, as the Wizards came back from 10 points down in the final four minutes to defeat Phoenix, which then had the NBA's best record. "I really do like this team," Jurgensen said. "They play defense. They get their hands on a lot of balls. To me, more than anything else, I think it's a team atmosphere."
"I look at Arenas, Jamison and Hughes and I see three players who actually like each other," Russert said from his center-court seats.
At a time when the NBA is trying to rehabilitate its image after a player-fan brawl at a Detroit-Indiana game in November, it's by no coincidence the Wizards have arrived as one of the league's feel-good tales.
"They're happy with the way we play but I think they also see us as young guys who don't have attitudes or problems," said Hughes, who was having an all-star caliber season before fracturing his thumb. He is expected to be out of action for a month. "When you don't have to worry about off-the-court things -- a guy not being with the team, a guy being kicked out of the league -- the focus becomes basketball. Fans watch the TV and definitely see what's going on. When they don't see negative stuff, they only have one option: to cheer for us."
Arenas has noticed the upsurge in interest, too. "It's been crazy. I went to Best Buy the other day and had to sign at least 15 autographs and take 15 pictures," the point guard said. "People are proud. They're glad to take their city back. They just want a winner in this city in any sport. You can feel the buzz."
Abe Pollin, the NBA's senior owner, recently walked by a hotel concierge desk prior to a business meeting. The clerk made a point to congratulate the owner for hiring Eddie Jordan, a native of the D.C. area who starred at Carroll High School.
"You didn't get that interaction as you moved through the city the last couple of years," said Susan O'Malley, president of Washington Sports and Entertainment.
The average attendance through 20 home games is 16,453 -- about 300 more fans per game than this same point last season. The Wizards have sold out three home games, the same as last year at this time. By comparison, the team sold out every game at the 20,173-seat MCI Center during Michael Jordan's last two seasons as a player.
To attract the casual fan, the Wizards came up with a College Night promotion -- plus Family Night, Singles Night and Tax Day, in which the first person to sink a half-court shot has his or her taxes paid, or refund doubled, by the team. But an almost foreign concept has dawned: People are actually coming to watch the team.
"It's a nice phenomenon," O'Malley said.
"I like how the Wizards play," said Brandy, the entertainer perhaps best known for playing the title role in the sitcom "Moesha." "They're fast-paced and exciting. And I'm a big fan of Larry Hughes."
It helped that Brandy's fiance, Quentin Richardson, was playing for the visiting Phoenix Suns that night. Still, the Wizards were undeterred by the attractive woman across the court from them, practically blinding the bench with her 11-carat diamond engagement ring. They persevered and pulled out the win.
Unlike years past at MCI Center, everybody cheering for the home team left the arena happy.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company