The team’s success 50 years ago may have boosted my childhood loyalty, Crandall explained, and their subsequent failures did not remove it. “Early learning is incredibly powerful and hard to erase,” Chris Crandall, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas who has studied fan allegiance, told me. But these deep, die-hard roots can influence our adult behavior. Recent pain should feel stronger than childhood joy, I would think-even for fans like me, whose support was passed down geographically. I was 12 when the Bullets paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate their only title, and the subsequent 44 years have brought lots of bad memories: Last season, the Wizards somehow blew a 35-point lead against the L.A. suburbs in the ’70s, when I was a Bullets-crazed kid devouring box scores on the sports page, shooting jumpers on a backyard dirt court, and pretending to be Chenier. The same is surely true of my fellow Wizards fans-and many fans of other perennial losers (hey, the Detroit Lions somehow still have fans). Still, even though the team is more likely to bring me agony than elation, I can’t fathom supporting any other franchise. In Philadelphia, the currently undefeated Eagles and the World Series–bound Phillies have generated a 20 percent or more increase in business for local restaurants, sports bars, and memorabilia stores.īut rooting for the middling Wizards takes guts at best and is downright masochism at worst. Each team finished with a winning record. Last season, the NFL teams with the top-selling merchandise were the Cowboys, 49ers, Patriots, Steelers, and Chiefs. It’s all #SoWizards, to use a Twitter hashtag.Īnd yet, I made it out to the open practice with a few hundred fans on a Tuesday night, wearing a Wizards T-shirt and feeling the faint, irrational warmth of preseason hope. We fans have endured 40-plus years of frustration and disappointment, mainly from the typical issues-bad defense, bad draft picks, bad trades-but sometimes from … weirder ones: One All-Star player was charged with a gun felony involving a teammate, and another was once suspended without pay for being overweight. The franchise last advanced beyond the second round of the playoffs in 1979 (back when they were called the Bullets), and they’ve missed the playoffs 16 of the past 25 years. Since the 2000–01 season, only the Knicks and Timberwolves have lost more games. These days? Not so much.īeing an NBA fan who loves the Wizards is a little like being a foodie who adores turnips: It just doesn’t make sense. Back in the 1970s, when Chenier was draining jumpers and sporting a Richard Pryor mustache, the team routinely chased titles. Here I was posing for a photo with Phil freakin Chenier. But as a lifelong Wiz devotee, I was having an awestruck, love-you-man moment. The season opener was a week away, and the players ran drills at half speed and engaged in silly skills competitions for fans, including a basketball version of Connect Four. But the lawyer for Arenas, Kenneth Wainstein, pressed for an earlier sentencing date.When I attended a Washington Wizards open practice at D.C.’s Capital One Arena earlier this month, the focus was more on spectator entertainment than Rocky-style workouts. law, carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and Judge Robert Morin told Arenas he was not necessarily bound by the plea deal.Ī tentative sentencing date of March 26 was set, pending a sentencing report that could take up to eight weeks. The charge, carrying a pistol without a license in violation of D.C. REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstĪrenas, 28, who signed a six-year, $111 million contract in the summer of 2008, has been suspended indefinitely by the NBA over last month’s incident at the Verizon Center.Īrenas, who has said the guns were unloaded, entered the guilty plea to the single felony count during a standing-room-only hearing that lasted just under 30 minutes in District of Columbia Superior Court. Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, currently serving an indefinite suspension from the NBA, is trailed by reporters as he arrives to face felony gun charges at the District of Columbia Superior Courthouse in Washington, January 15, 2010.
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