Photo by Brian Allen

Photo by Brian Allen

In case you didn’t leave the house this weekend, let me fill you in: It rained a lot. Just how much did it rain? Well, enough that it caused a significant leak at the Verizon Center, delaying the Wizards-Rockets game twice on Saturday.

The AP reports that a leak in the roof atop center court near the scorer’s table caused a 35-minute delay in the second quarter and a 22-minute delay at the start of the second half. Verizon Center staff placed trash cans and towels on the court to catch the water while workers ascended into the rafters to fix the leak.

On Saturday, the D.C. area was under a flood watch from the morning until the evening, and the non-stop rain certainly made its mark on the Washington area. During the game’s delay, Verizon Center workers were able to make some temporary fixes to the roof to continue gameplay.

Wizards majority owner Ted Leonsis weighed in on the events of Saturday’s game, along with his analysis of the team’s noble loss against the Rockets, on his blog. A possible cause? The polar vortex.

Thank you for your patience last night as we experienced a building maintenance issue – a leak in our roof. The two delays were created by dripping water on the court, and a wet floor creates potential safety issues for the players. Player and fan safety are always foremost in our minds. The NBA, our employees, and frankly our ownership group and I were all in constant communication during the delays. I am proud of the work done by our staff to fix the issue.

We have staff working all day today to make sure this issue doesn’t occur again.

Our staff worked very efficiently to identify where the leaks were. And we always have staff on hand that are experienced with issues such as this. We also literally had to get atop of the roof outside to see what the issues were. The big freeze this past week might have created a small fissure in roofing materials, and as the rain came on and some ice was melting, some water was able to seep in.

There were also staff up in the rafters and on the catwalks doing inspections and they were able to create a short term fix via some temporary tarp installation that stopped the leaks.

As to the game, we dug a deep hole ourselves by our performance during the second and some of the third period.

The game was tied after one period, and then we fell behind by 24 points. The team became very focused and chipped away at the lead, tied the game, and then took a five-point lead with less than seven minutes left in the game.

The game was statistically an odd one; we took 95 shots from the field and hit 40. Houston took only 73 shots and hit 38. But we were out-executed at the three point arc: where we hit 5 for 19 and Houston hit 8 for 18. Houston hit 30 foul shots and we hit 22.

We rallied as a team and when we ran and attacked the rim. We were very productive, but when we again started to settle for long jump shots at game’s end, they didn’t fall and we came up short again at home.

It was an odd game. A very unusual night. And it certainly was covered well by the media. Here are a bunch of articles and videos for you to peruse. Click away here, here, and here.

Filed Under: leaky roof, rain, verizon center, wizards,