It’s “our time” for VCU head coach Shaka Smart and his Final Four-bound Rams. When will it be the Wizards’ time? (AP Photo/Virginia Commonwealth, Scott K. Brown)To satisfy your Wizards fix, DCist is teaming up with Kyle Weidie and Rashad Mobley of Truth About It, who will take turns penning a column on Washington’s professional basketball team every week throughout the season. You can read Kyle and Rashad on all things Wiz here.
On March 20, after Virginia Commonwealth University beat Purdue to get into the Sweet 16, the Washington Post’s Michael Lee tweeted the following:
“Okay, so #wizards stop training camp @ VCU & Rams head to Sweet 16 for 1st time; They train @ George Mason & it gets thrashed by Ohio State
Little did Lee, or anyone else for that matter, know that VCU would make it all the way to the Final Four, becoming just the third 11-seed to do so, and matching George Mason’s epic run to the Final Four as an 11-seed in 2006.
As Lee stated, the Washington Wizards held their training camp in Richmond, on VCU’s campus, in 2009; they trained in George Mason’s arena this year. On the home court of the Rams, the first season under Flip Saunders, with hope pinned on Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler, Mike Miller and Brendan Haywood, the theme was “Our Time,” very similar to VCU’s team motto this year.
Jamison wore an “Our Time” t-shirt after the first practice session in Richmond in late September, Butler proudly sported a hat with the phrase. This mostly prompted jokes about “Our Time” being the rallying phrase from the 1985 movie, The Goonies — the one that kept them out of Troy’s bucket. The result for the Wizards was injuries, guns in the locker room, selfish play, a deceased owner and a blown up roster. It was certainly not the Washington Wizards’ time last season.
This season is a bit different — still not the Wizards’ time, exactly, but the outlook is somewhat more hopeful. After a 114-104 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Sunday night, the Wizards have fallen to 17-55 on the year, with a 1-35 road mark. The initial time of Ted Leonsis’ rebuilding process could be among the worst in team history, and the health of the franchise going forward remains uncertain. But at least with a huge 71-61 upset victory over the Kansas Jayhawks on Sunday, VCU proved that there was no bad karma left from the Wizards kicking off a disastrous ’09 season on their home floor.
Writes Adam Stern of the school’s newspaper, the Commonwealth Times:
“…when the season started, VCU second-year head coach Shaka Smart and his coaching staff designed a motto for the team to use to keep that in mind: “our time, right now.”
If I had to guess, Coach Smart probably found a waddled up t-shirt from Andray Blatche or Nick Young in the VCU gym and turned the tables in his favor. With a semi-final matchup against Butler next Saturday, the Rams have a legit shot at a national title, should their hot shooting and relentless, diverse defensive strategy stay in tune.
Meanwhile, the Wizards finish their five-game West Coast swing in Utah on Monday night, then host the Miami Heat at the Verizon Center on Wednesday. Far from playoffs and closer to coveting Arizona’s Derrick Williams or North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes in the NBA Draft — both excellent players who were knocked out of the NCAA Tournament this weekend. Leonsis’ basketball operations and player instruction brain trust often conveys the need for the same energy and exuberance that VCU’s 33-year old coach has become known for during his team’s run. Now, I’m not saying the college coach would fit on an NBA stage, but throughout this season, the Wizards haven’t had the freshest of rebuilding attitudes. While Washington has shown promising signs of life as of late from a young roster depleted by injury in tough, close road losses (or, moral victories) to the likes of the Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets and now Golden State Warriors, a consistent theme to build confidence on going into the summer and beyond has yet to surface.
John Wall has been nice, but he’s in surroundings that place him far from being able to be judged on his ability to be a “Game Changer” — the Wizards marketing catch-phrase given to Wall after he was drafted last June. In the 2010 training camp at George Mason in Fairfax, team personnel sported “Back To Basics” as a t-shirt motto — if anything has been proven, it’s that ‘Basics 101’ for many young Wizards, and some not so young Wizards, will continue to last for several semesters. Finally, “Live The Game” seems to be the official motto for the 2010-11 Wizards as of late, mostly seen on Twitter, the hashtag even accompanying tweets from the official team account about beauty tips from a Wizards Girl.
But as for the team’s actual play, it’s live by faint hope, die by the win column. The Wizards need a lot for the continued future rebuild — a large, intimidating presence in the paint on both ends of the floor who can jump out the gym, an All-Star caliber scorer, more long distance shooters around Wall, for starters, and for their current prospects to develop a defensive mind-set or get out of town, for starters. In other words, the Wizards have a long way to go for it’s truly “their time,” playing meaningful games in a playoff chase or in even the playoffs themselves. In the meantime, all protagonists of the team can really do is plead for patience as Leonsis ask customers to bare with him during construction. As for a new motto, the team currently probably waivers somewhere between “Bless this mess” and “Pardon our progress.”
