The Red & the Wall: The New Wizards

Something big is happening to the Washington Wizards franchise and I will give you a hint: It does not begin with winning basketball games. Not yet, anyway. Of course that's their ultimate goal, but that's going to take some time. They have to begin by improving upon their previous season record. The good news is, finishing the 2010-2011 season at .280 should make improvement a viable option.

For weeks I have been receiving emails from the Washington Wizards like the one I received today:

Tomorrow the Wizards will Rock the Red, and hopefully begin to resemble the Washington Capitals franchise in other ways as well. The owner is now the same, the colors will soon be the same, the #1 draft pick to build the team around seems hauntingly familiar as well. (Although I'm hard-pressed to find many more similarities between Alex Ovechkin and John Wall.) Soon we can look forward to the Wizards following the Caps footsteps and dominate throughout the regular NBA season so that they can roll over in the playoffs and shamefully lose to lower seeded teams.

Even apathetic goals like that will have to wait a couple more years.

I give the Wizards credit for their rebranding efforts. Even without the talk of a likely NBA lockout beginning in July, the Wizards are a tough sell. DC loves a winner and even on the rare occasions when they made it to the post-season, the franchise has only seen past the first round of the playoffs once since 1982. To generate season ticket sales, the Wizards are currently guaranteeing a 3-year price freeze. If you buy a ticket package this year, you are guaranteed that the price will not increase until after the 2013-2014 season has ended. I know several Capitals season ticket holders who wish they had a deal like that back in 2007 when the Caps began Rocking the Red again!

After the excitement of the color change, it won't be long before we learn more about what is in store for the new Wizards. The NBA Draft Lottery is one week away on May 17, 2011. The NBA Draft is in June.

Local hockey fan continues to watch boring television

Yes, my off-season sports chats sound like headlines from The Onion. I got called out after my last rant about the NHL Network by a facebook friend-of-a-friend. (Sad, I know. It wasn’t even a friend of my own. I have a very Charlie Brown-like existence.) But, my new FFOF pointed out that there is plenty going on in the hockey world right now to keep a fan (okay, fanatic) engaged. There have been shocking trades, the new schedules have been released, the recent NHL awards and NHL draft, and July 1 will open up free agency. She’s right. There's still plenty of action around the NHL, and the awards and draft have been broadcast on Versus. It’s not exactly the body-crushing action of watching a game every night, but it keeps things interesting. And for some reason, watching teams I mostly don’t care about draft young players I’ve never heard of is way more interesting than whatever else is on TV these days. I don’t know if that speaks to how much I love hockey, or how bad television programming is these days. Probably a little of both.

The first round of the NHL draft was Friday night and the only players I knew by name were the number one and number two draft picks: Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin. I’ve heard plenty of speculation about which one would be chosen first, but I still have no idea which one is which. I think that Taylor is the one that turns into a werewolf and Tyler is the vampire that sparkles. Or is it the other way around? Whoever they are, you never hear about one without a mention of the other. It’s a good thing NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was behind the podium, because the pre-packaged marketing opportunity of this rivalry must be giving him a raging hard-on. Next season the NHL can branch off from the constant comparisons between Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. Except this Taylor/Tyler thing may be even easier for the league to exploit. I bet no one has ever had a problem telling Crosby and Ovechkin apart.

So, the 2010 NHL draft is over. The Oilers have Taylor Hall, the Bruins have Tyler Seguin, and the Maple Leafs have to live with the fact that they gave up two draft picks this year, including their shot to acquire a promising young player with a built-in marketing ploy (along with a 2011 first round pick!) to the Bruins for Phil Kessel. For last year's draft, Toronto’s GM Brian Burke tried to trade up for a shot at John Tavares (spoiler alert! His attempts were ill-fated. Tavares just finished his first season with the Islanders and did very well for them.) This year they essentially gave up one of the –ylors. Better luck next year, Toronto. Oh no, wait – you traded away your first round 2011 draft pick too. Well, better luck in 2012 then.

Now that the NHL Awards show and the draft are over, I know I can count on the NHL Network to replay them for the remainder of the summer alongside old playoff games. I wonder how many more times I'll see Kevin Connolly. I was totally not expecting to see E from Entourage announce the Islanders pick.