Thanks for the nice words here. Sometimes I talk so much in these press conferences I don’t even remember what I said 
. If I said these things and made these quotes good for me!
At the same time, the media sometimes garbles what I said or perhaps meant. So here is some clarity.
1. The overall deal is valued at $825 million. That is what the Monumental Sports and Entertainment combined entity is valued at all in one. Soon we hope to make the asset worth $1 billion, which would be a major milestone.
2. The Washington Sports and Entertainment assets valued at about $550 million. I am unclear where the AP wire service got a number of $310 million. That number is a bad one. It was never mentioned by me. If you can find me saying that number, please bring it to my attention. Thanks.
3. In regards to a name change of the team, we have a lot of work to do right now on re-crafting the team itself, focusing on the draft, our number 1 pick, free agency, selling season tickets, suites and club seats, new interactive outreach programs, working with customers, prospects and media, crafting a new organizational structure aimed at maximizing our services to customers, working on making the Verizon Center the best it can be for our community, and finding new and improved ways to serving our communities of interest.
The NBA also has a lot of work to do on negotiating a new CBA with the players and working with everyone on a new business model that is fair to all.
With all of that going on understanding that to effectuate a name change could take two to three years. This simply isn’t a priority for us right now. We can’t change the name of the team for next season. It is June and the new season starts in October. There will be no name change. We can’t change the name. It is pretty simple.
We can change the colors more easily than the name. We will look into that as part of an overall brand uplift and updating project. That could happen as soon as the following season, but NOTHING new can happen next season. It is too late in the off season to have any changes at all. I am sorry but schedules and production of materials etc. are set years ahead of time.
As time goes on and we meet our goals, we can look into every issue our fans have about our team, but to focus and discuss an issue that can’t be fixed in the short term is not a good decision by anyone. I am not tone deaf but I am a realist and we must focus on the immediate tasks at hand. I hope this clarifies the issues to you all and helps the anger I see in emails and blog post commentary subside a bit. We will listen. But vision and strategy without execution is hallucination!
