Monthly Archives: December 2010

Thank You

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The team is working hard; staying together; and trying to get healthy. See article enclosed.

I saw Alex Ovechkin last night at the Wizards game. He was with his dad. He was upbeat, calm and quite focused and serious. He is the leader and captain of the team. I am hopeful the players take their cue from their captain.

I would like to thank so many fans for their words of advice and wisdom and support during the last 48 hours or so. Even the fans that have strong opinions regarding change have been straightforward, honest and not cursing in email. Thank you again.

If I can paraphrase two of my favorite emails:

“You are still 10 points ahead of the ninth place team in the conference. I do think you will make the playoffs and that is all I wanted from the team this season. I and many fans didn’t want the pressure of finishing the year with the best record in the league like last season. It is the playoffs that matter. Frankly, I wanted the team to face some adversity during the season. Yet now that we are losing games, I am unsettled and very angry with you and the team.”

“I am so confused. You made the exact trade that I wanted – a skilled younger forward for a vet tough D man – and we haven’t won a game since the trade. Is change that hard? Is this a coincidence? What do you think is going on?”

“I always thought our team would play better defense without Schultz and Green on the blue line. You know I don’t like those D men. You need to make some trades and bring in more D men.”

“You made a big mistake in getting younger and injecting so much change this season. You told us you would but it is a step backwards. Carlson, Alzner, Neuvirth, Varlamov, Johansson, King, Hendricks. This is too much change from last season. I don’t like it.”

“You must change everything about this team – staff; systems; key players. If you don’t change, the season is doomed.”

“How did the Southeast division get so tough? I can’t believe that Atlanta and Tampa are playing so well and if the season ended today, three teams in the division would make the playoffs. Yet I do believe that this higher level of competition will serve us well if we make the playoffs.”

We are facing true adversity now. It is healthy and perhaps necessary although let us be honest, we don’t like it. Just like real life trials and tribulations. But we are short-handed. We need confidence and calm and focus and belief. And hard work. We are in it together.

All of us – with fans at the forefront – I appreciate your missives and your communiqués to me. Thank you.

See you all tonight at Verizon Center. Go Caps!

Wizards vs. Lakers

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We see how far we have to come to be competitive with a championship caliber team. The Lakers have so much talent and depth. They are a tight knit unit and a vet laden team. They play and have perfected a system over the years. It is a great benchmark to see up close and personal.

We, on the other hand, are one of the youngest teams in the NBA. We have played the most starting five units in a game this season in the league with 10 different casts mostly due to injuries. We aren’t talented enough or deep enough to not be healthy and become a gel team. I am sorry but it is the truth. We need to heal up and get a rotation out there that can play and practice with regularity. If we can do that, we will be more competitive. We will get better results.

We played hard last night and up to our capabilities. We took so many more shots than the Lakers did. Our shooting efficiency was suspect. I am surprised at how much difficulty we are having in scoring. We literally had six trips in a row down the court in the 4th period where we clanged shot after shot and didn’t score. We didn’t get to the foul line much and they certainly did. That LA team is a grown-up team that plays the perimeter quite well. But plays defense and in the paint even better!

We played again without John Wall. Without Andray Blatche. Without Josh Howard. And then without Yi.

Despite that, I felt we competed and played to our capabilities. I was happy to see our rookies play so many minutes last night. That is the only way for them to gain experience.

I appreciate your patience. I appreciate the fan turn out. We didn’t register a sell out but I thought the building looked great and there was a lot of energy in the arena.

New Words for 2011

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Here are the three new words that I predict will make it into our lexicon for next year:

“Buycott” – Opposite of boycott. When you like someone or an enterprise you support them through commerce, a trend behind group buying phenoms such as Groupon. Wouldn’t it be cool if some of these companies went public and people joined in as groups to buy the stock? Real world Dutch auction!

“Hacktivists” – From the comfort of a keyboard someone can be an anonymous activist and attack your website, blog and customer list and infrastructure. All in the name of a cause. Most of the attacks come from outside of the US into the US. Next generation war is declared.

“Currentcy” – Using pixels, barter or virtual payments a la points to pay for physical goods. I made this one up. :-) But I think this will be a trend. We will see – more and more – an exchange of real time online stuff for real world stuff. It is next generation currency.

There you go. Three new relevant terms of art for 2011.

Grateful But NOT Deserving

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I was shocked to see myself on this list.

I have no idea why I am on this list.

I am grateful.

But I don’t feel influential or powerful. I would grade us and me with an “incomplete”!

All I want to do of late is have one of our team’s win a game at Verizon Center.

Thank you for the recognition. I am humbled. It is so great to see DC so well represented on this list as well. Thank you.