Daily Archives: January 31, 2011

Retort to Retort

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The Wizards have hired a personal chef for John Wall.

We did so before the season began.We also employ a chef that serves all of our players healthy fare every day for breakfast here at the arena and for lunch when needed. This has been a service that has been in place for many, many years. We teach our players about nutrition; rest; naps; workouts; hydration, etc. etc. All teams do. We do a lot of it because we have so many young players.

Why is it so hard to send me an email or place a call and ask a question before someone writes something?

Forest from the Trees

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Sometimes we place very high expectations on young players and we lose sight of how they are really doing.

Let us take John Wall for instance, our # 1 pick.

He is averaging 15.0 points per game. He is averaging 9.3 assists per game. He is a Top 10 league leader in assists per game and he has been hobbled with some injuries.

He is shooting at about a 40% clip from the field. He is averaging 4.0 rebounds per game as well.

So let us compare him and his rookie year to date to some other great point guards and their rookie year as a NBA player:

Player                 FG %       Assists     PPG      RPG

John Wall          0.396        9.3         15.0       4.0

Steve Nash        0.423       2.1           3.3         1.0

Jason Kidd        0.385      7.7          11.7        5.4

Derrick Rose    0.475      6.3          16.8        4.9

Deron Williams 0.421     4.5         10.8        2.4

Chris Paul         0.430        7.8         16.1        5.1

Rajon Rondo   0.418         3.8          6.4         3.7

(PPG – points per game; RPG – rebounds per game)

The list of comparables goes on. My point is that John Wall is having a terrific first year at a position that is the most demanding in the NBA and he compares – statistically – quite well against the best of the best today.

John is being very productive. He has plenty of upside. I am proud of him.

Special Event Requests

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The NHL All-Star game is a great event for our fans and our sponsors and for our players. The weekend in Raleigh certainly looked like it was a lot of fun for all involved. I did not attend this year’s All-Star game but I did watch the events on Saturday night on Versus and the game yesterday afternoon as well. Well done all around.

Many fans have requested that we work on trying to bring an NHL All-Star game to Verizon Center. At some point we will get to work on this request but only after communicating with our fans the logistics involved and how difficult it will be to service all of our season ticket holders as the game is a league event NOT our local Capitals-produced event. I also think these events are wonderful revenue generating opportunities for our city.

It is funny. Just the other day at a Wizards game a long term fan came up to me and asked if we would bid on having an NBA All-Star game here in DC and then he said to me, “I am still mad at the organization from last time. I have 4 season tickets in the lower bowl and all I was given was 2 tickets upstairs to the game. Shame on you.”

Let no good deed go unpunished!

An All-Star game is a major undertaking. We have to think through how and when we would want to work on this opportunity.

We also have a Winter Classic to schedule here in DC at some point in the future. That will be fun.

Participating in this year’s Winter Classic and HBO’s 24/7 series was a lot of fun but also a lot of work.

Some fans would like to see us schedule a NHL Draft here in DC, too.

Some have asked us to play pre-season games in Baltimore or elsewhere in Virginia.

We are being considered to play games overseas as well in the future. Many of our fans are encouraging us to go for it.

We will consider all of these requests. And discuss all of your emails and demands. There is a lot of time, effort and resources involved here but if it is important to you – it is important to us.

We must balance the requests with my concern that we focus on the here and now though.

Thirty more games this season – a stretch run. Then playoffs as we need to qualify less anyone forgets that it isn’t a given.

We hear you though. Thank you for all of your emails and input on these myriad of subjects. It is a great time to be a Caps fan. It is a great time to love the NHL and the great game of hockey.