Where's the Party At? MCI, Baby!

Sometimes fans bark back.

"C'mon, Eddie, get real players in the game." This admonition came from 15 rows back, like a hunter's rifle shot in the still country air, after Kwame Brown checked in during the second quarter of the Charlotte game and the Wizards were looking woefully sluggish against a team that had won just 17 games. On the court were four role players and should-have-been-an-all-star Larry Hughes. Sometimes MCI is a boisterous delight. And sometimes you can hear a lone fan with perfectly timed coaching advice.

Jordan can't pay attention, even if he wants to -- too many coaching balls in the air.

Center Brendan Haywood says he hears only fans who say something funny. That's because Haywood himself is a very funny guy.

Juan Dixon has his own methods of processing the game's noise. "When I'm on the court, it's like you're playing on the playground without fans." It's a kind of meditative concentration that allows him to tune out all but the coach and his teammates. But when he's on the bench, it's like he's suddenly conscious again. "I can hear some fans saying some great things, and I can hear some obnoxious things."

Ironically, it was a fan wearing a Dixon jersey who was hounding Brown from behind the bench during the Bobcats game. "Kwame! Gosh! Please! So bad!" It was not brutal treatment, not like some of the fan harassment the oft-injured Brown has had to suffer this season. It got so bad during one game, the chorus of boos, that Jordan had to ask the crowd to pipe down.

"I have no comment on the fans," said Brown. "I can't control what they do. What I can control is how I play."

Early in the Wizards-Bobcats game, it was Brevin Knight who was playing well. The scrappy, fundamentally sound Bobcats point guard had been with the Wizards last season. He has friends on the team. And so he talked a little trash -- before, during and after the game. Upon stripping forward Jared Jeffries of the ball for the second time, he turned to the Wizards' bench as he brought the ball up the court and shouted: "Tell him to stop dribbling."

Jeffries brushed it off. "I just told him, we'll see at the end."

Jeffries proved correct: Wizards 106, Bobcats 104.

Trash talk is not a staple of Arenas's game, and not many players talk to him, he claims. "A couple of rookies talked trash earlier [in the season]," he noted. "They got 43 on them. You can't talk to a guy who got the green light. That's a bad thing."

Not only has Arenas emerged as one of the league's most prolific scorers, he has become quite the postgame attraction with his jersey tosses. Some fans have come to Wizards games solely in hope of snagging a Number 0. One night, a man was so desperate for the Arenas trademark souvenir that he dove across two rows -- 12 feet, by a security guard's estimate -- and landed on a couple of customers. He was escorted out, and didn't even snare the prize. "Man, that was the craziest thing I've seen," said the security guard, who would only give his first name, Kevin.

Arenas handles these jersey giveaways with a relish not often seen by professional athletes. In fact, just before the Wizards-Cavs game was to begin, Sam Spiritos got his attention as Arenas was stretching his leg on the scorer's table. The real estate attorney was sitting directly behind the Wizards' bench with his 9-year-old son, David. Arenas whispered something to a Wizards assistant, and in five minutes the kid was brought a size 50 Arenas jersey that hung well below his knees. A great day for the suddenly beaming David Spiritos.

"He asked me, so no problem," said Arenas, who explained his jersey philanthropy this way: "I give it out to you, you don't have to spend $100. No problem."

And that is how Adam Dantus, from Rockville's Wootton High, went home a happy young man -- so happy, in fact, that he went off and left his LeBron James sneakers behind. "I guess he was too excited," said a nearby fan.