Playoff-Bound Wizards Pack 'Em In
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
His game plan wasn't working out so well, but the night would get better for 18-year-old Adam Dantus.
Okay, so no luck scoring a LeBron James autograph -- even though he had strategically purchased a perfect seat six months ago, even though he arrived at MCI Center super early, even though he came with a pair of LeBron's signature Nike sneakers and a Sharpie.
But with 30 seconds left in last Friday's Wizards-Cavaliers game, Gilbert Arenas came to the rescue. He spotted the high school senior's large yellow cardboard sign: "Gilbert, All I Want For My Birthday Is Your Jersey." Attached to the sign was a miniature basket, with net, and a photo of the Wizards' scoring leader hoisting his jersey into the crowd.
"It was his birthday, so why not?" explained Arenas, shortly after tossing the youngster a jersey.
This has been a storybook season for the Wizards and their fans, more luck than heartbreak for a change. The team has locked up its first playoff appearance in eight years with a running, gunning group of ballers who can liven up an arena and send a marketing department into ecstasy.
Being in an NBA arena is the most intimate experience in professional sports, but this season at MCI has been like no other -- from the smoochers on Kiss Me Cam to the rump shakers on Dance Cam, from the starting lineup to the bench, from the floor seats to the upper-upper deck.
You can be in the same building and never see what someone else sees. Did you notice which players sprinkled rosin powder on their hands before entering the game? Were you scoping out the rapper Nelly, in his red St. Louis Cardinals cap, sitting behind the basket Sunday, heckling Wizards players at the foul line? Everybody is processing the game differently, through their own prisms. They see what they choose to see, and hear only what they are listening for.
This is what Bobcats owner Bob Johnson sees when he comes to MCI: "There is a very large African American [fan] contingent. As an African American sports owner, you notice that."
Gheorghe Muresan, the 7-foot-7 former Wizard/Bullet, now views the game from his perch as "suite ambassador," meaning he visits the corporate suites. He poses for photos and talks basketball with fans who are watching the game from private rooms heavily stocked with food and drink. Often these fans just want to gaze at his size and ask him questions like: Do you play golf? Do you sleep in an extra long bed? Can I get on your shoulders?
Muresan is polite, and gentle, and always accommodating -- though not with the shoulder rides. "Right now, my head is clear," he said the other night. "It's not in the game." It's into being suite ambassador. "I tell you, it's the best job in the world." Then he paused. "I like it better after they have a few beers."
Whatever your vantage point, the Wizards are worth paying attention to again in mid-spring. Usually at this time of year, all that's left of a crowd is yawning with nonchalance or actively expressing its disappointment. Not this season. The Wizards have sold out 12 games, compared to four last season. And the average attendance was 17,197, up from last year's 15,741 fans per game.
Now, the question from fans is: How can I cop some playoff tickets? Now, the sights and sounds from a Wizards game might actually have real meaning.
Juan Johnson was sitting in Section 403, Row F, corner of the basket, for the Wizards' final home game against the Bobcats on Sunday when his cell phone rang. "Man, I'm up in the nosebleed seats," he quipped to his caller. No matter. "As long as you're in the arena," said Johnson, "you feel the excitement. And it definitely helps by us making the playoffs."
The NBA playoffs begin on Saturday, but the Wizards are likely to start their journey on the road, in Chicago. MCI Center won't feel postseason excitement until sometime next week.
Johnson was viewing Sunday's game from an AAU coach's lens, and seeing all he needed to see. "I'm looking at execution and trying to point things out to him," Johnson said, motioning to his 10-year-old son, J.R., who, naturally, would have preferred sitting lower "so I would get Gilbert Arenas's jersey."
Lower would be where hotel manager Pete Mangione was sitting the other night. Courtside seats. "I hear the refs talking, I hear the players talking. It's pretty neat." On this night, a game official came over to admonish a fan who was a little too belligerent. To make his point, the ref asked Mangione's son to stand up. "You see this little boy right here? Next time I hear some profanity, I'm going to throw you out." Mangione was astonished. "I've never seen anything like that," he said.
Mangione had a great seat. But the so-called best seat in the house -- center court on the Wizards' side of the floor -- is occupied by public address announcer Kevin Heilbronner. Not that he can relax and leisurely enjoy the flow of the game. He has to inform the crowd what is happening on the court, call out celebrities, entertain, ad-lib and "hopefully not annoy people." There's a guy who sits a few rows behind him who looks like Albert Einstein. Heilbronner likes to put his face up on the big screens above for a few crowd laughs, which Mr. Genius takes in good stride.
In the nightly gimmick-as-entertainment department, Heilbronner gets a big assist from G-Wiz, the furry blue mascot with the long snout and those floppy shoes with the gold stars. G-Wiz has to read the crowd's mood. Sure, he is there "basically to be funny and get the fans involved," as he puts it. But you can't perform some of your antics if the crowd is down. He gets a script before each game, and he studies it, but a lot of his job is about judgment. "As a mascot, you've got to be aware of the situation." After six seasons with the Wizards, G-Wiz (no real names, please) is having the best time of his mascot career. "Fans catch that buzz that the playoffs are coming," he said. "They get on their feet more."
Coach Eddie Jordan is always on his feet. Talking.
"That's a good feed, Larry."
"Let's go, let's go, stay up."
"Basic pick-away, I want a basic pick-away."
He squats, stands, waves, claps and always looks dapper in his tailored suits. He frequently barks instructions.
"Fifty-five strong, 55 strong."
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.