Team of the Future, or Last Year's Flavor?

A bright, young guard spoke into the microphone on Saturday night after winning an NBA playoff series. He tossed verbal bouquets toward a hot, new NBA team and its even-keel coach -- a club worthy of being considered the league's next "It" crew.

"If they stay together, they will be a good team for a long time," Dwyane Wade said of the 2004-05 Washington Wizards. "We withstood everything they had. This is a real good team." Wade's Miami Heat teammate, Damon Jones, went even further after a 4-0 sweep in the Eastern Conference semifinals. "We were playing a great, up-and-coming basketball team," Jones said. "If the nucleus of this basketball team stays together for years to come they are going to be a force to be reckoned with."

After the season expired, praise for the vanquished tumbled out just as it had eight years ago and 15 years ago. Watching the Heat guards in the press room of MCI Center after Game 4 was like watching Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen at the podium in 1997, the night two Bulls guards knocked out the Bullets after three, ultra-competitive, first-round games. Jordan and Pippen spoke glowingly of the potential that lay ahead for Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Rod Strickland.

"They're truly one of the teams of the future," Jordan said. "They gave us a run for the money. When we win the championship, we'll certainly look back at this situation as motivation. It opened our eyes to play with the hunger they played with."

Webber and Howard self-destructed the next season.

In the late 1980s, Magic Johnson called the Cleveland Cavaliers "the Team of the '90s." They had cat-quick Mark Price, plastic man Larry Nance, deadeye Craig Ehlo, dependable (if unspectacular) Brad Daugherty, Ron Harper and John "Hot Rod" Williams. The Cavs were supposed to unseat the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons by themselves, without Jordan and Chicago's help.

But Daugherty's back went out, Harper blew out his knee, Price and others went down to injury, and suddenly the Cavaliers were in rebuilding mode.

Bob Dyer said it best in his 2003 book, "Cleveland Sports Legends: The 20 Most Glorious and Gut-Wrenching Moments of All Time." Wrote Dyer, "The 'Team of the '90s' had the misfortune of coming into its own at precisely the same time as the Player of the Century."

Wade is not Jordan -- yet. But the instructive flashback for Washington's good, entertaining young team is clear:

Never be too sure of where you're going in the NBA; you might end up someplace else.

The Wizards have a talented, promising trio in Antawn Jamison, Larry Hughes and Gilbert Arenas. But the notion that these three all-star caliber players have another five years in which to take the organization to the NBA Finals is historically misguided. Ernie Grunfeld, the team's president of basketball operations, has his two most important offseasons in front of him. Failing to get significantly better today, Grunfeld understands, is throwing away tomorrow.

The end of this change-the-culture season was something to behold. But now that it's over, the Wizards need to surround their core scorers with talented, tough veterans, preferably big men. Soon.