Bullets, banners and Fathead give Wizards' practice digs a fresh makeover

More questions and answers about D.C. sports, while wondering whether any city has ever had more owner apologies in one calendar year.

Q. Why did Flip Saunders launch an extreme home makeover on the Wizards' practice gym?

A. "It'd be like walking into a house and there's no pictures or plants," Saunders said of the old, barren gym, featuring exercise bikes and scoreboards and blank white walls. "I wanted to make it homey, wanted them to know that this is our [house], wanted them to realize the tradition that's here, the players that have been here, to respect that tradition, understand that this team has won a championship."

So he hung up a world championship banner and massive Bullets banners honoring the franchise's retired numbers, in pleasing Bullets colors instead of the ghastly Wizards blue.

"It's significant," Caron Butler said of the gesture. "That's motivation. Antawn, Gilbert and myself, we want to see our own names up there one day."

The makeover also included Fathead artwork of every current Wizard. Well, besides Paul Davis.

"I think more than anything else, make it more of a [feeling] where that's our gym," Saunders said, summarizing his redecorating efforts. "We come in there, it's ours, and we feel good about it, feel at home."

Oh, and Saunders -- who's friends with the Fathead CEO -- has six Fatheads of himself. None are yet hanging in the gym.

Q. What would be an appropriate way to measure the crushing unhappiness that has descended on Redskins fans over the past 12 months?

A. Do you remember John Woloshen? He's the Redskins fan from Orlando who brought a 'Hip Hip Hooray' sign to Philly a year ago, earning thumbs-ups from players and coaches, getting his image into The Washington Post, and somehow managing not to fatally poke anyone in the head. And now?

"My teapot is now boiling over and I am done financially supporting this team in any way until there is a paradigm shift," he wrote to me on Tuesday. "It is sad, but everybody is set up in a no-win scenario. The players are not in a position to win, the coaches are in no position to win and the fans are in no position to win."

These aren't mere words. His 'Hip Hip Hooray' banner has been replaced by a 'Washington Deadskins' sign, which Woloshen carried around on Halloween. While dressed like a zombie. With a sign on his back reading 'The owner killed our team! Now I must eat your BRAIN!!!'

'Hip Hip Hooray,' that ain't.

Q. How did Rolling Stone manage to take a backhanded swipe at both the Caps and D.C. United while battering at the national piñata known as the Redskins?

A. "You have a responsibility to deliver as a football owner when you live in a city whose only other diversions are a basketball team that used to be called the Bullets and a once-good baseball team that used to be called the Montreal Expos," contributing editor Matt Taibbi wrote in the current issue. "The Redskins are the only real pro-sports franchise in the nation's capital . . . "

The Capitals are D.C.'s only Big 4 pro team to advance in the playoffs since 2005. In their last full season, they outdrew the Wizards and the Redskins for the first time since FedEx Field and Verizon Center opened. They've gotten better local TV ratings than the Wizards and the Nationals. Their superstar is almost universally acknowledged to be D.C.'s most popular athlete. I don't know what else they could do to qualify as a pro sports franchise, other than institute a sign ban.