Washington Wizards to star in syndicated infomercials
By Bryan Harvey
The following is a fairly fictional take on the Washington Wizards’ ongoing struggles against the NBA’s worst teams.
The holiday schedule can be brutal on an NBA club. The intimacies between family and team duel over an individual’s commitment. The Washington Wizards played two days before Christmas, on Christmas day, two days after Christmas, the Houston Rockets tonight and again on New Year’s Eve. These are the holidays. This is work. The players understand their obligations, but the team meeting on Dec. 28 was, if anything, unexpected.
On Christmas day, the Wizards unwrapped the Boston Celtics 111-103. Six players scored in double digits, and all of John Wall, Bradley Beal and Otto Porter cleared the 20-point hurdle. The team looked good, primed and focused against the team with the Eastern Conference’s best record.
Read More: Larry Bird still talks trash after 25 years of retirement
Two days later, the team resembled a disheveled Jimmy Stewart watching his life unfold without him in it. The then 8-win Atlanta Hawks rolled the playoff-bound Wizards by 14 points, and it was not a wonderful experience for a team so desperate to matter.
The up followed by the quick down is now the motif of this Wizards season. Prior to the big win against Boston, Wall and company lost by 35 points to a below .500 Brooklyn Nets squad. However, they followed that abysmal performance with a 27-point drubbing of the Orlando Magic.
So when the team meeting was called, most of the players believed it was to address their inconsistencies, to discuss issues of focus, to train like potential Jedi masters. But the meeting was not about these things at all, at least not on the surface.
“We walked into the room and a wrapped gift sat where every player was expected to sit,” said head coach Scott Brooks. “You know how people fall into habits that are predictable. The coaching staff pretty much knew where the guys would sit, so the gifts were personal.”
“Before I unwrapped my gift,” laughed Kelly Oubre Jr., “I figured it was another Rolex from John. You know how he does.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” responded Wall when asked about the gift-giving. “It was totally unexpected.”
“I ended up unwrapping a bunch of Rubbermaid Tupperware. It was weird, but I was glad it was at least name brand. There was a card included with a simple inscription on it: Match the lids. So that’s what I did.”
“That’s not exactly what happened,” said Beal. “Kelly opened the gift and let out an expletive and then he tried to get all the lids on, but apparently Tupperware is more intricate than most perceive it to be. He would get like three corners down, but the fourth wouldn’t snap. By the end of meeting, he was banging lids on the tables and dropping containers on the floor.”
Apparently, though, Oubre was not the only Wizard who had trouble with his gift.
“I could not spread the peanut butter on the bread,” said Marcin Gortat. “It was impossible.”
“Otto tried to pour the juice he unwrapped into solo cups, but the cups kept flipping over or he just plain missed the glass. It was awful,” reported point guard Wall on one of his teammates.
“Man, I got all excited when I saw I had a gift,” shared Mike Scott, “and then all I ended up with was a toothbrush and some toothpaste. At first, I wasn’t going to do anything with it, but then I decided why not brush my teeth at the team facilities. But when I squeezed the tube, all the paste came out. I’ve never had that happen. I don’t even think it was real toothpaste.”
When asked about the intent and integrity of the gifts, head coach Scott Brooks explained: “The gifts were not intended to embarrass any of our players. The whole idea was to build confidence and inspire them to play confidently and authoritatively against the league’s worst teams. I just wanted them to look at the Hawks and the Hornets like a tube of toothpaste or a jar of mayonnaise.”
“No one wants to receive mayonnaise as a gift,” said Markieff Morris, who traded his jar of mayonnaise for a task to be named later.
“But it backfired,” continued Brooks. “We had a few hidden cameras set up in the room. It really was a more expensive team-building project than it appeared, and we were going to splice footage of Ian Mahinmi rolling up a sleeping bag for example with some player dunking over the Plumlee brother who plays for Atlanta. You know, suggesting that dominating the Hawks is as easy as camping, but it turns out Mahinmi’s never been camping. Anyway, I don’t know what we’re going to do with all that raw footage.”
Next: The Nets have unearthed a star-level point guard
An anonymous team official commented that as each player opts to leave the organization or is jettisoned that the footage will be sold to companies producing infomercials in order to prove just how difficult and arduous daily life can be — in or out of the NBA.