Washington Wizards : Smoke, Mirrors, and a Lottery Pick (Ep. 4)

Hello, I’m Zach, the director of corporate misfortune. And I’m Trevor, still your VP of Half Remembered Dreams. And this is Misery Sports Company, the official podcast home for fans of terrible teams. If loyalty is your curse and hope is your downfall, MSK is your home. Each week we take a look at our teams, namely the Browns and Titans, and stick to our mission statement. Survive another week of bad sports. Laugh if you can. That’s right. In last week’s meeting, we dipped our toes into the MLB covering the historic bad beats of the Seattle Mariners, who are doing pretty well. I think the Tigers just forced game five, but they’re in it and trying to get to the ALCS. It’s exciting for them. The power of MSK. In today’s meeting, we’ll cover our weekly earnings report, provide a couple of moral victories, conduct a deep dive on another tortured fan base and wrap up with our pep talk. But before we jump in, let’s not forget about our wonderful sponsors, Trevor. Who do we have as our first sponsor for this episode? Well, you have to ask yourself, does your door ever get stuck closed because you ran out of Lou Holtz’s door slobber after greasing up the slip n slide for your kiddos? So now your door’s jammed. We’ll bust right through that thing with Tennessee grade A first round door busters. That’s right. Just open the can of Caleb Farley scented product by the handle and it’ll bust right through that thing. Need something stronger? Try the premium grade Isaiah Wilson. Strong enough to bust through military grade steel. Who are these people your son asks exactly. With Tennessee busters. Yikes. Well, thank you to the Door Busters for supporting fans who never got to support, who never got that support from their teams. We appreciate you. Mhm. We do. And I know what that’s like. uh, it’s time for our weekly earnings report. The part of the show where we file the paperwork on our two most underperforming subsidiaries, the Cleveland Browns and the Tennessee Titans. Let’s take a look at the damage. Or should I say massive, massive, massive losses, starting with the Browns. Um, I thought a lot about this segment, Trevor. I’m going to try not to lose my ever loving mind. Mhm. Uh, but the Browns played the Minnesota Vikings in London this past week. So you know you had a big time difference. The game you know on the on the Eastern Time zone was in the morning. Uh the Minnesota Vikings had actually been there already. So they had played a game in Dublin Ireland. And so they went to London for the second leg of their trip. I didn’t know that. That seems unfair. Yeah. No, definitely. When you think about it, that’s not really fair at all. Think about it. Uh, so then the other thing that was really going against us, uh, Joe Flacco, was terrible as we covered in our last episode. And so the Browns went to one of their two rookie quarterbacks, Dillon Gabriel. Now to Gabriel’s credit, he looked pretty good. One hundred and ninety yards two touchdowns no turnovers. Huge. No turnovers. Huge. Uh, rookie running back Quinshon Judkins had one hundred and ten yards rushing. Um, so he looked good. We had about, I don’t know, sixty, seventy additional rushing yards. Called back for penalties. Um. Not shocking. I’m really going to fast forward to the, uh, fourth quarter of this game. So we’ve had a back and forth affair. Uh, the Browns are up seventeen to fourteen going into the fourth. Okay. They had I kid you not four consecutive drives with zero points at seventeen to fourteen. All they had to do was just manage a few yards. Okay, a couple field goals and be on your merry way. Carson Wentz is the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings right now. He’s hot garbage. Uh their defense is okay. But Dylan was uh, you know, he was protecting the ball. He was being very cautious. And uh, our offense just couldn’t get anything going. So I’m really going to focus in on the last minute of this game, okay? I’m really going to set the scene here so the Minnesota Vikings have the ball. Um, it is you know, we’re we’re at a minute. They’re they’re driving you know two minutes. It just feels like NFL defenses play really conservative and just give up the dinks and the dunks. So they’re going five yards at a time dinking and Duncan. And they get it onto our side of the field inside of a minute. Okay. When you are up three you’re thinking well best case scenario here. They’re on our side. We’re going to force a field goal right. We force a field goal. Maybe they miss it. They actually we’ll have to go back. And people, viewers, listeners, they should look at this. But the Vikings actually hit one of the video cables and missed a field goal in this game from Skycam. Maybe that happens from Skycam. They showed a slo mo of it and it just went completely off center. We’re not going to talk about that. That didn’t happen. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. But maybe it happens right. So again we’re at a minute left. The clock is running. The Vikings are driving. They dump it off to the running back. Mason. He goes seemingly out of bounds okay. However the NFL reviews it and they say hey wait a second. His knee came down inbounds and we are actually going to start the clock. And on top of that we’re going to do a ten second runoff. So the Vikings are going to have to get up on the ball and snap it really quickly because the ref is going to, you know, Whistle and game on. Yep. No no no. Kevin Stefanski calls a timeout. We can’t have that. We need to preserve time Trevor. Why preserve time. Why three. I don’t know two. Three plays later, they dump it off to Jordan Addison, one of their wide receivers. Knee down. We touch him. The clock is running. They are going to have to get back to the line of scrimmage. They’re going to have to call a play really quickly. No no no no no no no no no. Stop the clock Kevin Stefanski with another timeout. Eventually Carson Wentz throws a game winning touchdown with like twenty five seconds left. But if you go back and you look at those timeouts, there are easily 20s that we preserved for the Minnesota Vikings. They would have had to have taken their one timeout. They had to kick a game tying, field goal tying field goal, not a winning field goal a tying field goal. Correct. I am not saying that we would would have won in overtime. I have no idea what the rookie quarterback, Kevin Stefanski is killing me. I am over it. If he’s here, fine. If he’s not great, I can’t deal with a coach that just can’t manage a game. We’re in like year six at this point. This isn’t a rookie head coach figuring things out Trevor I know. Ah yeah so that’s the Browns. Oh man I, I just feel for all the Browns. But I especially feel for Dillon Gabriel because it sounded like he had uh, an acceptable first game as a rookie and was primed for the win and would have at least gotten a shot in overtime. Right, right. And we, um, I mean, this is the first time I can say this. Our rookie class looks great. We have four or five rookies that are playing that are making contributions. Um, We cannot. We are. We are such a bad team that you cannot have coaching be the reason why you lose a game. Sure, if we lose and we got beat, so be it. Yeah. Kevin Stefanski, just bad, bad, bad bad. So, Trevor, how did the Titans look this week? Oh man. Well guess what. The Titans finally found the win column in a way that only the Tennessee Titans can. Which is the stupidest way to win a football game that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been a part of some really stupid wins. Uh, but this one takes the cake by far. I’ve been on the other side where the Titans have given away games like this. It’s really strange to actually see them win one. Um, for three quarters. It looked like a normal twenty twenty five Titans game. Cam Ward was under one hundred yards. Um, we had drops like crazy. We had the defense playing their heart out, chasing around that little Ewok, Kyler Murray back there. And then things just he can barely. He needs that. He needs that Bryce Young step stool that sponsored us a week ago. He could really benefit from that. Uh, and then the fourth quarter happens. So here are the things, all of the events that needed to happen for the Titans to win this football game. Uh, the first one is happened in the third quarter as Kyler Murray is calling out protections. The center snaps it into his face mask, hits him square in the face, and the Titans fall on it and get it, which is great. We needed that. He was so surprised by that snap. Shocked. He was just dumbfounded. And it was funny because he didn’t react after it hit him in the face like that shock lasted a while. He didn’t immediately go for it. Um, another event that happens, I believe this is also in the third. It could have been before the before the funny snap. We have the goofiest, intentional grounding that I think I’ve ever seen where Kyler Murray drops back is getting pressured. So he runs in a circle. He does a full three hundred sixty and then nobody’s chasing him, but he feels something. So he does another three hundred sixty, and as he’s doing it, he gently dumps the ball like a hot potato and runs away from it. And there’s nobody there. And so that was a very strange college level, intentional grounding. That was quite funny. The normal fourth quarter back breaker that happens every and has happened every game this season where our defense is holding holding holding. And then, you know they hit an eighty yard bomb, or they hit a sixty yard run. That happens in their third string. Running back Demercado, who is in the game because in the last couple of weeks, the Cardinals have lost their top two running backs, breaks off a seventy eight yard touchdown run except right before he crosses the line, he. DeSean Jackson’s The Thing and drops it as luxurious. Sneed is thankfully chasing him. I assume that helped him drop it. I’ve looked at the video. I don’t know, you’ve had a chance to look at this. I still don’t know that he didn’t cross that line without possession. Like, if I look at that thing, I, I think he kind of had it going across the line and they reviewed it and said that he fumbled going into the end zone. So it ended up being a touchback. I I’ll take it at this point. We need it. Um, so cam Ward drives down the field on third down, he rolls out where they’re at about the thirty yard line of the Cardinals rolls out to his left. Ill-advised throw. That’s going to the end zone. And there’s like probably four Cardinals around. Gets tipped and intercepted as the linebacker DB makes the interception for the Cardinals. He lands on his back on his side and then somehow punches the ball out from himself. There is a dog pile that pushes the ball into the end zone. And Tyler Lockett yes, that Tyler Lockett from the Seahawks is somehow his corpse is on. The Titans falls on it. And it’s a touchdown for the Titans. Um that happens. We have more Kyler Murray just general terrible throws which really helped. And then cam hits Calvin Ridley on a thirty eight yard dart on a go ball that for Ohio State fans was very reminiscent of third and Jeremiah. So that was a fun, fun little, uh, play for us. And then our kicker barely, barely makes a twenty nine year old. Twenty nine yard field goal at the end of the game, and the Titans win by two. Just the craziest stuff. All to happen, but the Titans get the win. I wanted to get your opinion on something. Uh, weird thing to focus on, but Titans are down by fifteen points. It’s twenty one six they get. We get our first touchdown on a, um, on a run by Tony Pollard. And so now you’re down by nine. So you can either go for two then and make it a seven point game, or you can just kick the extra point and it’s an eight point game. Um, I’m curious as to what you would do in that situation as a head coach. Um, if it was early enough on in the game, I’m probably kicking the extra point just to give the team a chance. You’re still within one score. You want to keep the hope alive. Um, I know that analytics probably points towards just do the two and move on and figure out where you’re at. But, uh, again, both of our teams are not great. And so you need to keep them in the game for as long as humanly possible. I totally agree, I absolutely agree, uh, Callahan got a lot of flack for that because everybody was saying you need to go for two in that situation, but if you miss it, then you’re down nine and it’s two score like you need to stay in the game, like you said, for as long as possible. Uh, Brian Callahan shockingly agreed with us and sent, uh, Joey Sly out there to kick the extra point. So it would just be an eight point game. And my thinking is to, like, go for two later in the game when the defense is even more tired. Like, give yourself an edge. Uh, none of that mattered because Joey Slye missed the extra point, so it stayed a nine point game. And, uh, we had to score, uh, a touchdown and a field goal, uh, to win. But that is the crazy Titans game. It was. That was a masterclass in misery from the Cardinals. I can’t say I’ve never seen it because I’m a Browns fan. But that one, uh, that one hit deep. And you can when you’re on the other side of it, you can feel it. Like you can feel it slipping. And you’re just like crap. Like, we’re gonna lose this game. Like, you can tell your team is actively trying in some ways. And then just the football gods are like, you’re not gonna win this. There were three Cardinals that tried to dive on that fumble, and it squirted into the end zone from three of them, diving on it like goofy stuff like that. Um, but you know what? We, uh. We got the win. Uh, our teams are hilariously the same record as the Ravens, which is one in four, baby. Uh, somehow, if the draft was today, the Titans would be picking seventh, which is ridiculous. It’s so stupid. Um, but I do worry about the Ravens and, uh, you know, potentially the Chiefs getting pretty high picks and they don’t need those. But anyways, that’s your weekly earnings report, uh, where the numbers are bad, but hey, hope is eternal. And speaking of bad investments, here’s a word from another one of our sponsors. So this sponsor is Franklin. That is James Franklin’s post game Spin School. Hey, James, welcome back to the show, James. Learn how to turn an eight and four season into a program on the rise. Enroll now and get a free press conference. Microphone. Thank you, James, for he keeps coming back. He he just wants to maybe he knows he’s going to be out of a job. So he’s got a hawk his products. And, uh, but thank you for the money. Yeah. As long as the checks clear, we don’t care. Uh, hopefully we get some signups for that spin school. I, I, I would go through it, so thank thank you, James, for that. Uh, man, talk about misery. Uh, the Penn State fans are going through it. But now that our investors are satisfied, hey, it’s time to hand out some equally super real awards as we step into the Office of Moral Victories. That is right. Everyone here at MSK underperforms. But corporate policy dictates we hand one of these awards out anyway. Our first employee of the week award goes to. This one is a little bit out of left field. So I am the Browns aren’t ever going to get it until they win a game. Um, so I’m just going to keep going around. So this actually ties into one of our sponsors. This goes to I’m going to butcher this Nico, I am Oliver from UCLA. That is the quarterback. His stat line was bonkers against Penn State. So you would you would look initially and you’re like oh one hundred and sixty six pass yards. That’s that’s not that great. Yeah. Two touchdown passes one hundred and twenty eight yards rushing with another three rushing touchdowns five touchdowns. Oh my good gosh. Yes. So he is my employee of the week Trevor. Who else gets an award. Uh I am also kind of going out of left field a little bit. Um I have two um, we’ll we’ll just go with one. I’ll give you I’ll give you the top one. Uh, are you familiar with Eric Collins? If I said the name Eric Collins, do you know who that is? I do not. So I was watching Red zone and it was boy, speaking of misery. It was on the Dolphins and Panthers game, and I was listening to it and I, I was like, I know, I know this voice, I know this voice. Where where is it from? And then I realized it’s the announcer for the Charlotte Hornets. And I know that voice because he is incredible on the calls. He has the most energetic calls I’ve ever heard. Uh, very much in that same vein as Gus Johnson, who big fans of Gus Johnson here on MSK. And so I want to share, uh, why he’s earning this award. So I’m gonna share that right now. Look at this. Down. Still on his feet. Caught back of the end zone. Xavier Legette. Tagovailoa got his man. Touchdown! Waller. Young caught. It’s horn. Bryce Young got his man. Touchdown third down. Down goes Tagovailoa. Really really great stuff. Really great stuff. I love his enthusiasm. No matter who the team. He doesn’t care if you get that ball in the end zone. He’s going nuts. Yes. He just brings the juice. That’s all I want. Like, I wish he would announce every Titans game, because you can tell that the announcers know this is some bad football we’re watching. And if if you start to pick up on that it’s a tougher watch for us. So congratulations to Eric Collins I love hearing you on football. Would love to hear you, uh, announce a Titans game someday. So Congratulations to Eric Collins. You are another employee of the week. And while those awards are framed and forgotten, let’s head down to the mail room for our standard, uh, posts of the week. Zach, what do you have? All right, I’ve got a few from the mailbag this week. So again, kind of all over the place. This first one, it’s a little dated maybe a few days ago now it’s from an official John boy. The haters said that the Cincinnati Reds didn’t belong in the playoffs and they were correct. Honestly, great call by the haters. The Reds just got crushed by the Dodgers. Let them live. They made it to the playoffs. They did make it. They made it to the big leagues. But uh, yeah, they may be a candidate for a deep dive here soon. Mhm. Um, I have another one. It’s it’s less uh, I’m actually going to post it on our website. So this is a nice plug. We do have our brand new website Misery Sports. Com. We also have Twitter as well as Spotify. Come check us out. Misery Sports Co please check us out. Subscribe. Give us some comments. We also have a place on our website if you want to list your team as well for a deep dive candidate, um, but we appreciate the support. Uh, this is from at Cleveland Sports Talk. The Browns are unveiling new uniforms for the coaching staff for this Sunday’s game against Pittsburgh. And it is literally just Kevin Stefanski in a clown costume. Uh, it will absolutely be posting this one. It’s better as a picture than it is commenting. And I have one more. It’s at mayhem. The New York Jets are a social experiment to see how much a person can take home. God bless you New York Jets fans, man, We feel you. You are part of Misery Sports Co. It hurts. It hurts to see some some good buckeyes there. We want. Yeah. They’re, uh, they’re putting it in right now, but, uh, the work is not paying off. No, no it’s not. All right. Trevor, what do you got? Uh, I’ve got two candidates for you. Um, the first is from at. It’s Jebidiah who has a funny gif of a suspicious Lego character and says Kyler Murray suspiciously has a foot injury a few days before battlefield six comes out. And this, of course, is a call to, uh, a famous look at his stats around Call of Duty double XP events, as he is a big Call of Duty player and his play typically, uh, and didn’t they? I swear for his contract negotiations, they tried to put something in for video games. They were like, I think you cannot. I think you’re right. It went public and they like, scratched it. Yeah. He is so obsessed. They had to look at his contract and be like, uh, I think we need to include this. Yep. And this one is my favorite. I’m not sure if you saw this this week. Uh, the post of the day is actually from a, uh, radio show in Nashville who had on former Titans center Ben Jones, who was here during the good years and is just a country boy who’s hilarious. Uh, but he was a great center from the Marcus era through the Tannehill era. Uh, Zach, if I said the name Terry Robiskie. Oh, boy. Uh, what sort of memories does that conjure? Well, we had both of them, so The senior was a wide receivers coach and it wasn’t nepotism, I swear. But we drafted his son, who was one in a an ocean of many subpar wide receivers that we got from the Ohio State University. Correct. Uh, so I’m referring to senior because while he was your wide receivers coach, he was the Titans offensive coordinator, uh, very infamously. And so Ben Jones was on a local radio show, and I wanted to play a clip of his memories of Terry Robiskie. So, like, we had Terry Robiskie. He gave us nothing. Like, he literally just said, y’all go play. So me and Marcus would have. That sounds about right, by the way. We would have the whole game plan. Like I was like, what is going on? Like when we had Trubisky we got nothing. Like it was just like turn off the mic. Y’all have fun boys. For a rookie quarterback. So me and Marcus would be out there. We wasn’t a rookie, but still the playoff game versus the Chiefs. When we came back and won, we got no play call the whole second half from Robiskie. He was just like, everybody’s probably wondering like, why are we calling draw on first and ten? Because we. Like he literally just was like in that game we were way down. And so it was going to be hurry up. And he was like, y’all go out there and figure it out. So our center and quarterback were literally like, we would do in flag football in college. Look at each other and be like, you want to run this play? Yeah, let’s run this play. Just freestyle Trevor. These are multi million dollar coordinators. They get paid. This is your job. This is all you do. It’s all you do. And we had fans being there like boy it sure looks like Terry Robiskie is doing nothing. And to hear that we were right the whole time we were right. He was doing nothing. I have so much more respect for I. I’m a huge Marcus fan. Uh, but to hear that Marcus and Ben led a huge comeback against the Chiefs, where Marcus threw a touchdown to himself on a deflected pass was amazing. So that, uh, is my tweet of the week. God bless Marcus Mariota. You know what. Yeah God bless him. He’s the backup. Where now Washington I think. Yeah he’s played in a few games. Yeah he’s had this season. Yeah Jaden’s got hurt. Good for him. So congratulations to this week’s honorees. We swear your awards are in the mail. Helping to pay postage on those awards is our next lovely sponsor. Trevor, what do we got? Zach, did you ever wonder what they’re hiding from us? Well, wonder no longer with Aaron Rodgers cold tub chats. They’re on to us. You know who’s they? Doesn’t matter. They’re them. And we’re us. And the less we talk about them, the more they feel better that we’re not on to them, and that’s unacceptable for us. Be so exhausted by a conversation that you feel like you’ve run a marathon with Aaron Rodgers. Cold tub chats. That’s what they want you to think. Zach. That’s what they want you to think. So it’s time to shift gears into our next segment, our deep dive here where we take a look at a miserable fan base with your resident VP of corporate misery, it’s Zach. Thank you Trevor. So the format of our show is really interesting right. Because we can kind of go across different sports. Really the focus is just on suffering fan bases, trying to understand them. We’ve hit the NFL with our teams. We’ve done the Las Vegas Raiders. You jumped into the MLB with the Seattle Mariners. I’m actually going to jump into the NBA for this episode. So we’ve got the NBA coming up. I think the season’s in like maybe two weeks. Something like that. Um, I am going to be focusing on the Washington Wizards. Excellent. Yeah. So the Washington Wizards were founded in nineteen sixty one as the Chicago Packers, of all things. I would have given you a thousand guesses. Never would have got that. Um, yeah. So the Chicago Packers back in the day in in the sixties, uh, Chicago had a meat packing industry. Sure. And so they figured, hey, let’s call them the Chicago Packers. One small issue with that, the, uh, the nemesis of the Chicago Bears was the green Bay Packers. So this name change actually went horribly, horribly wrong within a season. They renamed it to much better name the Chicago Zephyrs. What? I, I didn’t even do enough research to understand what a Z e y r. I don’t want to know. We’re just we’re just going to fast forward Freemason stuff or something like, what is that about zippers? You just had to be there. Um, so you really had to be there. They were. They were the NBA’s first expansion team. Little known fact. Um, and in nineteen sixty three, it went so well that they moved to Baltimore, Maryland and became the Baltimore Bullets, named, um, so a little bit different. They moved out of Chicago. Um, and for the sixties and 70s, they started to build the team, um, in the, in the seventies, they actually ended up moving to Washington, where they now reside. Um, and at that point they were known as the Capital Bullets in nineteen seventy three. That’s awesome. Yeah. So in in seventy four, they went from the capital bullets to the Washington Bullets, and they ended up winning their first and only championship in nineteen seventy eight. So back then they actually had two Hall of Famers on their team, Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld. So I knew Wes Unseld. Um, and as it would happen, his son ended up being the head coach of the Washington Wizards like a few years ago. So small world, a little nepotism there. But they ended up beating the Seattle SuperSonics. Um, wish we had the SuperSonics still, but yeah, they beat them in game seven. Um, and then the SuperSonics, they actually met in the NBA finals again the following year in the SuperSonics got their revenge, winning the NBA championship the following year. Four to one. Oh, wow. Um, yeah. I mean, in the eighties, they they acquired some, you know, pretty big names. So they drafted, uh, Manute Bol in the NBA draft, who ended up blocking three hundred and ninety seven shots in his first year. Goodness. Um, I think he was just drafted because of how ginormous he was. Yeah, I know his son, Bol Bol, is also gigantic. Yep. Um, so let him live. And then in nineteen eighty seven, they drafted none other than Muggsy Bogues. Oh, man. Um, he of five foot three stature. The shortest player in NBA history. Wow. They spent the number twelve pick on Muggsy Bogues. No disrespect to Muggsy. No. No disrespect at all. The shortest player ever in the NBA. Yeesh! Yeah. So in the eighties, you know, they had some success. But again, they never hit that that championship stride in the nineties. You start to look at some of their drafts. And again they’ve got some pretty decent players. They just never turned into that championship team. So they had Juwan Howard in nineteen ninety four from the Fab Five. Yep. Um, and then they made a trade for his his buddy Chris Webber. Oh shoot. The Fab Five as well in the nineties. So they were trying to get the the band back together. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. Chris Webber ended up getting injured in nineteen ninety five. Um, you know, he ended up getting shipped out a little bit later. Um, never really gelled. Um, they had Rod Strickland in the nineties, uh, you know, some, some decent names, but again, couldn’t put the pieces together, could not make a run. You’re going to see something similar in the the two thousand, even the twenty tens where they continue to draft decent players, but they just never, ever put it together. Yeah. Um, so in nineteen ninety eight, they traded Chris Chris Webber away to the Kings As we know, he had a great career with the Kings that was ended up going team. Yeah, ended up going to the um Western Conference finals. Gave the Lakers all he could handle. Um, in nineteen ninety nine they drafted Richard Hamilton, another wo great player. Yeah, really? So their draft history really isn’t bad. They just keep getting rid of these players. Yeah. Uh, but they got they got rid of him pretty quick to Detroit. Right. It must have been. Yeah. So they shipped him out pretty soon. It was in the early two thousand. Um, around that same time they traded Juwan Howard to the Mavs. Yep. So the Mavs and the Cavs actually have a an interesting history through the the two thousand on our teams with uh the Washington Wizards. There’s a lot of history here. This is the first touch point. So Juwan Howard went to the Mavs. Um, ultimately went to the heat, right? Um, yep. Want to ship there? Don’t want to talk about it. Too soon. Around that same time, Michael Jordan becomes the president of basketball operations and a minority owner in the Washington Wizards, two thousand, two thousand and one. And then in two thousand and one, MJ’s like. Well, I think I think I want to play again and I think I want to play for the Washington Wizards for my team. So he suited up. Yeah, he suits it up at thirty eight years old and he has to give up his minority ownership. So he had to divest his ownership when he, uh. I truly don’t understand. He had such a burning desire. He must have seen the team when he jumped in and was like, I can do better than this. Yeah, I’m going to do it. Um, so he and Rip Hamilton actually played a couple seasons together. Oh, wow. Um, yeah. And so in two thousand and two, they traded for Jerry Stackhouse and Larry Hughes. Also Mavs great. Jerry. Yep. Yeah. Jerry Stackhouse went to the Mavs. Larry Hughes ends up on the Cavaliers. During the early LeBron days, um was essentially the number two for a couple of years. Um, and in two thousand and three Jordan calls it quits. He’s like, I’m I’m done. I’m hitting forty. I’m good. Yeah. Um, and this is when they end up signing Gilbert Arenas. Oh, this is my favorite. This is my favorite stretch of Washington Wizards basketball. And I actually love Gilbert Arenas, the basketball player. He’s the first player that I can remember that really stretched the court that you had to guard. He wasn’t afraid to shoot. He would shoot all the time. Yes. He wanted to score, Gore. Obviously. Off the court. Different story. Questionable. Totally different story. But again, you see all these players and it never amounts to anything other than a quick playoff exit at best. But typically it’s five hundred or a losing season. Yep. I have him in the same category as Tracy McGrady. Like just super exciting scorers. And you just wish that they had done more in the playoffs. Like I kind of I kind of equate those two. I man I love watching Gilbert Arenas. Absolutely, absolutely. So in two thousand and four, the Wizards traded Stackhouse Christian Laettner. Okay. Uh, kind of random and Devin Harris to, you guessed it, the Dallas Mavericks. Yeah. Wow. So that’s how we got Devin Harris. Yeah. So the Dallas Mavericks had Antwan Jamison. I didn’t know that. Yep. They ended up shipping him to the Wizards. Um, I don’t know if the Washington Wizards just had the Mavericks on speed dial and knew that they would pick the phone up. Yeah. Maybe so. But every significant trade in the two thousand seems to be with the Mavs primarily. Um, so at this point, you’ve got Gilbert Arenas. Antwan Jamison was a good player. He’s kind of a tweener. He was like a power forward, but he could shoot. He was pretty. He was a little bit on the smaller side, more like a wing player. But um, they had a lot of offense. They just again, couldn’t ever really put it together. So in oh five, a couple years later, they acquired Caron Butler and Antonio Daniels. I mean, these are solid players. Also on the Mavs championship team. This is crazy. I did not know there was such a strong connection between the Mavs and Wizards. It’s blowing my mind. So this is right around when the playoff series start to happen with the Cleveland Cavaliers and that um, you know, rivalry really is born. So LeBron is very early into his career. You know, he’s trying to figure it out. The Cavaliers have surrounded him with just about nothing in terms of talent. Yeah. Um and so they clash with the Wizards. And really they’re at the bottom of the playoff pool right. You’ve got the Detroit Pistons at the top. They’re the standard at that point. Um but we’re duking it out with the Wizards. And the Wizards end up losing to the Cavs for two in that series. They they signed Deshaun Watson the next year also of Mavericks lore um go up against the Cavs or I’m sorry DeShawn Stevenson. Yes we know. Hey we know that Deshaun Watson has um has some space in the in the brain. It’s too soon. Yeah it’s too soon. They get swept by the Cavs. So again they just they can’t put it together. Uh this team just can’t get over the hump. And in two thousand and eight. I didn’t know this. They drafted JaVale McGee. Oh, wow. Um, and also this is when they. Yeah, yeah. And this is when they acquired Javaris Crittenton. Um, so this is when things start to go downhill from an off the court. Um, I’m not going to go into great detail on all of it. There’s a Netflix series out where you can go see that. Um, but they actually, uh, get, uh, in some trouble with loaded guns and threatening teammates. And so there’s just not a professional focus on the game and what you need to do to get better. Um, with that type of locker room environment. And so in twenty ten, they just they just blow it all up. And this is where the Mavs come in again. They’ve got the Mavs on speed dial and they trade the Mavs. Caron Butler Brandon Hayward, DeShawn Stevenson for Josh Howard and Drew Gooden among others. Yeah. So Drew Gooden went from the Cavaliers to the Mavs. Now to the Washington Wizards. Man, um, that they get rid of Gilbert Arenas for the Mavericks. I mean those were Brendan Haywood played a lot of backup minutes behind Tyson Chandler. He was a starting center before we got Tyson Chandler. Caron Butler was hurt the whole second half of the championship run but got us in great position. Um, that was just a huge, massive, massive trade. And I’m sorry that it didn’t work out for the Wizards, but thank you. Oh yeah, I remember DeShawn Stevenson doing his little face gesture. He put his hand up to his face like he was invisible. It’s kind of like a John Cena thing. Yeah for sure. So around the same time they’re they’re just tearing this thing apart. They they sent Antwan Jamison to the Cavaliers, um, for Zydrunas Ilgauskas and a couple other parts. Um, Antwan Jamison just never was the same with the Cavaliers. It just the thing with the Cavaliers and I’ll touch on it quickly. They kept acquiring players that just were over their their prime and Antwan Jamison definitely was. So the Wizards are destroying what they had built, but they they get really good fortune again in the draft. So in twenty ten they take John Wall number one. And in twenty twelve they draft Bradley Beal. So two all star players they end up getting kind of old Paul Pierce in twenty fourteen. Yep. But they have a decent core. Again they are not able to do anything with this team. They do not go far in the playoffs. They’re not able to build around this team. And just looking at from nineteen ninety seven when they became the Washington Wizards, they had been the bullets for so long. But when they became the Washington Wizards they have a forty one percent win percentage. So they had a nine hundred and twelve wins, one thousand three hundred and sixteen losses. God bless you Wizards fans who are sitting through thirteen hundred losses. Good golly. Nine playoff trips in those twenty eight seasons and twelve top ten picks. I think you’ll remember this, the most notable being Kwame Brown. Number one, gotta be known for something. One it’s an absolute tough one, man. So that is the Washington Wizards. Unfortunately, John Wall and Bradley Beal are no longer with the team. Yeah. Uh trying to build through the draft but it just they’re not building depth with the star players. So they’ve got to figure that part out. Uh but it’s a new season coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s a new season. You never know man. Right. Well we welcome we welcome all Wizards fans here at MSK. Come let us know. Put the Wizards on the map on our website misery Sports.com. Let us know you’re there. Shout out us on uh, on X. Yeah, I, uh, it’s I feel like the wizards are one of those teams that, like, the sport is more fun when they’re good. Like when they’re competitive. Like those Wizards Cavs series were so fun. Like, it was such a great rivalry. Loved going see up against them. And I maybe I enjoy them more because I was definitely rooting for LeBron. And he won all of those. So that was great. But they’re just a team that you want. You want them to do. You want them to do well, uh, and I feel like we owe them one for how you know, how much they gave the Mavericks. I assume they had pretty good odds in this past draft when the Mavericks got Cooper Flagg, I think they were up there in terms of, uh, lottery percentage. And they were one of the teams we jumped over. So No hard feelings to the Wizards. Thank you for all that. You know, when the league’s going to rig something, what are you going to do? That’s right. And if you thought that was bleak, just wait until you hear from our next sponsor, Stefanski Clock Management Consulting. We specialize in stretching 60s into three full possessions for the opposition because when in doubt, burn time and hopes simultaneously. Thank you, uh, Stefanski consultants for your for your sponsorship here. That’s. I’m sure they do good business. Big thanks to them. Uh, proving that someone out there actually does care about us. That’s right. And before we wrap up today’s meeting, let’s end on a high note with our pep talks. Trevor. That’s right. At Misery Sports Company, we believe in leaving every meeting with a little bit of hope, even if it is wildly misplaced. My pep talk of the week goes to Treylon Burks. Treylon Burks was put in a terrible position. Um, really unfortunate. So when the Titans decided that they needed to trade away the best receiver that we’ve maybe ever had. Uh, if you don’t count Randy Moss. Because by the time he got there, he wasn’t really Randy Moss. Uh, when we decided we needed to trade away AJ Brown the very next draft, we drafted Treylon Burks as his replacement, who was supposed to be the next big receiver. And so Treylon Burks had unfair expectations put on him from the start. And it was unfortunate because he got lots of concussions over his first couple years and just never seemed to be healthy. Well, this this year he was also, dealing with some injuries, was put on IR and was just released by the Titans. And I just want to say, uh, that we do not hold any ill will from you Titans nation. Certainly. MSK uh, I just want to say thank you for your service. Thanks for being positive. It was a really unfair situation from the get go. I hope you land on your feet somewhere and prove all the haters wrong, and can be a wonderful receiver at a different team, so keep your chin up. Trey. Thanks for your time at the Titans and best of luck to you man. Hope you do well. That’s my pep talk of the week Zach. Keep us rolling. All right I’m a little bit off the beaten path, but I am actually going to go down to Chapel Hill. I am going to visit the one and only Bill Belichick, Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame NFL head coach. Uh, not Hall of Fame college coach. Oh, boy. Um, Billy b, I, uh, I don’t know what to say, man. I just you’re seventy three years old. Uh, you’re currently two and three. Um, you did beat Charlotte in Richmond. Congratulations. Congrats, man. Um, but you lost to TCU, forty eight to fourteen. Uh, UCF kicked you in the face thirty four to nine, and Clemson was up twenty eight to three at the end of the first quarter. Oh, my good God. Um, I know that there’s a lot going on right now in your life. I’m not going to touch on your your off the field endeavors adventures. Talk about that. I can’t I can’t without threat of legal action. But Billy B, I think this is your time. It’s not really a pep talk. It’s more of like a pat on the back and just let’s let’s call it what it is, buddy. Let’s just ride off into the sunset. You’ve got your Super Bowl trophies. Um, I don’t know what’s going on in North Carolina right now. It’s not coaching, sir. It’s over. Thank you. It’s over. Yeah. I don’t know if that was a pep talk or a sliding the hospital pillow over his face. Just. Buddy, we’re done here. Did you see the latest, by the way, that was breaking this afternoon. About that? No. He was. He’s been talking to uncW about. Hey, if I can land somewhere with another team or get a media job, I will activate my own million dollar buyout clause and just leave. So I think they’re going to be like, yeah, go find that. We’ll we’ll broker something for you to like. We’ll take care of it. So just an absolute dumpster fire there at UNC after being so hyped. Uh Good luck. Bill. Good. Enjoy retirement, man. You’ve earned it. You’ve done a great job. Yeah. There’s the pep talk. Set yourself up really nicely. Well, that’ll do it for this week’s meeting at Misery Sports Company. We hope you’ll become employees here by subscribing to the channel, following us on X and visiting our new website, Misery Sports Co. Until next week I’m Trevor and I’m Zach. See you next time.