FanPost

Small time: Why the Wizards struggle to get ahead

Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

Pimpin' ain't easy

WASHINGTON -€” A microphone looms on the brightly colored vinyl. Sure, it doesn't smell like a beer and the air conditioning is good in here, but tension is a stone in your stomach pulling you underwater. You sit down in the folding chair with your unwritten name on it, like pouring your own concrete shoes, because there's something everybody knows but nobody says: justice draws a crowd.

You lean forward. The electronic hush pouring from speakers poised to carry your account is suddenly very loud. A expectant miasma hovers in the crowd like blood in the water, your blood. Justice.

Any ship's captain knows why it sank and so do you. It's salvage time, but you aren't free to be frank because in the NBA, the sailors are your most crucial investors. Still, you've got to say something because the public has got to buy what you're selling.

"We're gonna give it another shot and see what we can do."

Nobody says anything.

You can't risk analysis; you need those sailors back on the water and happy about it. Happy enough. You talk about how the wind didn't blow. Those waves, boy.

You're not just the captain of the ship. Gotta be a hustler, too. Short memory. Keep that action fast and loose.

So you never revisit the '11 Draft. You don't imagine The Beard in The District. Dressed yourself in a $64 million millstone for four years, so what? You tried playing in the clouds and ended up eating mud. You're still breathing. What's happening next? What's happening now?

The crowd disperses. They'll come for you later, sure, when something goes wrong. That's just how they do it. Nothing personal.

You're on to the next thing. Draft a wing, okay. Dump the black sheep for a little bench scoring? Thank you very much.

Everybody's trying to rob the same train. That's what Tommy said. You need that young, athletic big.

Everybody screamed after the draft. But you know. Right now, money is thinner than the spring ice in Forest Hills and large, basketball-playing humans are out in the cold. You've got talent, a good home, and someone is going to prefer it.

There's a young, athletic big out there and you've got a jersey with his name on it. Get it done.

You can see it now. Big, bold letters glowing Monumental Red: Mission Accomplished. Victory in Europe and Peace In Our Time. For a few months, anyway.

Maybe it doesn't work out. That happens, you know. But you can deal with that when it does. Mission Accomplished will be the furthest thing from your mind, then, because it has to be. You're a hustler, right? Short memory.

Anguished rage has a way of sticking, though. The K-word. Sidelined, seeing the team you built sniff the finish line without you...you keep what's important. It's possible. You've seen it.

It isn't always going to be like this, watching anointed teams, in anointed cities, vanishing in the distance while you sit in the folding chair with your unwritten name on it like pouring your own concrete shoes, explaining to the room full of faces, who expected you to fail, why you can't hack it in the small-time.

Those waves, boy. They'll get you.

This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.