I dig … I dig

Hate is a very, very strong emotion. So strong in fact that I’ve long been adverse to admitting, even in the comforts of my own mind, the possibility that I could ever hate anyone … except Kwame Brown. When your favorite NBA squad has been as bad as the Washington Bullets/Wizards have been since I was a young boy, you often look back at some of the diabolical moves the franchise has made over the years and while there are many to choose from, selecting Brown with the No. 1 overall selection in the 2001 NBA Draft has trumped them all. Yes, worse than trading Chris Webber for Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe. Yes, worse than giving Juwan Howard a mind-numbing seven-year, $105 million deal the season after his first and only All-Star appearance. The list could go on and on, but you get the picture.

This picture no longer makes me want to slap strangers

It’s moves like these that aside from a playoff appearance here or there, have made the Bullets/Wizards an annual participant in the NBA Draft Lottery, a pathetic assemblage of ineptitude for the NBA’s perennially awful organizations. Up until the spring of 2001, I’d watch the proceedings hoping that maybe, just maybe, this would be the year the good Lord would shine his everlasting light on D.C. and bestow upon us a savior, a savant of the game of basketball that would lead his flock out of the wilderness and to the promised land. So imagine me screaming at the top of my lungs and thanking his holiness after watching the Wizards win the 2001 NBA Draft Lottery and with it the opportunity to select any draft-eligible player in the world. The possibilities were endless, and after doing his due diligence, the G.O.A.T. made what is ’til this day, the biggest blunder in Bullets/Wizards draft history when he he used that selection on Brown.

Brown looked the part, he said all the right things and while it was expected to take him a few years to develop, he was fully expected to put the franchise on his shoulders and be the cornerstone a perennial contender could build around. Well, for myriad reasons, that didn’t happen and it still pained me … until approx. 8:24 PM ET, May 18, 2010.

The demons have been exorcised. I no longer cringe at the picture of Brown posted above. I no longer feel the need to explain who Kenny Green is to the uninitiated. I no longer want to jump through my T.V. and confront Nick Young personally every time I see him take an off-balanced 24-foot jumper and jog back on defense like he’s playing in a charity basketball game. I no longer care that the Wiz traded the fifth pick in last year’s draft then neglected to select DeJuan Blair, who I would have seriously contemplated taking in the first round to begin with, with their second-round selection.

It’s all in the past.

Someway, somehow – whether through the sheer luck of the draw or through divine intervention – my team, against all odds, won the NBA Draft Lottery and with it, the opportunity to select John Wall. Wall, a true franchise changer who possesses a rare combination of speed and athleticism at the point guard position, to go along with great size, instincts and a good, but not spectacular, skill-set that makes him the clear-cut choice at the top of next month’s draft. While Gilbert Arenas will return to the Wizards next season, Wizards brass shouldn’t even think of  opting for Evan Turner or Derrick Favors – the only other players who should even be thought of at No. 1 – simply because you expect Arenas to re-assume his role as floor general. Drafting Turner or Favors would give the impression that you’re still building around Arenas, and at this point, regardless of his contract, once the team traded Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood, the team committed to a full-scale rebuilding and drafting Wall is the first big block in the renovation.

While some may scoff at the idea of a young millionaire like Wall playing in D.C. and falling prey to all that entails, shut up. Enjoy your lukewarm chicken wings and fried rice, stale bread and Rock Creek orange soda lunch and leave the basketball talk to people who have something to look forward too come November.

We got John Wall, and you don’t.