Morning Look: Wiz Fans Turn Inward







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So I went to the Caps and Wiz games on back-to-back nights this weekend, and the environments weren't exactly identical. To begin with, while Caps fans Rock the Red, Wiz fans rock the business casual attire, in muted tones.

But more to my purposes, it's not so easy to find Wiz fans dressed in costumes or wearing wackily personalized jerseys or carrying giant green ogre hands painted flesh-colored, as Caps fans do. Two spins around the concourse yielded just two Wiz fans worthy of Internet celebration, and both were sort of downers.

First, meet Prescott, the DeShawn Stevenson jersey fan. He loves DeShawn Stevenson, calling him one of the team's most valuable clowns.

"When I say he is among the top five clowns on the team, I mean that in the best way possible," he later e-mailed me. "Scoring a lot of points is important, but someone has to represent the Wiz. I'ts popular to hate on Deshawn these days. People like to kick him when he is down. But he'll pick himself back up. That's really why I wear that jersey and try to get his attention-- so he knows the kids still believe in him."



"That jersey," you'll note, is actually a Utah Jazz DeShawn jersey. Prescott wanted to give the Wizards' franchise his hard-earned sports leisure bucks, but he was unable to find the DeShawn jersey in the team store, and didn't want to make it himself, so he just bought a DeShawn Utah Jazz jersey on eBay for $40.

So Prescott is paying tribute to a player who "represents the Wiz" by wearing his jersey from two teams ago, back when DeShawn could still feel his face. I asked whether he also has a soft spot for Utah; "the Jazz suck," he responded.





Even worse was Doe Kim, owner of an Andray Blatche jersey. The young big man so frustrated Doe with his seeming indifference earlier this year that Doe "was about to put it in the Goodwill box."

But he and his friends had come up with this "Bloth" nickname for No. 32--part Blatche, part Sloth--so instead of trashing it, he converted his jersey into possibly the world's only "Bloth" tribute.

"But we like him, now," Doe said. "He's been hustling lately."

Of course, it's worth noting that Blatche has also been injured of late, and that while he dressed in uniform for Sunday's game--complete with headband--that was only because he didn't have a suit to wear on the bench. No, really.

A few minutes after I met Doe, I saw a fan talking to an usher. "When's Gil coming back?" the fan asked the usher. "We don't know," the usher said. "We don't have anything to do with what goes on on that side. We just want you to have a good time on this side."

Call me crazy, but I think the two sides sort of go hand-in-hand. Or knee-in-knee, I guess.