This column is usually devoted to the intersection of politics and sports. But if our attraction to sports were entirely political, we would enjoy competitive athletics about as much as a C-SPAN hearing on agrarian reform. Sports capture our attention because of artistry, strategy, competition and sometimes forces that seem positively mystical. Where else, outside of Bob Jones University or the Oval Office can people speak with straight faces about otherworldly entities like curses, jinxes and being “snakebitten”?

I write this because hexes and snakebites seem to be gashing the arms of my local NBA team the Washington Wizards. Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was done rooting for them, they pulled me back in. And now after 35 games of thrills and chills, an injury to a key player appears to have sent them reeling.

All year the Wizards have played like they didn't know they were in fact the Wizards – a team that hasn’t won a playoff game since before George W was born again. They sprinted out to a 22-13 start led by the young athletic trio Larry Hughes, Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison. The Zards turning the keys over to players under 35 is a counterintuitive strategy for a team that typically drags in aged future Hall of Famers – from Moses Malone to Michael Jordan - with more tread on their tires than a '57 Chevette. To paraphrase the great Marcellus Wallace, 'Athletes don't age like fine wine, unless you mean they turn to vinegar.'

Hughes, Arenas, and Jamison seemed to laugh in the face of this history and simply dared you to outscore them. This style of play has been especially refreshing in a season when most the NBA oxygen has been depleted by stories more at home in US Weekly than Sports Illustrated. (“Will Shaq hug Kobe? Will Ron Artest go insane? Will Vince Carter ever stop whining? Tune in next week for Days of Our League.”) But the Zards alongside the Phoenix Suns and Seattle Supersonics have played an inspired team oriented brand of play harkening back to the NBA of the 1980s – before Pat Riley starting coaching the Knicks and the entire league became about as athletically aesthetic as elderly Greco Roman mud wrestling.

But in two games they appear to have given up all pretensions of greatness because Larry Hughes broke his damn thumb and will be out 4-6 weeks. Adding insult to injury, Hughes broke it on the day he was named NBA player of the week. Normally this wouldn't be cause for mass panic. Injuries happen and they still have two all-star quality players. But Hughes injury has sparked an existential crisis on a team that seems to have skipped a dose of their collective prozac. The old heaviness of the Wizards uniform has returned. In two games without Hughes, they’ve lost by a combined 50 points. First against San Antonio, they fell behind 21-2 – game over before the first commercial break. Then against Dallas they were down 26 in the first quarter and were behind an astounding 73-40 by the half. Arenas is already speaking in terms of 'soul-searching' without Hughes, as if Larry was in intensive care instead of merely out for a month. Instead of playing with reckless abandon, there is a now a deadness as if the ball weighs twenty pounds and they all sport snow boots instead of high tops. The momentum, the élan, the joy of play seems sapped.

What’s so maddening about this capitulation is that the cupboard is hardly bare. Juan Dixon, Jarvis Hayes, Laron Profit, and veteran Anthony Peeler could all rise to the occasion and replace Hughes’ production. In other words, the problem is not an absence of human material but confidence. They seem to prefer collapse over looking reality in the face and fighting back.

In some respects they are like a left in this country that moans and groans about how “right wing and stupid” the United States is, while choosing not to see the millions of unaffiliated, isolated people who hate this war, despise the agenda of this President but remain unorganized. The fact is that the Wizards can’t afford to sit passively and wait four weeks any more than the left can sit back and wait four years. It’s time to scrap and struggle right now. Because like Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Ya gotta give the people victories.”



--Dave Zirin's new book 'What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States will be in stores in June 2005. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at editor@pgpost.com.