D.C. residents cheered when three new escalators opened at the south entrance of the Dupont Circle Metro Station in October 2012. The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA) closed the southern entrance for repairs for nearly nine months, but the wait was worth it, in theory. WMATA had decided to strip the entrance and rebuild from scratch this past summer, finally doing away with some of the least reliable escalators in the system.

New “transit-grade” escalators promised a better commute—to “unsuck” D.C. Metro—in one of the city’s busiest, and deepest, subway stations. In reality, Metro and its faithfully frustrated riders were forced to deal with 20 outages in the first 40 days after the grand reopening.

Construction is a constant in the nation’s capital, but, for one reason or another, it never seems to go according to plan. Just ask any Wizards fan who is still waiting for their team to climb out of the gutter.

Supporters of D.C.’s pro basketball team have suffered through nearly 200 losses and some of the worst basketball the Association has ever seen for almost five seasons now. We all know about owner Ted Leonsis’ blueprint for rebuilding his Washington Wizards: stay financially flexible, sign free agents and develop supposedly talented prospect. And, perhaps, trade some of said prospects for major players when the opportunities arise.

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Truth About It.net will turn a whole five years old at the end of this October.

Hard to believe/interesting. Nonetheless, over the life of the site from the 2007-08 season to 2011-12, we’ve seen/lived/suffered through 131 wins, 263 losses, four coaches, two owners, one GM/team president, one Phil Chenier mustache removal, and 56 total players (amazingly, 48 players over the last three seasons).

You may have heard of ESPN’s #NBArank project, now in year two. Now hear of #WizardsRank, where we rank each of those 56 players during Truth About It.net’s five-year run. TAI anonymously polled 27 members of the Wizards pixel establishment — from mainstream media to new media, TAI staffers included, to a few pixel consumers (readers of the site) — and got 17 responses.

Participants were given the full list of 56 in alphabetical order, and included for each player were total games, minutes, PER (player efficiency rating), and WS/48 (win-shares per 48 minutes) only from the last five seasons. Participants were asked to rate each player on the scale of 1-to-10 according to this criteria: on court performance; off court performance; intangibles; and own personal memory. Yes, this is totally subjective, but relatively collective.

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ShareBullets: things from around the web…

>> We start with a big Kevin Seraphin block versus Tunisia.

>> James Singleton is moving on; Roger Mason, too.

With the Wizards reportedly unwilling to pay anything more than the veteran’s minimum, John Singleton moving on and Roger Mason signing with the New Orleans Hornets represents cost-considered moves for the Washington franchise (see cliche phrase: “It’s a business”). In a sense, this is a disservice: not finding a way to reward the efforts of Singleton and Mason while offering some constancy to a young team. In reality, the Wizards weren’t offering much playing time. Shooting from Mason would have been nice, the same with the grit of Singleton, but with roster capacity now at 13 — and the need to see how all the new feature parts fit together first– the Wizards can afford to hold off on filling the last two available spots, per report of the Washington Post’s Michael Lee. Not retaining Mason and Singleton was not part of an ideal offseason plan for the Wiz, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t come along an inspire the team from the end of the bench just as well.

>> ESPN’s Marc Stein reports (via Twitter) that the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat are interested in Andray Blatche. Both are solid organizations and could help turn Blatche into something. Each city also drastically differs in nightlight options, which understandably could have a significant influence on the overall “Party All-Dray” experience. Blatche has for the past couple of offseasons made his home in Miami. So there’s that. San Antonio has the Riverwalk. Also:

“Everyone knows San Antonio is a great city… they do have some big ol’ women down here,” famously said Charles Barkley.

Destination Blatche: To Be Determined. Read more »

Some people, ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz for instance, have argued that the NBA should kill the draft. The system is broken, teams are tanking, lottery teams stay lottery teams… The fix: End the NBA draft and have all rookies enter the league as free agents. Why? Well, the NBA is a “business,” free market this-and-that, yada-yada-yada…

However, in constant attempts to analyze the NBA as a business — “It’s a business,” often being a canned talking point of players and team personnel alike when unable to explain the real reasons behind a maneuver — people forget that one of the first principles of business is that the customer comes first (or that the customer is always right). Whatever the case, will somebody please think of the children?

Yes, free agency rumors and the current mass, social media dissemination of them can be fun for fans, but only media members (and maybe a few teams attempting to cloud their intentions), really benefit from the noise.

The NBA draft is for the customer. Well, it’s for the players, too. And, it also benefits the league’s marketing of itself and its individuals. So, there’s no need to muddy ceremonial pomp and circumstance with dollars and cents. Because if there are league-wide issues with the way the business of basketball functions, there are other ways to resolve them aside from eliminating one of the NBA’s most-covered events.

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[NOTE: Truth About It.net 2011-12 Player Reviews continue, where we take a look at the past, present and future of those players who have touched the Wizards franchise during the 2011-12 lockout-shortened season. Now, from D.C. to China and back again...  That's right...  James Singleton. TAI's Ryan Gracia and Adam McGinnis try to deem worthy James' 12 games with the Wizards. -Kyle W.]

Player Review Index:  Morris Almond (we’d like to)  |  Andray Blatche  |  Trevor Booker  |  Brian Cook (maybe)  |  Jordan Crawford  |  Maurice Evans  |  Rashard Lewis  |  Shelvin Mack  |  Cartier Martin  |  Roger Mason Jr.  |  JaVale McGee  |  Nenê  |  Kevin Seraphin (coming soon)  |  Chris Singleton  |  James Singleton  |  Ronny Turiaf (meh)  |  Edwin Ubiles (we’ll see)  |  Jan Vesely  |  John Wall  |  Nick Young

James Singleton: DC Council Ratings

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Someone had to be the first to throw a flagrant elbow after the Ron Artest-James Harden incident. And if Vegas had set odds, Charlotte’s Tyrus Thomas, a guy who recently got in a physical confrontation with his coach, might have been one of the favorites. Last night in Washington, he delivered.

No, it wasn’t a violent, or even wholly, apparently intentional blow. If you were following Twitter at the time, you might have even seen comment that Thomas delivered a phantom elbow to the chops of Washington’s James Singleton, that he didn’t really connect. And, perhaps, that the referees had found their first post-Artest victim of hyper-senstitive, swift reaction (although Artest — Metta World Peace – has yet to receive game suspension punishment from the league himself). Let’s watch…

Hard to concretely tell from that video. And personally, I didn’t see the play unfold while attending the game at the Verizon Center. But the refs immediately hit Thomas with a flagrant-2 technical foul and stopped the game for a more in-depth video review. Not long after they were done watching, Thomas was ejected from the game. A muted elbow swing or not, the referees obviously saw enough to make an educated decision. What they heard, however, likely played an even larger role in the punishment than the visuals.

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Is change in the air? Certainly not if you ask Washington Wizards fans this morning, a majority of whom are entrenched in disenchantment with the reported return of team president Ernie Grunfeld. The only true change fans might be used to at this point is a high-rate of roster turnover — after this season, the longest tenured Wizard, John Wall, will have been with the team for only the last 148 games– as well as the inescapable, save for one time, disappointment in NBA Draft Lottery position.

But we’re talking about change on the court, specifically the emergence of a basketball product that’s at least competitive — with a 101-73 win over the Charlotte Bobcats on Monday night, the Wizards have now won four in a row for the first time since December 2007. Of course, we should also be mindful of the fact that the Wizards will, at best, finish with one of the nine worst season winning percentages in 51 seasons of franchise history. Also, 22.2-percent of Washington’s 18 victories this season have come against a Bobcats franchise that has now lost 21 games in a row and is flirting with the worst winning percentage in NBA history if they don’t win one of their final two contests.

Ask some of the Wizards players about the reason for basketball product differences between early in the season and now, and you’ll get veiled explanations about new personnel and guys coming together as a team. Does it boil down to the fact that I like, and strive, to beat like a dead horse: that Nick Young, JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche (hopefully) are gone? It feels all too easy, almost disingenuous, to use the mentally inept as scapegoats. Yet, here we are, with a different basketball team, one that actually might find success given the right additions this offseason.

Maybe veteran Mo Evans said it best when asked about how late season success this year, as opposed to similar circumstances over the past several seasons of futility, should be evaluated with any grain of credibility.

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[The DC Council -- After each Wizards game: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the bench, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is over the table. Click here for cumulative DC Council 3-star ratings over the course of the season. Game 61 contributors: Markus Allen, Arish Narayen, and Kyle Weidie (@truth_about_it).]

Score

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Photo by Stephen Gosling/NBAE via Getty Images

No energy. No result. The Wizards dropped their 45th game of the season, this time in a home meeting with the short-handed Cleveland Cavaliers. TAI’s Rashad Mobley (@rashad20) and John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend) have the reaction.

M.V.P.

-Rashad Mobley

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This past week has been a blur, mostly because I’ve been oddly feeling under the weather… in a haze of a head cold that won’t quit. It also might be the Wizards. Have I mentioned how this 2011-12 NBA season can’t be over soon enough? A week? These past several years of the Washington Wizards franchise, one that can’t stop finding ways to top itself in futility,  has been a blur. Actually, they’ve been bottom-feeding for a while, so nothing should surprise, even almost breaking the all-time franchise low for points scored in a game (64), which happened to be set less than 100 days ago.

After getting embarrassingly demoralized, 103-65, by the New York Knicks in their only appearance in Madison Square Garden this season, Washington has now collected 223 losses since falling to the New Jersey Nets on opening night of the 2008-09 season. There are just 82 wins to show for it. During the calendar of those previous three NBA regular seasons and including this fourth, lockout-shortened one, Wizards fans have experienced a loss every 2.8 days, a win every 7.5 days of a season.

But the key number from Friday night’s defeat: 22. The Wizards made 22 field goals, a franchise low, and committed 22 team turnovers, while the Knicks had 22 assists. How should fans respond to such ugliness? How can they? They can’t.

It’s not about this team losing to those Knicks in that manner on whatever night while being heckled by New York fans, media members and players alike. There are mitigating circumstances. Over the past eight games the Wizards have trotted out the youngest starting lineup in franchise history. The hard sell of the team and its television broadcast partners won’t let anyone forget.

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