[Looking south down 5th St. NW from Grant Circle]

The Wizards are 0-6 on the road so far on the season, but they are treating faithful fans to a 5-2 record at home. The last time the team started 0-6 away from home came in 2008-09, they won road game No. 7 against the New Jersey Nets on December 2, 2008. The worst before that came in 2006-07 when the Wizards started 0-8 on the road before beating the Knicks in New York on December 6 … and actually, that represents the worst road start in franchise history.

The 1961-62 Chicago Packers, technically the first season in franchise history, actually started their season 0-8 “away from home” — in that their seventh game of the season versus the New York Knicks took place in the neutral territory of Detroit, Michigan. The Packers won their eighth “true” road game, ninth “away from home” against those same Knicks in New York on November 21, 1961.

Of course, current team personnel doesn’t consider those two seasons in Chicago (’61-62 as the Packers and ’62-63 as the Zephyrs) as part of the franchise’s history that counts.  If they did, we’d be celebrating the franchise’s 50th season in existence this year. Instead, as a member of the Wizards’ PR team informed me a while ago, the franchise’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated two years from now, marking half a century since the franchise arrived in Baltimore, instead of when they actually started bouncing balls on courts.

Read more »