A Wiz White Out
Cavs fans wear yellow, or gold, or whatever. (By Jesse D. Garrabrant - NBAE via Getty Images)
Red Out? That's SO mid-April. It's now late-April, and that can mean only one thing in Chinatown Fuddruckerstown: White Out.
"White House?" asked Brendan Haywood.
No, no, Brendan, White Out. You know, Wizards fans being asked to wear nothing but white for tomorrow's playoff home opener? Think white tuxedos, white top hats and white canes. A prime seating spot for the Associated Press's Joseph White. Extra minutes for Darius Songaila and Oleksiy Pecherov. Scoreboard reenactments of the War of the Roses (with Eddie Jordan representing the House of York) and the Russian Revolution (with the Wiz Dance Team playing the part of the White Army).
The Caps got Pat Sajak; the Wiz need Vanna White. Maybe scheduled guests Kevin Durant, Soulja Boy and Clinton Portis could come dressed as Barry White, Shaun White and Snow White, respectively.
"I'm coming in a white suit!" declared Andray Blatche, who then admitted he didn't actually own a white suit.
The club, in fact, seems to suffer from a serious lack of white formal clothes.
"Hell no," Haywood said to the white suit question. "Not my cup of tea," agreed television analyst Phil Chenier, who said he'd try for "something light."
"Last time I had a white suit I was probably in fifth grade, and my mom made me wear it," Antawn Jamison said. "Easter Sunday or something like that. One day my wife will make my son wear something like that. If I'm around, he's not wearing that."
"Just do like I do," Nick Young advised uncertain fans. "Wear some white shoes, get your little white hat, white mink, and you just come to the game fitted tomorrow, you know?"
("Yeah, if the White Out was in January," Haywood said of the mink suggestion.)
"Or you could do it gangsta style," Young continued, "and come in your white tees," Dominic McGuire finished.
"White tees, white Air Force Ones," Young said.
"The clean Air Force Ones, you know what I'm saying?" McGuire agreed.
"I'm coming in my white boxers!" declared Blatche, who had rapidly downgraded his fashion goals.
In truth, the red mohawked Caps fans set a pretty high bar this week, one that Pecherov was familiar with, having attended two NHL playoff games.
"I saw all same red t-shirt. It's just like, it's amazing," the Ukrainian said. "I've never seen zis in my life before, I've never been in zat atmosphere before....Everybody vas ze same. It's just more organized. It look more nice everybody ze same....Like, in Cleveland, all of zem was yellow, yellow t-shirts. They screaming and yelling also. It was crazy. Zey, like, zey HATE us."
Really?
"They had 40,000 signs," DeShawn Stevenson said. "I heard 10 [insults] at one time. There were so many I couldn't hear."
"The whole team gets booed, not just individual players," McGuire said of the Cleveland experience. "It doesn't matter who you are, you're gonna get booed."
And so the Wizards were hoping for a similarly colorful--or perhaps colorless--atmosphere in Game 3.
"I don't care vat I vear, zey give me a t-shirt or whatever, I'm just gonna be screaming and yelling and try support my team," Pecherov said. "It's vhy we playing sports. And it doesn't matter hockey or basketball, vhen fans came, like 20,000 people screaming support you, it's a great feelings for players. It's motivate you 200 percent. You play 200 percent energy. It's vhy you win ze game."
By Dan Steinberg |
April 23, 2008; 3:43 PM ET
| Category:
Wizards
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Posted by: yo | April 23, 2008 4:24 PM
Sadly, the Wiz have no choice but to do a white-out. I doubt they'd have many takers if they called for a "Teal-Out".
Posted by: Southwester | April 23, 2008 4:28 PM
some-off-tone-of-blue-out
Posted by: | April 23, 2008 5:08 PM
gold-out would have been my choice actually
Posted by: | April 23, 2008 5:10 PM
I'm not feeling the White Out. All I can come up is, why?
Black out maybe?
This is just another reason why the uniforms need to be changed back to the Bullets motif.
Posted by: sitruc | April 24, 2008 8:45 AM
Don't forget that there will be 20,000+ RALLY TOWELS!!! my white t will actually be the fourth shirt I've ever worn in the Verizon Center (after my two WAG shirts and an oversized black White Sox t)
Posted by: 1234 | April 24, 2008 12:35 PM
Every game in which Pecherov gets some burn is a white out.
Posted by: | April 24, 2008 2:18 PM
It appears as though just about every NBA home crowd is going with white this year since Miami isn't in the playoffs.
Posted by: sitruc | April 25, 2008 9:52 PM
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