Written by Dan Steinberg at Washington Post.com
Let’s glance at The Washington Post the last time the Wizards franchise clinched a divisional title. The lead story in sports was the upcoming Michigan State-Indiana State basketball final — Magic vs. Bird. Down the page, 22-year old Martina Navratilova was winning a title in New York over 16-year old Tracy Austin. Further down, Lanny Wadkins was claiming the third ever TPC at Sawgrass, in a story told by a young staff writer named Thomas Boswell.
Flip to the front page, and Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat were just hours away from signing the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The Post announced that subscription prices for home delivery were increasing from $5.60 to $6.20 every four weeks, and The Calvert Wine and Cheese Shop was advertising a handle of Kentucky Gentleman bourbon for less than eight bucks. Thirty-five-year-old Neil Diamond was recovering from back surgery, The Post’s health columnist was opining that “excess weight unaccompanied by disease is probably overrated as a health hazard,” “Norma Rae” played in theaters as “Hair” was released, and the Maryland legislature was considering raising the drinking age — to 19.
Oh, and the president wanted to overhaul the federal government’s machinery, which had deteriorated into “a bewildering mass of paperwork, bureaucracy and delay.” President Carter.
Okay, division titles matter virtually not at all in the modern NBA. No one sets a season goal of raising a division banner, and fans typically don’t care, either. Okay. Sure. Still. Take a moment to reflect on this one, clinched with an overwhelming comeback and a 119-108 victory over the hapless Lakers early Wednesday morning, with the Wiz ending the game on a 49-22 avalanche. That led to Washington’s first division title in 38 years (plus two days).
If you’re under 40, you surely don’t remember D.C.’s last NBA divisional title. If you’re under 50, the memory would probably be dim. If you’re under 20, this might as well have happened in the peach basket era. As CSN’s Chase Hughes discovered, this had been the longest divisional drought in U.S. sports — well ahead of the 30 years the Edmonton Oilers have waited. And after all those years — and after this season’s horrid start — the Wizards wound up strolling leisurely to a first-place finish, clinched on almost the same date as their 1979 brethren.
“It’s great, man,” John Wall said on CSN after the game. “I’ve been here for seven years; it feels like I’ve been here my whole life. We haven’t accomplished a lot of things. This is something that’s exciting for the city, just the start to where we want to be. Hopefully they can enjoy it. Hopefully we put a banner up for it, because it hasn’t happened in so long. But we’ve got bigger goals that we’re trying to reach.”
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