DC gave Monumental Sports $515 million over three years to refurbish Capital One Arena and other projects in Gallery Place, ending a three-plus-month saga since Ted Leonsis announced plans to build a new arena in Alexandria.
But, while DC leaders and Leonsis were all lovey-dovey in Wednesday’s presser announcing the deal, can Caps and Wiz fans that felt spurned in December ever really forgive Ted – and can anyone act like this wasn’t a fallback option at best and a called bluff at worst or vice versa?
“I’m sure everyone will be excited in 2050 to have Capital One Arena be 60 years old and not have a new arena at that point, let's just put some more lipstick on it and it'll be better to have a four than a 10 somewhere else, right?” Grant snarked, before getting down to business.
“That press conference yesterday was an all-timer. I give Ted and the Mayor credit because they acknowledged a couple of different ways what had happened previously; speculation was that they would just pretend like Virginia never happened, but they made some veiled mentions, and now everyone knows the story here,” GP said. “They were going to Virginia, but weren't allowed to go to Virginia basically by Senator Lucas, and it didn't work out, so now they are coming back to DC because that's where the arena is and that's where they can have an arena moving forward. Bowser is kind of celebrating as if like I stole them back from Virginia – okay, victory lap if you want to, but it all worked out in the sense that DC teams are going to be in DC and the place where we've got all the great memories of the Caps Cup and so many playoff appearances and the Wizards getting into the postseason those few times, they're gonna continue to be there. Yay.”
“What I've learned in doing this gig is that 99.6 percent of people don't care about how. They don't. If Dan Snyder had left the yacht and picked the right quarterback, everyone would have been happy because the quarterback was good,” Danny replied. “But there are some of us that can't get past how stuff happens, and I'm one of those people, I need to know, I need to understand, I need people held accountable for bad processes, and that's what this was. Make no mistake about it: this wasn't some negotiating genius, some Machiavellian 3D chess move – they got lucky.”
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but…yeah, not in DC’s case?
“They didn't have their ducks in a row, and there was arrogance on the part of DC leadership on a million different fronts that totally ignored it was a very real threat for them to leave, and they couldn't have been more fortunate that Virginia politics is a tangled rat's nest of nonsense – just like they are, by the way,” Danny said. “So they get the teams back, and everyone gets to pat themselves on the back and have a press conference, and we all congratulate ourselves, and Ted Leonsis is like, ‘yeah, where I always wanted to be, totally, I'm sure I believe it.’”
But to that point about the how…
“I wonder, does it matter what the prologue was to most people? The answer is no to the average person, and I think their opinion on Ted Leonsis ultimately is going to be determined by how good his teams are,” Grant said. “If you like Ted Leonsis right now, you probably are a bigger hockey fan than basketball fan, I would say, but you feel good about the direction of the teams. If you are anti-Ted, you think that the Caps should have more than one Cup or maybe that he's done a bad job running the Wizards. But we don't think of Jack Kent Cooke as the guy that took the Redskins out of DC and into Maryland, we think of the beginning of the incredible run of this organization and the three Super Bowls on his watch. So I think if they win, Ted won't have much to worry about.”
Danny’s response?
“Yeah, people don't care, they just hear positive stuff. I think the majority of rank and file fans might be irritated for five or ten minutes about this, but I'll just go over to Cap One and see it all worked out. I think that's how most people are gonna feel.”
At least it’s good for Chinatown, so someone won?