Black Washington Wizards fans frustrated over proposed move to Virginia

WASHINGTON — James Reynolds comes to many Washington Wizards games downtown.

The 46-year-old from Anne Arundel County, Maryland, always gets tickets from his job, which is located just a few blocks from Capital One Arena, the Wizards’ home since 1997.

Reynolds is a Wizards lifer, decked out in a retro Wes Unseld Washington Bullets jersey from the franchise’s earlier, better days. He is able to condense the best and worst moments of his fandom into two-word responses.

The good times? “Rod Strickland.”

The bad? “Kwame Brown.”

The owner of the Wizards announced Dec. 13 that it has reached a nonbinding agreement to move the team and the Washington Capitals of the NHL from their home in Washington to a future arena across the Potomac River to Northern Virginia. Monumental Sports & Entertainment owner Ted Leonis, who announced the agreement, owns the two teams.

Reynolds said he doesn’t plan to go to a game there.

“I think it’s going to lose a lot of money as far as going to Virginia,” Reynolds told Andscape outside of Capital One Arena before the Wizards’ Dec. 15 game against the Indiana Pacers. “People ain’t going to make that hike.”

But his main concern, similar to other Black people interviewed for this story, was how the move would affect Black people and this very Black city.

“I think it’s crazy, Reynolds said. “It’s going to be a lot more situations as far as dealing with Virginia police, as far as Black people.

“It’s going to be no good.”

Washington goes by many names: D.C. Washington. The District of Columbia. The District. The nation’s capital.

But it’s also Chocolate City, the nation’s first majority Black major city, whose population was 71% African American at its peak in 1971. Black people made the culture. Even if you’re not familiar with Washington, you’ve heard of Howard University, coach John Thompson’s Georgetown Hoyas, mambo sauce, go-go music, and “beat ya feet.”

Since 1997, when then-team owner Abe Pollin moved the team from nearby Landover, Maryland, to the Chinatown neighborhood in downtown Washington, the Wizards have been a part of that culture. The building of the team’s arena revitalized Chinatown; the team does work around the community that directly affects underserved Black people; the team’s developmental team, the Capital City Go-Go, is named after the subgenre of funk music created here; even the team’s City Edition jerseys this season are inspired by Benjamin Banneker, a Black astronomer who helped survey the land that would became Washington. Asking some Black fans about their favorite moments elicits callbacks to when the Wizards were really Black.

“Chris Webber. Juwan Howard. Rod Strickland. When we actually won games,” Kesha Williams, wearing a Washington Bullets hat, said of her favorite era of the team.

“Definitely when MJ played for us, because it was like, ‘That’s MJ.’ He wasn’t the same, but still,” Joel Moore, 25, said of NBA legend Michael Jordan, who played on the team for two seasons. Moore is a member of the Dover Air Force Base recreational basketball team who participated in the Wizards’ military appreciation festivities that evening.

“Also when Gilbert [Arenas] was here. It was a stage where he was just cookin’. Gilbert, he was the man. Gilbert need to come back. John Wall need to come back. A lot of people need to come back.”

To move the team to Northern Virginia, which is whiter than Washington and has a reputation for being less hospitable to Black people, can be seen as an affront to that history and the Black people (Washington is now just 45% African American) who support the team.

Steve, who has been selling — let’s call it unofficial — team gear outside of Capital One Arena for the last eight years, says he’s seen the benefits the team provides to the area, pointing to the new casino sportsbook, coffee houses and restaurants. Pulling the Wizards and Capitals out will lose the city a lot of money, he said.

And while there’s no denying that certain crimes are up in the city, Steve believes that’s used as a justification to put the team around more white people and fewer Black people.

“Because they know that things are going to happen anywhere you go, but now they trying to blame it on the atmosphere,” Steve said. “But that ain’t everything, because same as Black people do, white people do. I feel as though it shouldn’t be no change, because you go to Virginia, you gon’ have a lot of problems. They have too many problems out there.”

On this particular day, about an hour before tipoff against the Pacers, there are people standing in line perusing a mini market and a small Christmas parade blaring Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” down F Street.

Reynolds recognizes there’s crime, but doesn’t believe that’s an anomaly among city centers.

“It’s no different from any other place, to me,” Reynolds said. “Think about it: Washington [Commanders] in f—ing Landover. But now the damn basketball team going to be in Virginia.”

Williams, 33, said she’s not a fan of the move and that it will likely devastate the area, but recognizes why Alexandria, which is nearly 60% white and had just two homicides in 2021 compared to Washington’s 226, would be more attractive to Monumental Sports.

“So, Chinatown is going to go to s—. Complete s—. It’s already s—. So now you take out the Caps and the Wizards, you’re not going to get any industry here, so all these businesses are going to suffer,” said Williams, who lives in Washington and plans to move to Howard County, Maryland, soon.

“So, again, what is the mayor doing? But then I get it, because you walk out [to] the street and got a 12-year-old robbing you.”

Steve said there are normally no issues in the area where he stands, evidenced by the man standing 10 feet away singing a cover of Bobby Caldwell’s hit, “What You Won’t Do for Love.” But on the other side of the arena, near Chinatown, there can be problems.

“But that’s not our fault,” he said. “That’s the police supposed to get that together.”

Steve rarely went to Northern Virginia before the move was announced, and he won’t be dragging his hats and table to a place he where he believes he’s not wanted if the team eventually moves there. (The planned development still has to be approved by the Virginia General Assembly and the Alexandria City Council.)

“I’m not going out there,” Steve said. “They ain’t gon’ do nothing but try and lock you up.”

Supposed crime was not the only reason the team is decamping. Virginia taxpayers would be contributing an estimated $1.35 billion to the team’s new arena complex, according to a state-financed study obtained by The Washington Post. That’s far more than the $500 million Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Council of the District of Columbia offered in public funds to renovate Capital One Arena.

“It’s definitely worth it to keep it in the city,” Reynolds said. “They taking everything from us.”

“So that would be coming out of me and my mom’s pockets. So I’d have to talk to her about it,” Moore said of using public funds for the renovation of Capital One Arena.

“But to keep the basketball team here, I think it is [worth it].”

J.D. Strong, another of Moore’s teammates at the Pacers game, said much like the franchise’s moves out of Baltimore and Prince George’s County, Maryland, in 1973 and 1997, respectively, the move will hurt those left behind. Strong was born in Washington and raised in Prince George’s County, which is predominantly Black.

“It sucks that a place this rich in culture would be losing that,” Strong said.

Moore, who grew up in Southeast Washington and was born in Philadelphia, said it would hurt to lose the team — which is currently 4-22 and in 14th place in the Eastern Conference — because it was such a part of his upbringing, and he doesn’t plan to attend many games in Alexandria.

“I don’t go there a lot,” Moore said. “… it’s nothing there for me to see.”