The lament comes from all corners. Excuse me, the former lament.
“We were pretty bad most of my life,” Kevin Durant said Thursday.
Durant, of course, is not talking about any of his basketball teams. All of them have been good, often quite good, and championship-winning good more than once. And he is a future NBA Hall of Famer. But the team of his youth, the team of his city, was so, so bad for so, so long. And now … it isn’t.
The Washington Commanders are one of the final eight teams standing in the NFL playoffs. They have, for the first time in … well, maybe ever, a player in Jayden Daniels who appears to be on the fast track to becoming a legitimate, top-of-the-NFL level franchise quarterback. That Washington faces steep odds Saturday night in Detroit against the top-seeded Lions does not deter most of their fans, including the ones who are more well-known than most. They are … giddy.
Durant’s already interacted with Daniels, having shot an episode of his “Boardroom” series with him, asking questions of the rookie quarterback with rapper/singer Travis Scott.
“Jayden’s representing well, man,” Durant said. “He’s doing his thing. Just that poise. You hear a lot about his poise and just can understand the moment well. His athleticism is one of one. His toughness is one of one. He’s carving out his own lane. It’s good to have that in D.C.”
Many pro sports teams have celebrity fans like Durant. The Lakers had Jack Nicholson sitting courtside. The Knicks have Spike Lee. The Cowboys have a Who’s Who of followers: LeBron James, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, and on and on. Taylor Swift reps the Nashville Predators. The Yankees and Dodgers have to beat back celebrity fans with sticks. But, the Commanders — even during the Worst of Snyder — did, too. Really.
There were, and are, Grammy-nominated rappers, such as Wale, who’ve been fans for more than a minute. Academy Award-nominated actors and actresses such as Jeffrey Wright and Taraji P. Henson, both D.C. born and raised, and Matthew McConaughey — Texas-born, but whose heart remained with the burgundy and gold from childhood, rather than gravitating to the Cowboys. Local athletic stars such as tennis phenom Frances Tiafoe, and Knicks guard Josh Hart, who was in a box at Northwest Stadium late last month, when the Commanders clinched a playoff berth in their overtime win over the Falcons. NASCAR’s Denny Hamlin is a longtime fan; so, too, is Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who went to the playoff game in Tampa last week.
It’s not like it was all bleak and dark, all the time, for them. Just … most of the time.
“Somebody asked me, ‘How do you translate what it feels like for the team to be where it is now, for someone who’s not a sports fan?’” Wright said on The Rich Eisen Show last month. “The way I would put it is like this: you have a long friend — childhood friend, that you absolutely adored. And, that friend’s been in a coma. For two decades. And finally woke up. And you’re throwing the ball together, again. You’re out in the yard.”
How did they stay with it, all these years?
“I know,” Dale Earnhardt, Jr., said over the phone, with a little chuckle.
“I feel like I had so much equity built up in the players,” the former NASCAR driver and co-owner of JR Motorsports said Thursday. “Darrell Green, Art Monk, John Riggins, the names go on and on and on. And you build up so much equity. And that’s hard to walk away from. And you don’t have any of that as a foundation to create a fan experience with a new team. I’d always kind of liked the Chargers, because they were blue and yellow, and my dad’s racecar in the 1980s was blue and yellow. And I always kind of liked the Chargers. So I had an idea of where I may go. But I just couldn’t do it.
“There’s a loyalty. There was always this belief that it’s going to turn around, somehow, some way. Every offseason, there was retooling, there was reasons, there was changes that would give you some hope and excitement. Since the Super Bowl in ’91, everybody looks over that period since then as mostly awful. There were some big moments, some good wins. I went to the Dallas game (in 2012), and I hate Dallas instantly, being a Washington fan; it’s like a requirement. I went to that game when DeAngelo Hall had a (fumble return) six. I’ve been there for those moments. Those kind of moments like that will keep you around and keep you going.”
Durant grew up in Seat Pleasant, Md., a stone’s throw from Northwest Stadium. Through the lean years, he stayed loyal to his local football squad, cheering for Santana Moss, Sean Taylor, Lavar Arrington and Jason Campbell.
“No, I didn’t get clowned,” he says. “It was just cool to see, because I grew up close to the stadium and you kind of heard the roar of the crowd. You kind of got immersed in the culture of the NFL, being that close to the stadium. I don’t know; it was just cool having a team that close more than anything else.
“I wasn’t really tripping about wins and losses. It was the fact that I had a stadium and a team in my backyard that was cool. … you could always hear the crowd and you watched it on TV, but I never scored no tickets.”
After the franchise decided to move on from its old name, Earnhardt, Jr., actually liked the name “Washington Football Team.” When the team announced it would be picking a new, permanent name, he liked the sound of Washington Warriors. But winning has a way of cutting through the noise. So, too, has Daniels’ arrival.
“The thing that makes me go wow is that the moments aren’t too big for him,” Earnhardt, Jr., said. “The stage isn’t too big for him. I don’t know what he was thinking in his mind when he threw the Hail Mary against Chicago. But I was lucky enough to be there with my wife at that game. There’s some people that are just built in such a way that they are, for lack of a better word, oblivious to the pressure that we would all feel, or that think we’d feel in those scenarios.
“He’s so mature beyond his years. His family must’ve done an incredible job preparing him for adulthood. He seems to be able to handle and work in some of the most trying of moments for a team, and he has succeeded. …I’m extremely impressed by his mentality, how he carries himself, what he says when he speaks, what’s important to him to convey when he does his press conferences and postgame comments.”
Earnhardt saw a clip of one of Washington’s defensive players saying all they had to do was get Daniels the ball, and he’d figure out a way to win the game.
“That right there, that’s s— that’s been missing for so long,” Earnhardt, Jr., said.
He watched last week’s game against Tampa with his two daughters.
“I had on my Dexter Manley jersey, and they had on their Commanders’ t-shirts,” he said. “My oldest girl, Isla, says ‘Well, we wore our stuff, and we helped them win.’ I love that she thinks like that.”
This is what happens when a community starts to believe. It’s ridiculous and silly. Which describes the franchise for most of the last 30 years. But, now, the team is in on the joke, no longer the butt of it.
Which explains where Durant will be watching the game Saturday night.
He’ll be at Ford Field. In a suite. The Suns are playing the Pistons in Detroit Saturday afternoon at Little Caesar’s Arena, which just happens to be 3/5 of a mile from where the Lions play. And the Suns are staying in Detroit Saturday night before flying to Cleveland Sunday, where they play the Cavaliers Monday night.
“It worked out perfectly,” Durant said. “We play four hours before, right across the street, we’re staying (Saturday) night, too, already. So we were already locked in to staying in Detroit. Hopefully, we can get this W.”
(Photo of Kevin Durant: Alex Goodlett / Getty Images)
