We were short staffed at my 9 to 5 job today, so my after hours job as a mild-mannered Hoops Addict reporter was put on hold for a bit.   Instead of transcribing audio from Nick Young or Antawn Jamison, I was knee deep in returning emails, answering phone calls, and being a good employee for my regular job.

Then a little after 3pm, my work phone starting to ring. I looked at the caller ID, and it was one of my co-workers from upstairs who loves to talk about sports.  Because I was knee deep in work I started to not even answer the phone, but then I thought a break would be nice, so I picked up and said hello.

“Man, did you hear that Abe Pollin died?”

When he gave me the news, I did the logical thing and started searching the internet like crazy to find an official link, but there was none to be found right away.  I kept trying and trying and finally I found one, which in my mind made it official.  I decided right away that I was obligated to write about this.

I started writing an article that was devoid of emotion or passion.  I grabbed bits and pieces of Pollin’s life from the articles I saw online, and I was going to sprinkle in some commentary here and there, but then I thought how much of a disservice that would be to myself and our readers.

Abe Pollin wasn’t just the longest tenured owner in the NBA (46 years), or the man who brought an NBA title to Washington D.C. in 1978, or the man who allegedly ran Michael Jordan out of town back in 2003.    To me, as a D.C. area native he represented a revitalization in the previously deserted Gallery Place/Chinatown region of downtown Washington D.C.  He  represented an unselfish owner who built the Verizon Center, risking much of his own fortune in the process.

There have been many evenings and afternoons that I have gone down to Verizon Center area and marveled at how many fun options there were downtown.  There are nightclubs, museums, restaurants, bars, and they were all able to thrive due to Mr. Pollin’s investment in the city.

So instead of writing a mundane, mechanical article prior to the Wizards/Sixers game, I decided that I would take the temperature of the coaches, players, ex-players and other pertinent staff, and let that guide any article I wrote.

The first stop on that tour? Eddie Jordan.

Eddie Jordan is a Washington D.C. native, who coached the Washington Wizards from 2003-2008, and is currently the head coach of Philadelphia 76ers–who the Wizards were to play this evening.  Prior to Mr. Pollin’s passing, the main story on this day was going to be Jordan returning to face some of his old players, but, of course, that was altered a bit.

Jordan took some time to reflect on the man who gave him the Wizards job six years ago.

“He hired me to come back and coach a team that I’m a big fan of and my hometown team.  It was a ten minute interview, and I shook his hand, and he said you know I don’t live by contracts, I go by handshakes, ” Jordan said while smiling broadly enough for me to see his braces.  “I shook his hand, and I walked out, and I said, ‘Geez did I get the job.’ ”

Jordan went on to describe the style of ownership Pollin possessed.

“He was understanding;  he was passionate about his team, about his players.  He wanted to win, and he understood the game.”

Jordan sat and talked to the media for a good 10 minutes, and when he was getting ready to head into the locker room and talk to his players, I asked him if he had time for one more question. When he said yes  I asked Jordan about the last time he spoke to Mr. Pollin.

He paused a bit, then thought carefully, before answering my question.

“I spoke to him when I was fired, he called me on the phone, ” Jordan said.  “The last time I talked to him was probably a year ago today. ”

After I left Eddie Jordan, the next person I heard from was Hall of Famer Wes Unseld.  Unseld has been affiliated with the Bullets/Wizards in some way for 41 years.  He played for the Wizards for 13 years and was Finals MVP when the then-Bullets won the the title in 1978.  Upon his retirement, he was the VP for the Bullets for six years, and then he took over the head coaching job in 1987.  He coached the Bullets from 1987 until 1994 when he resigned, and then became the GM in 1996.

Even though he is no longer affiliated with the team directly, he is still a fixture around the Verizon Center, and his son Wes Unseld Jr. is an assistant coach.

The bottom line?  Unseld is Mr. Bullet/Wizard, so his words about Abe Pollin’s passing carry tremendous weight.  Unseld tried his best to convey to the media exactly what drove Pollin.

“People don’t understand, Mr Pollin was to me,  a tremendous competitor.  He wanted to win, ” Unseld said emphatically.  “But he wanted to win differently than someone like me.  I wanted to win because it made me look good and I could renegotiate contracts.  He [Pollin] wanted to win because he was a competitor…and it made other people swell their chest and take pride in where they were and who they were…everyday that I knew him, for over 40 years, he was that way.”

Unseld also wanted the media in attendance to understand just how much Mr Pollin risked and went through to bring the Verizon Center to downtown Washington D.C.

“I’m sorry that some of you might not have seen..what it looked like in 1995 when we first started down here, ” Unseld reflected.  “I remember the day when we went to put the shovel in the ground, and some group said we had to stop because some Indian artifacts might have been there, Jimmy Hoffa might be under there… all this was said.  But it never bothered him, he knew the whole thing, he could visualize this and he had that type of mentality.”

As the media listened to Unseld tell stories, it didn’t feel like we were on the hunt for quotes in a story, and it definitely didn’t feel like we were in an NBA arena.  It felt like our grandfather had chosen this moment, on this day, to reflect, and we were lucky enough to be in attendance to hear the stories.

After Mr. Unseld’s speech, I listened to Team President Ernie Grunfeld and Wizards’ guard DeShawn Stevenson discuss what Mr. Pollin meant to them, and then I prepared for the game.  I felt overwhelmed by the all the information I received, and I even commented to someone next to me, “I don’t even want the game to start yet, I have so much to process.”

Unfortunately though, the game had to start, but before it did, there was a moment of silence for Mr. Pollin. And for those brief eight seconds, the house that Pollin built was completely silent, while his picture, with the years he lived under it, hovered over all of us in attendance on the giant flat screen.

And there was a game, which the Wizards won by one point, and I’ll eventually break all of that down in my Game Notes.

The last media presser I attended before leaving the arena was that of Gilbert Arenas.  As Arenas himself mentioned during his speech, Pollin took a chance on Arenas when he was still young and very much unproven, so there was a certain bond between the two.  Pollin had every reason to believe that the signing of young Arenas was the first step in bringing the title back to DC.

Even as recently as the beginning of the season, Pollin still believed the Wizards could win with Arenas leading the way.

Arenas was asked to tell his favorite Abe Pollin story, and he did so with that unique “Agent Zero” flair.

“After every win, he would slap the s**t out of you in the face, ” Arenas said while most of the media doubled over in laughter.  “He’d walk around slapping everybody, and players used to come in, and he was getting ready to slap them, and everybody would be like (at this point Arenas leaned back as if he was evading a hand).”

Arenas was asked if he ever slapped Pollin back, and he laughed and said, “Nah.”

And with that humorous explanation point to an otherwise somber atmosphere, the night was over.  Abe Pollin never knew who I was, and never did anything more than wave at me one time en route to the introductory press conference of Flip Saunders.  But on this night, I felt like I got a bit closer to the man, while covering his team, in his house.