Wizards no longer have awful smell

It was not long ago, less than a month, that Michael Jordan succinctly summed up the state of the Washington Wizards in two words: "We stink."

Nine consecutive victories later, they don't anymore.

Jordan stood in the center of the visitors' locker room at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, surrounded as usual by a swarm of microphones, cameras and tape recorders, and gave yet another state of the Wizards speech.

Whereas Jordan was dejected and downright angry when he uttered the infamous "we stink" line Nov. 27 in Cleveland, on this night he had a proud and satisfied air about him.

"I think it's changing, which is what my vision has always been about this organization," Jordan said. "One of the reasons I came from upstairs downstairs was to change the attitudes about competing and winning.

"And this nine-game winning streak has given us confidence that if we believe in ourselves and do the work and collectively stay connected, we can be successful."

The nine-game winning streak is no small accomplishment for the Wizards, a franchise that has never won 10 consecutive games -- even when it was based in Baltimore and Landover, Md. and was known as the Bullets.

Washington will try to make it 10 straight tonight in Charlotte.

The transformation of the Wizards from losers into winners has been nothing short of stunning.

Potshots were starting to fly Jordan's way as Washington got off to a 3-10 start that included an eight-game losing streak -- the longest of Jordan's career. Few believed he had the kind of supporting cast capable of being a respectable team, much less a playoff contender -- even in the wide-open Eastern Conference.

It all started to change after the Wizards began a four-game road trip in San Antonio and Jordan sat out with a sore knee. He returned two nights later in Houston, and the Wizards haven't lost since.

Their victims during the streak have been Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Miami, New York (twice), Toronto and Atlanta. And the leading scorer for the Wizards during their streak has been Richard Hamilton, not Jordan.

"Each and every game, we're learning how to play with each other. Not just me learning how to play with him, but him learning how to play with me," Hamilton said.

Hamilton said that earlier in the season, the offense tended to grind to a halt whenever the ball ended up in his hands or in Jordan's hands.

During practice, the team always ran the offense correctly. The problem, though, is that Jordan does not practice because of his knee condition.

So when Jordan joined the team for games, what worked in practice didn't carry over.

It took the team about a dozen games to learn to do things the right way -- and to listen to what Jordan was telling them.

"We're playing hard, and when you're playing hard you get rewarded," Jordan said. "That's one of the things I kept trying to say last year when we were probably more talented than we are this year."

Jordan often was revolted at the lack of effort the Wizards displayed last season, but if his words didn't exactly fall on deaf ears, they fell on reluctant ones. It's one thing to have the boss complaining from afar -- especially with the scant amount of time Jordan actually spent in Washington last season. It's quite another to have him on the team, in the locker room, in uniform and drawing sellout crowds wherever the team plays.

"Coming down out of the front office to show them and be a part of it, I think they're starting to understand it and I'm very happy with the way they've received it," Jordan said.