WASHINGTON—In a statement that mourned “the extinguishing of one of the league’s oldest and most infernal lights,” the Washington Wizards announced Tuesday that the organization’s founding wizard, Osric the Baleful, had died at age 682, bringing to an end a centuries-long career in necromancy, prophecy, and NBA ownership.
Osric’s 1997 acquisition of the team then known as the Bullets is said to have taken place after an omen from the entrails of a hanged usurer convinced him that possession of a middling sports franchise would grant him an inexhaustible river of mortal anguish on which to float into eternity. Osric emerged from his crypt during a lightning storm and presented the team’s owners with a yellowed parchment granting him “full dominion over basketball in the District of Columbia, together with all courts, revenues, and towering gamesmen, who are hereby subject to permanent indentureship.” Before the owners could protest, the wizard had already turned them into wooden pestles.
During his tenure, Osric was known to oversee team operations through the use of scrying bowls, graveyard rites, and cat-roasting, reportedly believing the Eastern Conference to be a natural home for the dark arts. Former employees noted that he would frequently appear in clouds of green vapor to weigh in on everything from roster decisions to contract negotiations. Medical staff recalled Osric forecasting injuries by examining the smoke of burnt box scores, while scouts said they were ordered to rank prospects according to “wingspan, courage, and might of soul and tooth.”
He was also credited with bringing in star talent over the years. When the team was badly in need of a reliable scorer, Osric took it upon himself to walk the earth for three winters in search of an elite combo guard before eventually discovering Gilbert Arenas. When the team was lacking a dominant paint presence, he transmuted the corpse of a white foal to create 7-foot-7 center Gheorghe Muresan, whom he allegedly modeled after “a colossus from the old kingdom who ruled the bogs.”
Though feared by generations of coaches, players, ball boys, and Southeast Division rivals, Osric brought stability to the organization through his front-office savvy and command over terrible forces of evil. According to team officials, the Wizards will honor the late sorcerer by interring him beneath center court so that his spirit might continue influencing the franchise’s fortunes for all ages yet accursed.
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