At a loss for winning

“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The noted 19th-century essayist, poet and philosopher might have been on to something with the first part of his quote. He was against end-zone celebrations long before anyone danced, dunked or produced a Sharpie after scoring a touchdown. But it’s clear he never repeatedly tasted defeat, at least in competitive sports.

There is little to enjoy - in fact, nothing comes to mind - when losing becomes a numbing, taxing, everyday occurrence. Hall of Fame NBA coach Pat Riley famously said, “There’s winning and there’s misery,” and here was a guy who won five championships and almost two-thirds of his games.

Imagine how the real losers live.

“It’s embarrassing,” Detroit Lions running back Kevin Smith said after his team completed its historically awful 0-16 season in December. “You try to smile, not to cry, but I don’t think you can even smile.”

Antawn Jamison wasn’t smiling much Wednesday night, although there were no eyewitness accounts among the media. His Washington Wizards lost to New Jersey by 27 points at Verizon Center, and Jamison, the team’s top scorer, missed 16 of 20 attempts from the field. The veteran forward is one of the more insightful, quotable, good-humored players in the league, but he made it a point to stay away from his locker.

Talking about losing likely has become as frustrating as the grind of losing itself for Jamison, who helped take the Wizards to the playoffs the past four years. Besides, it’s not as if he hasn’t addressed the subject already - a subject with which he is painfully familiar. The first team he played for, the Golden State Warriors, won a combined 57 games in three of his seasons there. It was supposed to be different here.

But with the home team fielding only eight healthy players Wednesday, another small home crowd chatted quietly but unhappily, shaking their heads and raising their voices briefly to cheer a second-quarter comeback and to boo shortly thereafter when the game got out of hand.

A few weeks ago, Jamison said: “We’re accustomed to a certain atmosphere in this organization, and right now this is not what we’re accustomed to. So this is the toughest it’s been for me. I hate losing.

“I don’t think anybody can take anything positive about what we’ve accomplished so far and where we’re at. So we’ve just got to do what a lot of teams have done - fight, plug away, make changes and go toward the future, I guess.”

Things haven’t improved since then. After a tough loss to Memphis on Monday, interim coach Ed Tapscott, who replaced the fired Eddie Jordan in November after a 1-10 start, ripped his players’ effort.

Their latest loss dropped the Wizards to 10-39, tied with the Los Angeles Clippers for the league’s worst record. That means the District might end up with the worst teams in major league baseball and the NBA back-to-back. The Washington Nationals went 59-102 during the 2008 season. The last time a locale was bestowed such an honor was in 1984, when the San Francisco Giants and Golden State had the worst records.

Then again, the Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers won successive Super Bowls to provide joy in the Bay Area back then. The D.C. area, meanwhile, has the perennially average Washington Redskins. Among the so-called major sports, the entertaining and first-place Washington Capitals appear to be the only salvation.

If this presents a dismal scenario for the fans, it’s certainly no fun for those who wake up knowing another loss likely awaits.

“Even if people I’m working for or the fans know the situation we’re in and what we’re trying to do, at the end of the day they’re not happy, and neither am I,” Nationals manager Manny Acta said.

His “situation” is a modestly talented roster that was cracked by injuries last season. Acta, who is respected throughout the baseball world, is a realist who won’t make excuses. But he also knows, like everyone else, that he was dealt a bad hand. In a way, he said, it helps him cope because the bar is so low.

“That being said, the people above me [in the organization], the players and myself, we’re expecting to win, even when we know three guys in middle of our lineup don’t match up with the three guys in New York and Philadelphia,” he said. “You still want to win because you have that pride and you have to try [to] make the guys believe they can win.

“It’s not easy,” added Acta, who said he tries to avoid reading and listening to negative comments. “What I try to do is prepare myself the best way possible, every single day, regardless of our situation so I can give our guys [the] best chance to win. If I do that, I can sleep at night.”

Tapscott, who is coaching in the NBA for the first time, has publicly maintained his calm demeanor and good humor, for the most part, while immersing himself in the task at hand.

“I try not to make a big deal out of the stuff we call adversity,” he said. “Who doesn’t face adversity? Over the course of an 82-game season, who doesn’t have injuries, who doesn’t have problems? We all do. Next man up, step up. Where there’s challenge, there’s opportunity.”

Like Jamison, Wizards guard Juan Dixon, who won a national championship at Maryland in 2002, has gone through this before in the NBA. Three years ago, he played for the Portland Trail Blazers, who finished a league-worst 21-61.

“You’ve just got to learn from the situation,” Dixon said. “You can’t dwell on it. It’s 82 games. You’ve just got to learn from each game. We’re struggling right now, we’re battling some injuries and we’ve just got to keep fighting and learning every day. We’re playing a lot of younger guys right now, trying to develop them, trying to teach them the game. As a team, we’ve got to stick together and follow our coaches’ lead.”

In some ways, playing for a big loser in Portland was harder for Dixon.

“I was younger then,” he said. “It was three years after winning a national championship. Now I understand that some teams go through this.”

The same fate befell former NBA guard Greg Anthony, though much later in his career. Anthony won an NCAA title at UNLV in 1990. He played for good teams in New York, Seattle and Portland, but in his last season, 2001-02, the rebuilding Chicago Bulls tied for the league’s worst record at 21-61.

“You remember the misery of losing. You really do,” Anthony said, citing Riley’s quote. “It was an interesting experience: new city, new team, losing. There’s never any way to really deal with that.”

Anthony, now a college basketball analyst for CBS, said he knew he was going to retire and that his main job was to work with the young players. That helped, “but it was still extremely difficult,” he said.

Being a professional “is not just about winning or losing but the ability to deal with adversity,” Anthony said. “You have to be a role model. Your character gets tested. I knew the team would be horrible, and I knew what my role was gonna be.”

Anthony paused before adding, “Having said that, it doesn’t make any easier.”