Posts in month: June, 2009

You’ve seen the YouTubes of Nick Young playing in the Drew Summer League out in L.A. — you can find highlights of Young with JaVale McGee here and more sans McGee here.

But that’s not all Young has been doing. He and his fellow Trojan, Gabe Pruitt of the Celtics, recently attended a party at the Roadstarr Motorsports mansion. Elie Seckbach was the ‘Embedded Correspondent’ and leads video of the occasion via FanHouse.

I’ll let the clip do most of the talking, but just know you are about to see to following excursions of young NBA ballers:

• Nick Young has a posse: The Rich Family Click aka The Rich Youngs
• Yet another Nick Young nickname, ‘The Wiz Kid’
• Posse dude Mike Ski (sp?), a rapper, rhyming “do it big” with “do it big”
• Nick claiming his swagger is high and that he’s ‘jet riding’
• The posse having a “get numbers” contest
• When it comes to choosing between Kobe and LeBron, Nick chooses himself
• Nick  showing off his ‘Jesus Piece’
• Pruitt claiming that he and Young started a  trend of good players going to USC (SoCal’s all-time NBA roster)
• Hot girls dancing in their underwear and voguing in body paint
• Some dude who is evidently Nick Young in 10 years
• Young claiming he started the ‘fro hawk’ — gee, thanks
• Young expressing his desire to win the 6th man of the year and most improved player awards.

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[image via Gilbertology]

Tony Kornheiser will turn 61 on July 13th. Fully entrenched into his sixth decade, we can only hope that Tony has been given a shingles vaccine, the CDC recommends it.

Kornheiser shares a birthday with Spud Webb, boxer Michael Spinks, Harrison Ford (who is six years older, but about 6o years better looking than Tony — self deprecating joke that TK would make alert), was born on the exact same day as Aunt Viv from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (the second one, after the first one left due to difficulties with Will Smith), and fittingly, shares a b-day with some fella from Queens named Dick Bunt, who played for both Kornheiser’s Knicks and Baltimore’s Bullets.

Life expectancy has increased in recent years. If it were 1935, Tony would be reaching the age where he would be expected to pass. Not so these days. That’s why some are proclaiming that 60 is the new 40.

So hey Tony, turning 61 is not all that bad, just as long as you’re following MSN’s 12 steps you must take at age 60. Although, according to Kornheiser’s On The DL Podcast with Dan Levy, he’s not closing in on a retirement date, he’s looking for another job.

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Wizards player evaluations for ‘08-09 continue, up fourth is Javaris Crittenton. My thoughts are below, you can check on the full report on Bullets Forever.

[Previously: Oleksiy Pecherov | Juan Dixon | Etan Thomas]

I really like the move Ernie Grunfeld made to get Javaris Crittenton, even if he doesn’t pan out. GM Gruns turned an over-hyped 2002 40th draft pick, who probably would have barely lasted with the Wizards, as he did with the Grizzlies, into a still developing/promising young point guard taken 19th in the ’07 draft.*

It’s funny, because I think the Wizards need a long distance shooter like Juan Carlos Navarro aka “La Bomba”. And JCN did hit just under two treys per game en route to making the ’07-08 NBA All-Rookie second team, but got those attempting 5.3 in just under 26 minutes per game. So it’s probably good that the Wiz opted out of a gunner who can’t really play defense. Not playing D should only be reserved for starters like Arenas, Jamison and Butler.

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Dan Steinberg of the DC Sports Bog has a quick Q&A with Diamond District-bred San Francisco Giants shortstop Manny Burriss. It’s a must read if you put on for the DMV. Here are a couple of the better excerpts (h/t @macg_og):

I should know the answer to this, but did you grow up rooting for all D.C. teams?

All of them. All of them. The only one I didn’t really do was the Bullets when I was growing up, because that’s when everybody loved the Bulls. But yeah, I loved all of them. And once they turned into the Wizards and moved back into the city, that was my team. I love D.C. When the Nationals came here, that was my team, for real, until I got drafted.

Is it weird though, to be representing another city and still root for D.C. sports teams?

No, not at all, not at all, because I’m so about D.C. Last year, the Wizards did horrible, and I was there cheering it up, screaming in our clubhouse whenever a Wizards game would be on TV, because that’s my city, I don’t want to root for anybody else. Except for baseball.

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I’ve been sitting on this post for a while, almost since Eddie Jordan got fired from his gig with the Wiz. Well, now that he’s at the helm of the Philadelphia 76ers, this is an appropriate time as ever to publish.

My feeling is that a majority of Wizards fans think Jordan was unjustly fired (or at least weren’t dancing in the streets when he departed), and that even more wish him well.

Count me among both of these groups. Although, when he was terminated, I wasn’t like, “OMG! What an injustice!”

I was more disappointed with the entire landscape of the team, and later resigned to it just being ‘one of those things’, and in the end, maybe it was best that both parties moved on. But we’ll never really know.

In any case, here goes my tribute to Jordan’s basketball career (to date).

Eddie Jordan was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers out of Rutgers with the 11th pick of the 2nd round (33rd overall), in the 1977 NBA Draft. Ernie Grunfeld was selected with the 11th overall pick out of Tennessee by the Milwaukee Bucks in that same draft.

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I’m tired of Tony Kornheiser’s “haha, look at me and my self-depreciating ‘comedy’ when I really have an over-inflated ego the size of Shaq’s dumps” shtick … it’s been stale for a while now.

People tell me that long ago, he used to pen some great stuff …. and I even remember reading some of said stuff. But Kornheiser is becoming the epitome of a bitter old codger who I aspire not to be when I get older.

Tony Kornheiser is nothing but a hater.

Of course, I write this with the caveat that as a ‘blogger’, I have “hated” on some people/things, i.e, LeBron James, but I do so comfortably knowing that I’m no where near the jerk/dick Kornheiser is, especially in terms of his unabashed and unreasonable hatred of “new media” … such as blogging.

But also, Kornheiser has touched on a subject near and dear to my heart, the Washington Wizards.

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You may have noticed that Truth About It.net recently moved from the Blogger to the WordPress platform, among other site design changes, such as a new header.

I think WordPress will allow me to maintain a more streamlined/organized/user-friendly site going forward …. in addition to forthcoming improvements.

Please bear with me as I work through the tweaks (like restoring and adding outbound links), etc..

One result of the platform change might be the need for you to update your feed, should you subscribe to TAI via an aggregator/reader. And if you don’t currently subscribe, here’s your chance to do so … the Google Reader comes highly recommended.

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Wizards player evaluations for ‘08-09 continue, up third is Etan Thomas. My thoughts are below, you can check on the full report on Bullets Forever.

[Previously: Oleksiy Pecherov | Juan Dixon]

What can I say about Etan Thomas’ season? Well, at least he has intelligence and social involvement to fall back upon.

Etan’s 2008-09 wasn’t nearly as tragic as his previous season, at least he saw the court (for all of 306 minutes over 26 games). Then again, working his way back from open heart surgery only to go down with a torn knee ligament in mid-January seems pretty devastating. Then again, again, at least he didn’t have to toil through the remainder of a miserable year. Although, if you ask Etan, he surely would have been glad to do so.

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No one is going to question Wale’s allegiance to the DMV area. As he’s worked his way up through the mix-tape scene en route to his first studio production release, the DC-born/Largo, Maryland-bred rapper hasn’t lost touch with his roots, carrying the District’s Go-Go music genre with him along the way. Wale is the epitome of an up-and-coming rapper with snowballing nationwide appeal, and genuine staying power for a long time coming.

Wale has also stays touch with the DC sports scene. He’s rapped about Alex Ovechkin, among other DC sports figures, including Gilbert Arenas and Clinton Portis. He’s also appeared on ESPN’s First Take to rep DC sports, not to mention wearing the Nats’ Curly W while taking pics wit Lindsay Lohan. Wale puts on for the sports in his city … or so it seems.

Late Friday night, Wale twittered:

Maybe not all Washingtonians, or even Wizards fans, were actively rooting against LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs. But most ‘true’ Wiz fans, in good conscience, are probably pretty damn glad the Cavs lost Saturday night, myself included.

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