When the DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg was in Vegas, he tweeted the question:

“Is mike miller the wizards’ best white player since….gugliotta?“

Dan later followed up in a Sports Bog post saying:

I was asking some of the other media members who would be the answer to this question: “Mike Miller is the Wizards/Bullets best white player since…..” There was no consensus. I will keep working on this. In a purely jesting, non-offensive way.

Steinberg’s nomination of Tom Gugliotta seems like a choice with which most of Wizards nation could concur. But thinking back, the organization hasn’t exactly had a history of illustrious contributions from the white man on the basketball court.

All of this got me thinking … and research would have to respond to these thoughts.

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flickr/Keith Allison

Haywood is a non-starter for 20 NBA teams.

by spurchief on Jul 26, 2009 4:00 PM EDT

Is that so?

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This is JaVale McGee and his team USA Basketball mini-camp jersey. Don’t ask questions, just know it came from his TwitPic account.

JaVale McGee interview at the USA Basketball mini-camp:

And now the best links from ’round the world wide wizards web …

Somebody Is Noticing

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flickr/Roadsidepictures

I watched the Wizards take on the Timberwolves and Clippers in the Las Vegas Summer League long ago, but am just getting my notes/observations on those two games posted.

So in the spirit of better late than never, here goes ….

(Note: I still need to get my post up on the Knicks game and hand out the summer league grades … but only to the players who ‘count’ — Blatche, Young, McGee, Crittenton and McGuire.)

Wizards vs. Timberwolves : Summer League Game 3

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Fabricio Oberto can’t jump. He can’t lock down today’s athletic big man, nor keep up in a fast break sprint. Block shots? A career 0.6 blocks per 36 minutes says it all. He has a nice shooting touch, but don’t look for him to be a scorer. Hell, his career 60% from the free-throw line knocks on the door of atrocious. The guy even fouls at a per 36 minutes rate slightly more than Andray Blatche (however, I’m willing to bet that Oberto’s fouls are “smarter” than Blatche’s). Oh, did I also mention that he recently had heart surgery? Yuck.

Oberto is exactly what the Wizards need.

I’ve been contentious about Ernie Grunfeld pigeon-holing the final free agent big man target to 8-10 minutes per game. That announced strategy put way too much trust in Blatche and JaVale McGee. Plus, it limited the attractiveness of the job opening.

But I’ll be the first to admit that I’m neither a GM nor a coach. If this is the direction in which the guy I’ve come to trust would like to go, so be it. I’ll be behind the movement.

What Oberto brings to the table is a composed veteran presence on offense. He’s fluid, he’s efficient, he’s smart. He can pass, and his hands don’t resemble oven mitts. Leave him open and he’ll gladly knock down that J. No, Oberto doesn’t have the floor spreading range of Darius Songaila. His .364 eFG% on jumpers is dwarfed by D-Song’s .460 eFG%. But Oberto’s overall .587 eFG% would have been tops on the Wiz last year, and much better than Songaila’s team best .532.

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Ok, if you’ve ever read this blog, you’re probably aware of how I feel about LeBron James. Hell, I’m a Wizards fan, you shouldn’t have to read the blog, you should just know. But I’m not going there (this time).

And oddly enough, my opinion of Dunk Gate is somewhat similar to Cavs blogger John Krolik. Here’s what he had to say:

….it’s obvious and it has been said before, but the coverup here is far worse than the crime. If nobody had said anything, there is no way that video ever becomes news. It’s not all that impressive, and you wouldn’t know it’s LeBron unless someone told you. Unless Jordan Crawford is on the cutting edge of viral marketing strategies, this thing would have gone away instantly if nobody had made a stink. Just another lesson in how turning the other cheek is pretty much always the way to go.

So now it comes out that at one point in high school LeBron smoked weed.

So what … big deal … why is this news? And who cares?

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With pictures of J-Macverine having previously been released, video of the mythical beast has now been captured as he descends upon Las Vegas, ready to slash up the court at the USA Basketball mini-camp.

Ya Dig?

JaVale McGee in Obama shades.

Update: a better version

The buzz around “the” dunk has been building for what seems like months now …. Twitter, blog posts, FaceBook groups, national media attention, and the like.

And now that the masses have actually seen the Jordan Crawford over LeBron James dunk, the Internet is predictably calling it over-hyped and overrated.

Sorry J.E. Skeets, maybe ‘anticlimactic’ has a seat at the table, but words like ‘over-hyped’ and ‘overrated’ are irrelevant.

Sure, they could be used to describe a grainy video of a far-away jam. But the dunk was never the point.

The confiscated videos, the cover-up, the absurdity, the protectionism, the Danny Snyder-esque power play for control by LeBron and Nike … these are the reasons for the sensational explosion from the furthest corners of the World Wide Web to the creases of the couches from which bloggers blog.

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We’ve heard it from Ernie Grunfeld before, most recently in an interview by Mike Prada of Bullets Forever.

We were the first to make a move, so everybody’s following us (chuckles).

True, the Wizards were the first to strike when they landed Mike Miller and Randy Foye. But it’s hard to laugh, or continue to pridefully boast about the move, when the cream of the Eastern Conference crop keeps passing the Wizards by.

Let’s quickly go through what the top three teams in the East (Orlando, Cleveland and Boston), have done this off-season.

Orlando:

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Yahoo’s Marc Spears is reporting, via Twitter, that JaVale McGee will replace Portland’s Jerryd Bayless at the upcoming USA Basketball mini-camp on July 25th. Bayless will miss due to a wrist injury.

Stay tuned for more info, but this could be a very cool opportunity for young Epic Vale.

UPDATE: I ‘tweeted’ JaVale, asking him (essentially) to confirm the news … he answered, “I think so. “ And you know what that means … it means to continue to stay tuned.

UPDATE II: A Yahoo link from Marc Spears

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Now that we know the guy’s secret, I expect him to not get injured this season. And if he does, he better recover before the next play.

[via JaVale McGee's twitpic]

Between hitting up the John Legend concert Friday night, going out for some fresh oysters at Hank’s Oyster Bar on Saturday, followed by a night on the town (really, the oysters at Hank’s, especially the ones from Fanny Bay, BC, Canada, were awesome), and then getting trounced in softball on Sunday afternoon (honestly, I think the final score was 24-2), I didn’t have much time to dedicate to the Wizards this past weekend.

I was able to make it through the T-Wolves game Sunday night, and take notes on it, but fell into a slumber before I was able to watch the Wizards against the Clippers or Knicks, both of which, I understand, were much better efforts from the D.C. boys. Oh, and Andray Blatche didn’t play in either game. Nick Young sat out of Sunday’s game against New York as well.

I aim to watch both of the remaining games tonight and subsequently post notes/observations, and then hand out some summer league grades. But until then, here’s the big media dump on what others have said:

Wizards vs. T’Wolves

Flip Saunders apparently sent word down to the bench at halftime that he wasn’t unhappy with the shot selection or their offense, but that the effort simply hadn’t been good enough, and the second half certainly looked better, anyhow.
…..
After posting double-doubles in his first two games in Vegas, Andray Blatche was completely out of kilter. I didn’t have a chance to catch up with him, but he was matched up with Pecherov a lot in the early going, and it sure seemed to me like he was trying (and failing) to take advantage of his former teammate.

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With Thursday off, the Wizards will be back in summer league action tonight against Oleksiy Pecherov and the Minnesota Timberwolves at 8 pm. I won’t be able to catch the game live since I’ll be checking the John Legend concert at Merriweather … so I’ll depend on the usual Twitter suspects to keep me updated on the goings-ons. But until then …

Not this guy again .... (flickr/wizardsdotcom)

More positive signs regarding Andray Blatche? The DC Sports Bog reports:

Many of you have expressed doubts about Blatche’s recent promise to take advantage of his latest opportunity, and it’s understandable, given the relationship between what he’s said and what’s done in the past. I can say that, without a doubt, he’s made some weird quantum leap in talking with the media. I’ve never seen him anywhere close to as good with the media as he’s been this week. Here’s what he said about his teammates, and bear in mind, I asked the question, he wasn’t just offering this up.

“JaVale’s a great player,’ Blatche said. “If he focuses on the things he does the best, that make the crowd love him–blocking shots, rebounding, and then if he’s at the rim and he’s got a put back, put it back. That’s what I want him to focus on more. Because he’s a great player, if he just sticks to that. And Nick, I see a big improvement in Nick. His shot is more efficient, and they have him playing defense this year. Dominic, you know what to expect from him, he’s gonna play defense no matter what. He’s a real hustle player, a lot of energy. So everybody’s making improvements.”

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No, this isn't Ernie Grunfeld, it's Keith Sweat (clearly) - flickr/gwen

This Wizards lost their second summer league game against the Nuggets, and as a unit, they did not look good. But Ernie Grunfeld’s not sweating. He’s probably sitting poolside at the Hard Rock, requesting that the waitress blast some Skynard “Simple Man” over the sound system while he snacks on a cucumber and plays it cool in the 108 degree Vegas heat.

But should the Wizards’ Pres. of B-Ball Ops. (GM) be breaking a sweat over what he’s seen so far in Sin City?

On one hand, as we keep telling ourselves, it’s just a summer league game. The roster players out there will be playing vastly different roles come the regular season. They will be asked to do specialized acts and play within themselves, leaving the bulk of the scoring/defensive/creating duties to the ‘big boy’ players.

On the other hand, Grunfeld must be wondering, “are we really depending on JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche and Dominic McGuire (who might be counted upon to play the four spot) to be key cogs, supporting the efforts of Brendan Haywood and Antawn Jamison down low where the dirty work is done?”

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When I hear about Flip Saunders saying he’s a teacher before a coach, about how he and his assistants (namely Sam Cassell) have been working with the young guys, that he, being an ‘offensive mind’, has developed a mini-playbook for the summer league team and that he’ll be observing from a close distance on-site in Vegas, I think, “Boy, isn’t that refreshing?”

It’s comforting that a new, veteran coach, known to keep a tight bench and favor elders in his rotation, has arrived in D.C. with the mind-set of bringing along the young fellas. Not only does Flip believe that children are our future, but he practices it, knowing the jobs of both him, and the man who hired him, Ernie Grunfeld, depend on how they develop the team from top to bottom.

Mike Prada recently expressed a similar sentiment regarding Saunders in a pre-summer league post on Bullets Forever.

But in patting Flip on the back for his involvement with the youth, no one should be pointing ‘shame on your’ fingers towards former coach Eddie Jordan. Yes, Jordan used different tactics with his young players. And from the outside perspective/opinion of many (not including myself), those tactics were less than ideal.

But the fact is, we’ll never really know the true difference between Jordan’s player development and that of Saunders. An initial thought would be that Jordan was more no-nonsense, treated boys like men, and was less tolerant of mental breakdowns in concentration. Seemingly in contrast, Saunders has come in with encouragement and positive thinking.

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