Posts in month: September, 2009

What in the name of Eva Perón are these two doing here?

Well, with a glimmer of the Sun of May in their eyes, and perhaps fueled by a well-aged Malbec, these two Argentinians seem to be re-enacting the final match of the U.S. Open with household fireplace tools, celebrating a big win by fellow countryman Juan Martín del Potro over Rodger Federer.

Carry on boys,  see you on the hardwood.

(Speaking of … the Wizards and Spurs will first face off on November 21st in San Antonio, and the return favor will be on January 2nd in D.C.)

So Michael Jordan made it to the Hall of Fame. Should we be surprised that he didn’t mention Abe Pollin and the Wizards amongst his list of competition fuel? Oh, that’s right, he hasn’t had much success at the management level, so no grounds to prove anyone wrong there. Although, I will admit that pawning off Juwan Howard and his silly contract on Mark Cuban was cigar-smoking smooth. Unfortunately the WaPost’s Michael Lee wasn’t afforded a chance to ask Jordan about the Wiz … it would have been nice to see his reaction to the question in the least.

I still stand behind what I wrote regarding Jordan’s induction speech. However, in discussing it with a co-worker, I’ll admit that he could have been more charming, while still recounting his motivational factors. But Jordan’s message was a conveyance of his personality, and since he’s not some basketball demigod to me, I could care less how he came across … opting to stick with my preference of honestly at face value instead.

[If it feels like I'm posting about Jordan too much lately, then good, we are on the same page. But like I've said before, we really won't have a chance to cover him this much again (until he passes). So, might as well get it out of the way now. And don't worry, there will be plenty on the Wizards of the future coming soon.]

Below is the best of what was said regarding Jordan’s tenure with the Wizards…

Suggested Michael Jordan/Wizards Reading

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{ Jordan smokes 'em if he's got 'em - flickr/simplistic.designs }

I’m not a ‘huge’ fan of Michael Jordan, and I definitely don’t hate him. When he was beating the Lakers and Blazers for a ring when I was 11 and 12, I was like, “Oh cool! It’s MJ!” When he was taking down Chuck Barkley, my sentiment was “may the best man win.” When Jordan came back, I rooted for the Sonics and Jazz because I thought the Bulls had won enough, it was time for someone else. Finally, when Jordan was a Wizard, I initially thought his presence would be good, then responded to his departure with shock/surprise, and ultimately, became apathetic toward his presence in DC.

Ok, now that my Jordan fandom disclaimer is out of the way …

Jordan’s HOF speech has been called petty, uninspiring, disparaging, vicious, and strangely bitter by Yahoo!’s Adrian Wojnarowski. He was called a clown, and vicious again, by FanHouse’s Terence Moore. Ken Berger of CBS Sports dubbed Jordan “ruthless,” and called him a “competitive sociopath.” In his Twitter one word description of each HOF entrant’s speech, The Washington Post’s Michael Lee used “cruelty” in reference to Jordan. J.E. Skeets of Yahoo!’s Ball Don’t Lie twittered that MJ’s speech was a bad idea, and akin to “finding out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were crackheads.” Joshua Lobdell of The Inquisitr called Jordan petty (again), and a disgrace, even going so far as to say, “a large part of Jordan’s legacy has been forgotten” as a result. Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell called the speech “tacky, vitriolic, and unnecessary” … but Tim also recognizes that Jordan’s shots were “footnotes of his mythology,” and calls on us to better recognize the David Robinsons of the world (a more than valid request). And finally, Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm calls Jordan a jackass, but has a great piece highlighting that such actions from Jordan are nothing new … although Moore does claim that, “Ron Artest probably has more going for him than Michael Jordan as far as a complete life goes,” and challenges readers to wrap their brains around that assertion. Not worth trying.

You see, I came across most of these reactions prior to actually seeing Jordan’s speech. My initial response to the reactions was, “Well, that’s Michael … he’s a dick, but a competitive and winning dick.” And the same sentiment seemed to be conveyed by many who knew Jordan with a shrug of the shoulders.

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{ Yes, I actually own this jersey }

Are you inundated with Michael Jordan posts/readings/articles yet? Sorry. If you’ve found yourself here, you’re at the point of no return. But dude is the G.O.A.T., and unfortunately, we won’t have another chance to reflect upon his career this much until his death.

Being a Wizards blogger, I’m obliged to write about Jordan’s time in Washington … sort of. You see, when MJ was playing for the Wizards, I was finishing my last four semesters of college. During those years away from DC, I lost touch with the team I’d grown to love unconditionally. And since the MJ experiment occurred way back at the beginning of the millennium, I didn’t have the advantage of blogs, streaming online video, NBA league pass, and the what-not to adequately keep tabs.

Thus, I’m apathetic toward memories of Jordan in Wizards blue. At the time, I thought his front office presence, and his subsequent comeback to the hardwood, could be nothing but good for a perpetually floundering franchise.

Did I care about, much less notice, the negative aspects Jordan brought to the table? Nope.

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Remember in Rocky IV when the main character, also named Rocky, was training for a big fight in Russia? He was outdoors, chopping wood, running in the snow, fighting wild Russian wolves with both hands tied behind his back, and fueled by a three-day vodka-only diet (I think all of this happened, my memory is fuzzy).

Meanwhile, Rocky’s counterpart, the evil Dolph Lundgren, was training in the lab with robots and steroids, and robots on steroids.

I’m not sure who eventually won the fight, I just remember the speech that Rocky made at the end being a life changing experience. Not so much because of his words, but more because of the kick ass song that followed, “Hearts on Fire” by John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band.

What does this have to do with JaVale McGee? Well, he’s been putting in au naturale work just like Rocky.

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flickr/Keith Allison

Darius Songaila, the coaches dream and a consummate teammate. I’ve made no secret that he’s been one of my favorite Wizards (if not ‘#1′) over the past couple of seasons … perhaps to the point where I’ll one day purchase a D-Song customized Wiz jersey and appear on Straight Cash Homey.net (although I’m not exactly the jersey wearing type). Songaila will undoubtedly be missed after being traded to Minnesota just prior June’s draft. But at least I can rest a little more comfortably now that he’s been moved to a good team in the New Orleans Hornets, where his contributions will be appreciated.

Songaila was unjustly criticized more than any other Wizard. Sure he was slow, white, and non-athletic … you know, the traits people only judge with a glance without digging below the surface. However, most who closely follow the Wizards realized the level of Songaila’s professionalism, leaving his detractors looking like an uneducated bunch.

Statistical critics will point to Songaila’s porous rebound numbers. And yes, for a 6’9″ bruiser, a dirty-working tough guy, they were far below where we would have liked them to be. His 5.4 rebounds/36 minutes last year was a career low, finishing below every Wizards big man, and a mere 0.3 points above Javaris Crittenton.

In the Basketball-Reference.com database, since TRB% (an estimate of the percentage of available rebounds a player grabs while he is on the floor) started being kept in ’70-71, only 14 players 6’9″ or taller have had seasons where they averaged between 19 and 20.6 minutes per game (Songaila = 19.8); less than 5.5 rebounds/36; and had a TRB% less than nine. The list ranges from your “non-big” bigs like James Worthy and Clifford Robinson (at age 40), to your traditional stiffs like James Edwards, Jarron Collins, Brian Scalabrine and Matt Freijie, to a big like Antoine Carr who was more concerned with scoring than anything else, to some cats you’ve probably never heard of before.

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Upon discovering that he played against Yao Ming’s father during his visit to China 30 years ago, Wes Unseld pleaded with the Chinese to get busy in the bedroom and start making more Yao Mings to send to the NBA, preferably in the Wizards’ direction.

Chinese officials promptly snickered and told big Wes not to worry. They then pointed to a “friendly” mascot being held by Caron Butler, which is really a non-lethal DNA collection robot that will be sent back to the U.S. to gather samples from various Wizards (sorry DeShawn, you aren’t needed for this) so they can be combined with that of Ming to create a monster the league has never seen. His name will be Car’Twan-yao Gilwood Ming-Arenas.

via CRIEnglish.com

The robot then expanded after drinking some Tuff Juice and challenged Caron to a game of 1-on-1. The bot, named Haibao, was winning 8-6 until Butler gave it the ‘Crocodile Dundee Gender Test’, confusing Butler and embarrassing the robot. The cruelty of being non-gendered, and having short arms, was too much for Haibao to overcome. It lost 11-9.

via sports.qq.com

Ok, none of this really happened … but Unseld did say: Read more »

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

[Previously: Oleksiy Pecherov | Juan Dixon | Etan Thomas | Javaris Crittenton | JaVale McGee | DeShawn Stevenson | Nick Young]

flickr/wizardsdotcom

DMX’s “Here We Go Again,” is the first song that plays in my head when contemplating Andray Blatche. Of course, DMX’s career went the way of the gutter with a litany of charges, crack-induced federal agent impersonating, car-jacking attempts at JFK, and jail time. Evidently Earl Simmons is trying to find the lord now. Andray has certainly been through the fire, but people are still waiting for his first coming, much less a resurrection.

Sure, I’m skeptical of ‘Dray, but no more than the next guy, or the guy after him, or the dozens in line after him. I really want Blatche to succeed. Honestly.The success of the Wizards depends on several aspects, and he is very high on the prioritized list.

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When I first saw the above video of Brendan Haywood training, I thought, ‘Hey, he and JaVale McGee both like to workout to the mellow sounds of Drake, Lil’ Wayne, and Trey Songzzzzzz just wanting to be successful’. Don’t believe me? Just watch … (well, until some facist decided to disable the audio on McGee’s workout vid because they probably believe in protecting the money going towards more Lil’ Weezy face tats and Drake eyebrow waxings more than they believe in an open source world … oh well).

Then I watched Haywood’s Workout Part II: Jump Shots Juice from Concentrate …. and said, ‘Hey, I recognize that workout guy, he’s The Hoops Whisperer’.

The Hoops Whisperer aka Idan Ravin is a guy based out of Washington, DC who used to be a lawyer, but is now a famed NBA basketball trainer, a job he just kinda fell into. Oh yea, he also runs ethnic dating sites such as Ethiopian Personals and Eligible Greeks in his spare time. No really, he does … go check a pretty good Wall Street Journal profile on Ravin. Too bad Oleksiy Pecherov is gone, maybe Ravin could have hooked him up via a future venture called ‘Ukrainian Ill Na Na’ dot com.

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September already? What has it all gone? This was supposed to be the ‘Summer of George‘ … what happened to all the things I was supposed to do? Post work drink soirees in the sunlight … trips to the beach … pick-up basketball games outside. They are no more (well, almost).

At least football season is here, and more importantly, Wizards training camp is less than a month away. Instead of crying over the passing Summer’s spilt milk, I suppose I should appreciate the crisp fall before the bone-chilling wintertime bus rides arrive.

At the beginning of August, I took time to remember the Wizards goings-ons during 2008′s August. Initially, the idea was to cover subsequent months in the days following that post. However, I decided it would be better to do a month-by-month reflection … thus, I now present ‘Past Year Wizards Memories: September 2008′ (with some other historical Sept. tid-bits included):

Sept. 6, 1963: After playing one season for the Chicago Zephyrs, Don Nelson’s contract was sold to the Los Angeles Lakers.

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flickr/Keith Allison

If the Washington Wizards prefer to lie amongst the weeds and surprise everyone, a panel of 53 ESPN experts is trying to make that happen (despite the Wizards being voted by the same ESPN panel to have the biggest turnaround this upcoming season).

Tied with both Philadelphia and Toronto to achieve 39 wins, and finish seventh through ninth in the East (the averages actually break out to PHI – 39.4, WAS – 39.1, TOR – 39.0), the ESPN panel believes that the Wizards will be fighting just to make the playoffs.

Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix and The Wages of Wins Journal both seem to think the Wiz will be significantly better than sub-40 wins, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Maybe some of the ESPN experts think the Wizards’ defense won’t be up to par, or that their frontcourt is too thin and they desperately need an upgrade. Of course, when Mike Prada of Bullets Forever wrote the two previously linked pieces, he had improving the team to compete for a championship in mind, not so they can solidify a playoff position. Still, both defense and frontcourt are valid areas of concern.

No one will argue that the Wizards are definitively behind Cleveland, Boston, and Orlando when trying to predict the East. And with the improvements Atlanta has made this summer, it’s even hard to put the Wiz past the Hawks. But thinking that the Heat, Bulls, and 76ers will all be better than Washington is absolutely absurd. Let’s take a glance at what those team have done this summer: Read more »