Remember when Ted Leonsis gave Gilbert Arenas a fist pound and called him a panther?
Me neither, I wasn’t there. But Ted blogged about it … the chance encounter between him and Arenas last October when they crossed paths in the Verizon Center parking lot the day after the Wizards won their season opener in Dallas.
The interaction probably took place near where an unnamed Wizard would one day unsuccessfully attempt to return Arenas’ bag of guns to his ride, opting instead to leave them somewhere in the parking garage when he couldn’t find the car.
The interaction from Ted’s Take:
I said, “Hi Gil. You lost some weight? Tell me your secret ’cause you look great.”
Gil says, “What do I look like? What kind of animal?”
To dunk, Juwan Howard had to make his body as straight as possible
and daintily place his off hand to his side.
More Cardboard Bullets are below, but first, please read the story of Juwan.
Last Sunday marked the 13th anniversary of Juwan Howard’s first ever NBA playoff game. Yes, that Juwan Howard and the appearance was with those Washington Bullets, who were bounced from the 1997 playoffs in three games by the cigar smoking Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls
Hard to believe Howard is still playing in the current NBA Playoffs. And despite 1,116 career regular season NBA games, he’s only appeared in 28 total playoff games and is set to appear in number 29 with the Portland Trailblazers tomorrow night.
Howard’s tenure in Washington was memorable, but forgettable. Taken fifth in the ’94 NBA Draft, his first year happened just before the NBA’s rookie contract scale, which was implemented in 1995, partially due to Howard, but mostly due to top pick Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson and his $100 million holdout demands.
So what’s the theme of Caron Butler’s season? It’s very hard to function when you’re dogged by resentment and dreams of personal success. Butler has moved on to Dallas, where he’s now shooting more than Dirk Nowitzki and generally wasting possessions like he did in DC. His game has declined with age, sure, much like other 29-year olds who have been as injury-prone as him.
But this is not your typical decline. Much like Kevin Garnett, Butler has declined while kicking and screaming about the wonder days that were. He’s the last person to accept the fact that he isn’t the player he once was. He never figured it out in DC and he doesn’t appear to have figured it out in Dallas. Worse, his decline was accelerated by lingering resentment of his co-star that only grew when that co-star started missing games. That co-star is now on a different team, but Butler still stubbornly pushes on, trying to show he deserved his past status.
And really, this is a story about how precious one’s state of mind is in this game. Butler went from being one of the league’s most unselfish and professional players to one with too big an opinion of himself that resented his teammates. It was a dramatic shift and it couldn’t have happened to a more unexpected guy. If it can happen to Butler, it can happen to anyone.
I recently received a copy of “The Business of Happiness: 6 Secrets to Extraordinary Success in Life and Work,” by Ted Leonsis, the soon-to-be full owner of the Washington Wizards. I’ve yet to delve into reading, but I get the premise: true success is making money from doing something you enjoy while allowing for yourself and those around you (family, friends and employees/co-workers) to be happy. Doesn’t sound like the easiest task in the world given the constraints of our society today, but that’s why Leonsis wrote the book, to help others understand what he has learned.
“The Business of Happiness” could also apply to the upcoming free-agency of Shaun Livingston. It would certainly make Wizards fans and Flip Saunders happy if Ernie Grunfeld found a way to retain the revitalized guard at a fair price. And it goes unquestioned that Livingston’s basketball presence would also be good for business. But it will ultimately be Shaun’s decision to make, what really matters is his business of happiness.
The guy obviously wants, and needs, to get paid. When you’ve been through a devastating injury like Livingston has, you want some career security, especially when the 24-year old’s athletic skills will continue to diminish with age. But before we get into the balance of playing basketball as a profession and making as much money as possible while putting yourself in a situation to succeed, let’s rewind to look at the player-coach relationship that developed between Livingston and Saunders toward the end of the season.
Statistics versus observational analysis. Many prefer one over the other and to varying degrees. Those who are way into the latter are referred to as “old school” — the type of people who usually hate change. The type of person I will always strive not to be. The others are often referred to as nerds or geeks, but even those terms are out-dated. With the internet age, there are so many classifications of people that calling someone a “nerd” is more meaningless than the connotation of the label being “not cool.” In other words, being into statistics and sports these days is cool.
However, there are those who have such a great love for sports and statistics that they marry the two without considering other relationships. A life-example of this would be a jerk friend running off to wed a significant other and forgetting about friends and family.
What I’m trying to say is statistics and observational analysis can, and should, go hand and hand. This is the type of person I am, but one who very slightly favors observation and our inherit ability to know things in the Malcolm Gladwell “Blink!” kind of way. I believe in statistics. I believe in advanced statistics. I believe they should be used along with other methods to tell a story, but definitely not used by themselves to tell the entire story.
Dave Berri and his cohort Martin Schmidt, however, are economists. Berri is an economics professor at Southern Utah University and writes the popular Wages or Wins Journal, and Schmidt is an economics professor at William and Mary. Understandably, they are way into statistics. If Berri could program a computer/robot using data from the history of man to properly raise his child without him needing to be there to see it happen, I believe he would. Okay, that’s going too far.
Berri and Schmidt, have a lot of very interesting things to say about managerial and coaching decision-making in sports, which includes several interesting arguable observations about the NBA. Their new book, “Stumbling On Wins,” which has been described as a “MoneyBall” of sorts that expands way past baseball, provides a lot of fodder for the great debate (stat heads v. non-stat heads v. in-betweens) and a unique perspective that should greatly interest the well-rounded sports fan.
Since the season is over and the Wizards aren’t in the playoffs, time for posts of a random nature that really aren’t that random.
Ever wondered what NBA scorekeepers use to keep score? I haven’t. I just trust that they’ll do their job.
Of course, if you Google “NBA scorekeeper,” you’ll come across Deadspin’s “Confessions Of An NBA Scorekeeper,” about a scorekeeper who once juiced the stats worse than a Baltimore cop … which only goes to show you that not only are the stats kept for basketball incomplete (as in, many things go un-tracked and hence the inexact science of advanced basketball statistics cannot possibly accurately depict everything), but they are also subjective.
Hey, that’s life. Maybe one day the inexact science will be less inexact and those who base entire theories on it will be a little more right. In any case, here are some pictures of the Washington Wizards score-keeping consoles … granted, not the ones used to track detailed stats, but the ones that control the in-game arena clocks, scoreboard, etc. … which kinda makes these pics a little anti-climactic from the previous paragraph. Drat.
The Wizards’ season is over. And while there will certainly be reflections on said season to come, sometimes you gotta look way back on the franchise’s history via the basketball cards I collected when my fandom was being cultivated by the early 90s Washington Bullets.
One Summer Don MacLean worked so hard that his game improved with increased confidence. Well, at least that’s what this fake headline Upper Deck card says after he won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award in 1993-94, his second season in the league.
After being drafted out of UCLA by the Detroit Pistons with the 19th overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft, MacLean was immediately traded to the Los Angeles Clippers with William Bedford for Olden Polynice and two second round picks. But MacLean didn’t stay in his Los Angeles hometown for long. In early October he was sent back East, again with Bedford, to the Washington Bullets for John “Hot Plate” Williams. Bedford was immediately waived by the Bullets while MacLean spent the first three years of his career in DC.
People used to call MacLean a gym rat. In November of 2000 as a member of the Miami Heat, MacLean became the first player to be suspended under the NBA’s steroid policy, which was in its second season of testing. As a result, Charles Barkley famously said, “I’ve seen Don MacLean naked, and he doesn’t use steroids.” The two never played together, but were both in the 1999 Houston Rockets training camp.
Pictures of people at the club flipping the camera off seems to be popular these days, especially among athletes. And this picture of Andray Blatche at his season ending party last Wednesday at District in Adam’s Morgan is wrought with symbolic opportunity.
For one, he appears to be brushing (or hiding) his teeth with that middle-finger of his — any 23-year old will tell you that having braces at that age, as Blatche does, isn’t exactly ideal.
Or maybe the finger is in front of Dray’s mouth as a silencer on what he has said or will say.
Or perhaps Dray is just expressing toward the Wizards’ 2009-10 season in its entirety what I’ve done mentally several times before … bidding it a fond farewell. Read more »
This Sunday April 25th will mark the 13th anniversary of the Washington Bullets’ 1997 opening first round playoff game against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. That game represented the franchise’s first playoff game since May 8, 1988 … or, the first in eight years, 11 months and 17 days to be exact.
Recently Webber went on the Dan Patrick Show and recounted a story from the ’97 playoff match-up against Jordan’s Bulls (via Sports Radio Interviews):
“One time we played in Washington. We played a five game series against the Bulls. It was the year they won 72 games. We lose all three games by a total of seven points. I saw Michael Jordan come into our locker room with a cigar, while it was lit, and said, ‘Who’s going to check me tonight?’ And we looked at Calbert Cheaney and we were laughing like little school kids knowing that Calbert Cheaney was going to get him, we knew it wasn’t a game for Mike. He was going to be there and he was going to be playing like he said. Game Three we get off the bus and Juwan (Howard) is from Chicago and used to workout there. I’ll never forget, Jordan was sitting on his Ferrari and Pippen was right there and they have a cigar lit. We get off the bus and we have to pass them with a lit cigar. You want to talk about posturing? Forget Phil Jackson. You got Michael Jordan there behind the scenes smoking a cigar before the game, letting us know that he’s the Red Auerbach before the game even started. It was almost like, ‘I lit the cigar. I’m celebrating already. This is just a formality, you guys getting on the court tonight.”
What’s in nickname? Some are given by teammates or coaches. Some are given by friends and family. Some are given by fans. Some give themselves nicknames, although that method is certainly not very valid/credible.
Prior to a couple games before the season ended, I asked several Wizards about their nicknames, past and present. Not all players had fun with the question – i.e., JaVale McGee, who I’m sure, if members of the media were polled, would win the ‘Most Boring Interviewee’ award — but most willingly answered.
Watch the video below to find out who was called “Bucky” as a kid because of his buck teeth, who was given a certain nickname because he evidently walks like O.J. Simpson (whatever that means), and who isn’t willing to laugh at himself.
Doing some spring cleaning while watching the NBA playoffs on Sunday, I found myself ripping off covers of old ESPN The Magazines and trashing the rest, but not before quickly flipping through to make sure nothing was keep-able.
Times were different in December 2007. Well, not so much for Wizards fans. The turmoil was just getting started with the news that Gilbert Arenas would be having a second surgery on his knee just two weeks old. That December 3rd edition of ESPN The Magazine ironically had part of an NBA advertisement featuring a picture of Arenas and the words, “Where I’m back happens.”
In that same edition, which had Terrell Owens giving Tony Romo ‘bunny ears’ on the cover (Jason Witten was in the picture too), was the above ‘Got Milk?’ advertisement featuring two former Dallas Mavericks, coach Avery Johnson and player Josh Howard.
December 2007 represented some of the last days of NBA harmony for each Howard and Johnson. The Mavericks as a one-seed lost to the eight-seed Warriors the previous Spring, an ’06-07 season where Howard also represented the Mavs in the NBA All-Star game. But from there, it would go further downhill.
The Mavs finished ’07-08 as a seven-seed in the West, losing to the New Orleans Hornets in the first round. Johnson was fired days later. Howard would subsequently go through a tumultuous six-month span in 2008, including some off-court incidents that severely damaged his public image.
Skates. They can be roller or ice. But they can also happen on the basketball court.
“Putting someone on skates,” means to initiate an offensive move which makes the defender appear like he’s wearing one of the aforementioned … like he’s sliding (or rolling) in a direction beyond control.
Recently, Duke’s Josh McRoberts, who plays for the Indiana Pacers in the present day, gave young JaVale McGee, of the Washington Wizards, a pair of skates. With a couple hard dribbles to the right and a cross behind the back to the left, McRoberts sent McGee slippin’ and slidin’ all over the court. Let’s watch in GIF form.
Now, to McGee’s credit, the youngster immediately bounced back up and attempted to block McRoberts, but was ultimately unsuccessful, sending the Pacer to the free-throw line for two shots. That was McGee’s third foul in just under six minutes of action in the first quarter. He was subsequently summoned to the bench. Let’s look at another angle…
Who will get to the 2010 NBA Finals and who will win? That’s the question I posed to several Wizards on the last day of the season. One player wants to see Antawn Jamison get a ring. Another surprisingly chose the Orlando Magic to win it all because, he says, “Vince [Carter], he picks and chooses when he wants to play, but I think in the Finals he’s going to be up for it. I think he’s going to be the difference maker.” Interesting.
Out of 10 players polled, four ultimately picked the Cavaliers, three the Lakers, and as mentioned, one went with the Magic. Two players declined to make a choice. Time to watch…
The Wizards have a 10.3% chance of getting this guy with the top pick.
{flickr/Tennessee Journalist}
The NBA Draft Lottery
First, the Wizards lost this afternoon’s random drawing against the Golden State Warriors to break the tie for fourth place in the NBA Draft Lottery (first reported by Matt Steinmetz of CSN Bay Area on Twitter).
What it means is that the worst the Wizards can pick, if they are jumped by three teams like last year, is 8th in the draft. Obviously the best the Wizards can do is 1st, or they can win 2nd or 3rd.
If the Wizards are jumped by one team, they will pick 6th; two teams means the 7th pick. The Wiz can also be jumped by no one and stay at 5th. The one pick in the top eight that Washington will not be getting is the 4th. Just can’t happen.
