[Pierce showing his bounciness, flexibility in unique pre-Draft workout. Courtesy SI Vault.]

When the Wizards have the 10^th pick in the NBA Draft, we get a player like … Jarvis Hayes.

The Celtics? They get an All-Star like Joe Johnson—or even better, a future Hall of Famer like Paul Pierce.

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[With the Trailblazers in D.C. tonight, looking back at when a single trade helped both franchises. Before the deal, a young 'Sheed standing tall in the District. Photo: SI Vault.]

It’s NBA trade season. But there’s one kind of trade you shouldn’t expect.

The heads-up, big-name deal.

Dwight for Dwyane. Pau for Josh.

It’s got a playground sort of feel to it: You give me your guy; I give you mine. Maybe we throw in some spare parts to make it even.

But there hasn’t been a great one in 15 years. Not since Rasheed for Rod.

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[Antawn Jamison ponders the Wizards - photo: K. Weidie]

Tonight, the Cleveland Cavaliers travel to Washington for a marquee match-up between struggling teams and former rivals. Though Soulja Boy is not expected to be in attendance, Antawn Jamison will be, playing in his first game in Washington since he was shipped out. Both teams look to snap losing streaks. Three questions, three answers, from three of your favorite people– John Krolik (@JohnKrolik) of ESPN TrueHoop blog Cavs: The Blog, and TAI’s Sam Permutt (@sammyvert) and Kyle Weidie (@truth_about_it) — right now.

#1) You’re Antawn Jamison, consummate professional and former All-Star power forward. The NBA has decided to merge the Cleveland and Washington teams. You get to pick four other players (point guard, shooting guard, small forward, and center) to start alongside you for the new and improved Wizaliers team. Who are you running with? And even with this merger, how successful can the Wizaliers team be?  Are they a playoff team? Championship contenders?

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In terms of winning percentage and shooting, two kind of big things in basketball, this lockout-shortened season could be rock-bottom for the rebuild of the Washington Wizards. And in terms of record books and scoring, it is. They scored 64 points tonight against Chicago, a franchise all-time low, to 78 points for the Bulls. The previous Washington franchise low was 65 points scored in an away game against the New Jersey Nets on December 13, 2002.

The Wizards shot 31-percent from the field on Wednesday in Chicago, at least they shot 36.6-percent that night in New Jersey — and Michael Jordan and Larry Hughes were chucking up shots (14-34 FGs, 31 points combined) instead of Jordan Crawford and Nick Young (6-23 FGs, 19 points combined).

Speaking of Young and Crawford, their shooting and passing stats this year:

>Crawford is shooting 33.3% from the field
while averaging 17.9 FGAs per 36 minutes as well as 3.6 assists/36.

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If you prowled around this site during the lockout summer (or rather, fall), you may have seen a post about former Baltimore Bullet Stan Love, father of Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves. When he was in town on Sunday, Kevin took some time before the game to chat with me about his dad. Here goes…

What has your father told you about the NBA?

“My dad has dropped a lot of knowledge on me throughout the years. He placed a ball in my hands from an early age, so basketball has always been in my blood — obviously with having the last name ‘Love’ and obviously being named after Wes Unseld, different spelling [Kevin’s middle name is Wesley, Unseld spelled his first name, Westley], but going back to his heyday. It’s pretty special to be trying to follow in his footsteps and kind of do what my dad did, but also a little bit of what [Unseld] did as well.”

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September 22, 1971. Louisville, Kentucky. Freedom Hall.

Just over 40 years ago the Baltimore Bullets made the 600-mile trip west from Northern Virginia, where they had battled the N.B.A.’s New York Knickerbockers in their preseason opener the night before, to square off against the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association in the biggest game few today have ever heard about. The contest would be the second act in an Inter-League Exhibition Game (ILEG) series, a sporting event invented by the owners who were looking for something to make “airing out the big arenas, sweeping the floor and printing up tickets worthwhile,” amid rumors of a merger between the two roundball associations. Though early on, these exhibitions were not well publicized, they weren’t without meaning.

The 1971 ILEG series was headlined by two N.B.A. titans, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Baltimore Bullets, both gearing up for another shot at an N.B.A. championship. They were scheduled to play five A.B.A. squads in five A.B.A. cities; the games were held in A.B.A. cities like Louisville and Winston-Salem for the simple reason that the N.B.A. didn’t want to legitimize the upstart league.

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Wes Unseld doesn’t come around much anymore, and it has nothing to do with the lockout. We’re talking the house that Abe built, the Verizon Center.

Sure, he’s part of the franchise’s alumni group and has a seat “for life,” once blogged Ted Leonsis. This was in response to a oddity spewed by New York’s own Peter Vecsey in January 2011, saying Unseld’s season tickets had been “stripped” from him. Dan Steinberg aptly described the curious case on the DC Sports Bog, as both Leonsis and Unseld denied such; and as Mike Wise said, “Let’s put it this way, Tony Kornheiser’s not an evil human being. He has an evil side to him, but he’s not an evil human being. But Peter Vecsey is Satan incarnate.” Always nice to have Kornheiser involved.

Still, season tickets or no season tickets (after all, someone, somewhere had to be miffed enough to drop of a nugget for Vecsey to run with, unconfirmed), Unseld was no where near as present at games last season as he used to be, when Pollin was owner. And that’s okay. He was Abe’s guy. Constancy is neither sacred, nor a vice. Plus, sometimes in life there are other things to do.

New can always be found without the old, but often can’t be appreciated without what’s already been done. And that’s why on this Wednesday, we appreciate Wes, just as the Washington franchise and fans of the franchise always will. Read more »

Sit back folks. I know it’s hard to digest losing the opportunity to watch John Wall, Jan Vesely, usually JaVale McGee, Trevor Booker, Jordan Crawford, Nick Young, Chris Singleton, and others play basketball for the Washington Wizards. It’s the pits. On the other hand, I shrug my shoulders. What else are those who will inevitably return to the game when they start playing again supposed to do? We get ready for the long haul.

But don’t worry folks, this site will carry on just fine. Friends have asked me what I’m going to do during the NBA Lockout. One, I’m going to miss taking pictures at games. There’s nothing like being right there, and photography from the baseline has, at least for me, allowed for new ways to express basketball from different visual perspectives. I’ll also miss the ability to interview players about things that don’t necessarily pertain to basketball or the game at hand — Christmas presents, nicknames, clothing/shoes, and those who never made it being some of the topics.

And that’s what this Wizards-related website often is all about… an outlet for creativity, no matter the pixel medium. So while there will be no games for a long time, it seems, basketball doesn’t go away. There’s history, there’s some old games to break down, there’s forgotten about projects that deserve attention. Of course, all of this as time with regular life allows. But to exist, we certainly don’t need NBA basketball. They’ll be back, one day.

Dave Stallworth

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If you follow @Truth_About_It on Twitter, you’ll often see a lot of random stuff, but lately you might have also noticed a personally renwed interest in old NBA collector’s cards, some of which I’ve shared with the hash-tag #oldNBAcards. Of course, “old” is relative — most of what I’ve shared comes from the 1990s. However, this past weekend I came across some even older cards (as in, from the early 70s, just under a decade before I was born), specifically pertaining to the Baltimore Bullets.  And this Friday, I’m here to share with you Stan Love… perhaps the first bro/dude in team history. Let’s bask in the glow of a Love card from 1972, then a bullet point run-down on the former Bullet, and finally, another Love card from 1973. Enjoy and Happy Friday.

• Stan Love, from Los Angeles, California, was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets with the 9th overall pick out of the University of Oregon in 1971 — Love was also drafted by the Dallas Chaparrals of the ABA, but opted for the NBA. 
• Love said he found out about being drafted on the radio while driving on a California interstate, said he had to pull over on the side of the road and look at a map to see where Baltimore was.
• Love’s older brother, Mike, was a founder of the band, The Beach Boys; other group members, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson, were cousins of the Loves.
• Love had a decorated college career playing for the Ducks (he was inducted into Oregon’s Hall of Fame in 1994), but his time in the pros was relatively disappointing.
• He played two seasons with Baltimore, was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Truck Robinson in the summer of 1973, played a season and a half in L.A., at which point he was waived and later picked up by the San Antonio Spurs (then of the ABA) for 12 games before retiring from basketball in 1975.
• Over four pro seasons, Love appeared in 239 games, averaged 14.7 minutes, 6.6 points on .440 field-goal shooting, and 3.9 rebounds.
• He partied with Phil Jackson — from the 2001 book More Than A Game, co-written by Jackson and Charley Rosen, this part penned by Rosen: “I first met PJ at a postgame party in the spring of 1973 in his loft on West Nineteenth Street, brought there by a mutual friend, Stan Love, a six-foot-nine well-credentialed hippie and part-time power-less forward for the Baltimore Bullets.”
• Other terms across the Internet used to describe Stan Love include: flaky, kooky, goofy, feisty, wacky, California surfer dude, etc.
• Two stories on Love are conveyed in a 2009 piece on BaltimoreStyle.com: 1) “At a game in Milwaukee, he impersonated Tarzan by hanging on the rim after a dunk long enough for the Bucks to score on the other end. All he drew for his effort was a technical,” and 2) “Another time in Baltimore, he was knocked to the floor. [Gene] Shue sent in a replacement. Instead of rising and walking back to the bench, Love “rowed” himself across the floor like an Olympic skuller.”
• Love thought so much of teammate Wes Unseld’s ability, especially his rebounding and outlet passing prowess, that he made the middle name of his son, Kevin, “Wesley” — of course, Unseld’s first name is really spelled “Westley,” but the intent was there.
• Kevin Love, another of course, is that guy in the NBA you often hear so much about — like when he was a 2011 All-Star, the 2011 NBA’s Most Improved Player, and that 30 point/30 rebound game he had last November.
• In March 2008, after seeing Kevin Love play for U.C.L.A., Unseld had this to say: “Passing skill is something you learn. It’s not something you’re born with. Kevin’s had a good teacher in his dad. Stan was a very good player, but he was just a space cadet. Stan was completely different from me, but I loved throwing passes to him so he could score. If Stan scored you could keep him out of trouble.”
• When Love retired from the NBA in ’75, he went on to work as a bodyguard for the Beach Boys, also being tasked as an assistant to Brian Wilson, and to keep Wilson out of trouble and drug free. That didn’t always work out according to various well-known stories and lore, not necessarily by the fault of Stan, however.
• That’s life, kid.
• One Love.

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Most of us saw where Kobe Bryant took time to rip Kwame Brown during a guest lecture to a college class at the University of California-Santa Barbara the other day, video embedded above and linked here if you missed it. In calling out the transgressions of inglorious bastard teammates Brown and Smush Parker, Bryant took pause to mention that he would say the same thing to the faces of both players; this after eliciting chuckles from the class en masse by mere mention of Brown’s name. Surely Kobe realizes that every comment he makes, every action, is susceptible to fast dissemination amongst the Internets. He knew Kwame would hear his dig.

People are always ready to rip Kwame, myself included. Almost as readily, people blame Michael Jordan or Doug Collins for all that went wrong with him at the onset of his career with the Washington Wizards as the NBA’s 2001 No. 1 overall draft pick. Both men have admitted that they would’ve handled the 18-year old differently, Collins at various times even admitting that their scouting was duped by Kwame’s accelerated physique and confident persona in a pre-draft workout where he bested, and beasted, high school contemporary Tyson Chandler. Jordan, now majority owner of the Bobcats, attempted to swallow his mistakes last summer by reuniting with Kwame in Charlotte.

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