What do you write after a team shoots 65.8% (50-76 field-goals) on their way to a 114-83 win over the Wizards?

Chalk it up to the Boston Celtics being a great-passing veteran team at home and the Wizards being a non-passing, relatively inexperienced team on the road and move on, I suppose.

Oh, lest I forget a stat fact that you’ll surely be made aware of by others: the Boston Celtics had 32 assists, the Washington Wizards had 31 made field-goals.

But let’s go back to this field-goal percentage thing. It’s kind of like winning in overtime when you didn’t deserve it … a win is a win.

Read more »

Plenty of professional athletes pull pranks. Plenty of regular people pull pranks. Gilbert Arenas didn’t invent the prank, he just was, perhaps, the best at it — the most prolific … because he’s a professional athlete.

Arenas’ varied pranks are infamous, and for a recent spell due to a horribly failed prank with guns that wasn’t really a prank, they became blemishes open for all armchair psychologists to analyze to their core, from a distance.

And then there’s pooping in someone’s shoe, an act that added a somber twist to Arenas’ locker room gun affair and his history of egregiousness excused by a franchise. Or in the least, it was Gilbert’s most memorable prank, which went from the punchline of comical stories among those in the know to something that was used to further indict Arenas’ character.

The proper term, kids, is defecation … in verb form: to defecate. And it was first properly used in reference to Arenas and victim, Andray Blatche, by Mike Wise and Michael Lee of the Washington Post in January 2010:

“Former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan and his staff privately intimated they felt undermined by Grunfeld when it came to matters of discipline with Arenas. Arenas, a notorious practical joker, often crossed the line of acceptable decorum. The example often cited was how Arenas once defecated in teammate Andray Blatche’s shoe during Blatche’s rookie season. His behavior often went unchecked and unpunished, said a former team employee on condition of anonymity.”

Read more »

[Note: This is a trial run of a "Player Lock" series in which Truth About It.net will spotlight one player over the course of a game. -John]

I chose to spotlight Gilbert Arenas in Saturday night’s contest between the Washington Wizards and the Cleveland Cavaliers. And why not? It was Gil’s homecoming — the first time he had played at the Verizon Center since January 2, 2010 against the San Antonio Spurs.

[To beard or not to beard? via K. Weidie]

Flip Saunders and Gilbert tested a bit of my patience, forcing me to wait … and wait for his debut. He didn’t check into the game until just a few minutes before the end of the first quarter. After making his season debut against the Knicks on Friday, Arenas indicated that he didn’t mind coming off the bench for the unforeseen future, saying, “When I come off, I just got to be ready like ‘The Microwave’.” And Wizards fans in D.C. were hungry for whatever he had cooking.

Read more »

Slow steps and seconds guesses were the main themes from Saturday’s night home loss to an Antwan Jamison-less Cleveland Cavaliers. The Wizards let a very winnable game slip away as Anthony Parker, Daniel Gibson and Mo Williams all burried late key three pointers and Washington fell to 1-4 on the young season.

Coach Saunders regretted sitting a hot Al Thornton (23 points on 10-16 field-goals) for the final nine minutes of the game.

“I said to Al that I made a mistake….I question myself the last three minutes about not having Al in there.”

Flip went to the long anticipated three-guard lineup of John Wall, Kirk Hinrich and Gilbert Arenas for the fourth quarter. The trio led the Wizards to a 90-85 lead with five minutes to go in the game after Arenas fueled a 3-on-1 fast break that ended with a flush by Andray Blatche.

Read more »

Not too long ago we took a look at some of the worst shooters in Bullets/Wizards franchise history. Now, especially since shooting is such a concern, we’ll take a look at some the best shooters in team history, specifically from the three-point distance.

[Basketball Court - Georgia Avenue/Howard University - photo: K. Weidie]

Last season was the 31th anniversary of the three-point shot in the NBA. Well, sorta. The three-point line was implemented on a trial basis for the 1979-80 season and set into permanent rule for the 1980-81 season. So, perhaps technically this season is the 31th anniversary of the three-point shot in the NBA. Nonetheless, stats on the shot have been kept for the previous 31 seasons and are available thanks to Basketball-Reference.com.

Read more »

[Shaw Rec. Center - Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

In mid-September, ESPN.com contributor Tom Haberstroh made an attempt to determine the five worst players in the franchise history of each NBA team [ESPN Insider]. The requirements, along with the implementation of John Hollinger’s PER, were:

“… a player needed to have played at least 10 minutes per contest over the course of at least 100 career games with the franchise. Furthermore, we’ve added the “Bruce Bowen Corollary” to exempt players who started for championship teams.”

And the list of distinguished gentlemen for the Bullets/Wizards franchise:

Read more »

A D.C. pic, commentary, and links …

[Shaw Library: 7th St. & Rhode Island Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

So the Wizards lost to the Chicago Bulls on Friday night, putting their preseason record at 2-1. They got out-rebounded 48-32 and after the game, Wizards coach Flip Saunders said it wasn’t so much a result of the three-guard lineup. Via Wizards Insider:

Saunders said the disparity had nothing to do with size or inexperience. “Our bigs played really lethargic, very tired tonight. Very much with a lack of commitment. We have to play harder than the team we’re playing against. We can’t afford to let teams play harder than us, because we’re young and we’re going to make mistakes. And you have to make up for those mistakes with effort plays.”

“MESSAGE!” — And Flip was calculated with his message or call-out to Andray Blatche (three rebounds in 25 minutes), JaVale McGee (five rebounds in 18 minutes), and Yi Jianlian (three rebounds in 19 minutes off the bench). Of course, these numbers don’t tell the full story, exactly how many rebounds the Wizards allowed their assigned opposition to get.

Read more »

Ted Leonsis is a man of lists. He believes in lists.

In fact, his original “list” of 101 things to do in life, which arose from a day of reckoning in 1983 when a plane he was on was forced into a crash landing, actually landed him an appearance on Oprah.

But getting on the media mogul’s show wasn’t the point. Making that original list helped bring direction and focus to Leonsis’ life. He achieved a lot, financially, before making his list, but clearly, through telling his story in his book, The Business of Happiness, he achieved far more value and meaning in his life, over monetary concern, after making the list.

And thus, as a big believer in lists, shortly after taking over the Wizards last June, Leonsis sought input from his team’s community on what he could do to make their basketball experience and relationship with the franchise better. And with that input, he started making another list.

Evidently, that list grew to the point where a simple benchmark of achieving 101 total improvements in the quality of life for Wizards fans (and Capitals fans, and Mystics fans … since the Verizon Center that houses all teams was part of the package Leonsis fully acquired in June) became a list of 101 accomplishments in 101 days, with more likely to come.

Read more »

Remember former Washington Wizard John Coker? Of course you don’t (especially since he’s wearing a Phoenix Suns jersey in the image below).

[Note: This appears to be the only picture of John Coker on the entire world wide web, so please excuse me if I've "stolen" it from use amongst several websites. To be safe, I've done some artsy-fatsy stuff with it using a filter in Photoshop.]

Not many even remember this guy’s entire NBA career, which is a tad interesting, and very brief.

Read more »

ESPN.com currently has this “Franchise Five” feature going on for all NBA teams. Basically, they have an interactive page where visitors can vote for the “best” player in franchise history at each position (PG, SG, SF, PF, C).

Here are the candidates:

Point Guard:
Gilbert Arenas, Rod Strickland, Archie Clark, Kevin Porter and Michael Adams

Shooting Guard:
Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Jeff Malone, Phil Chenier, Kevin Loughery and Don Ohl

Read more »