[Lou Williams - photo: K. Weidie]

As I publish this post, the Wizards are down 52-40 to the Philadelphia 76ers at halftime. After a relatively decent first quarter where Washington outscored the Sixers 26-23 behind 11 points from Nick Young on 4-7 shooting and 10 points and five rebounds (three offensive) from JaVale McGee, things came more back to reality. Philadelphia out-scored the Wizards 29-14 in the second quarter. It’s not that Washington was wholly selfish as usual, they just found a way to bumble opportunity, even when Philadelphia gave them a couple chances with turnovers (six, leading to four Washington points). But the Wizards turned the ball over even more, giving it away 13 times leading to 21 Philadelphia points at the half. Below are some speakable quotes from Flip Saunders, Sixers coach Doug Collins, and notorious Wizards killer Lou Williams from before the game started.

Before the game Flip Saunders was asked how a coach sends the message that selfish basketball won’t be tolerated. Flip said:

“It’s a fine line because there are so many young guys. You don’t want them to play looking over their shoulders, that you’re going to take them out at every mistake. But I think that we probably have to be… that’s probably what has to happen, because we can’t… it’s not fair to the team, it’s not fair to them. We want to do aggressive-type things. If you’re playing aggressive offensively, and you’re taking good shots and you’re open, that’s different than taking a contested shot.”

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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.”

What have you taken from what you’ve seen of Wes Unseld’s game via old film, YouTube, etc.? Read more »

The Night After The Wizards 2011-12 Season Opener:

The Day After The Night:

Andray Blatche just can’t help himself, literally, figuratively, and ways in between.

After the Wizards grabbing the mic to announce to a much-less-than-capacity Verizon Center crowd over the P.A. system:

“How y’all doing? This is your captain, Andray Blatche. On behalf of myself, my teammates, the whole Washington Wizards organization, we want to say we strongly appreciate y’all sticking around all summer. It’s been a long summer, and it’s a shortened season, but it’s going to be tough. And we’re going to need you guys, the best fans in the NBA, to be our sixth man. So in other words, let’s get this season started.”

Fairly good intentions (“best fans in the NBA” jokes aside; Blatche gets booed a lot by the paltry home crowds). Look, no one can question that Blatche is trying. He just doesn’t know how to try. So he continues to fall on his face while the franchise constantly running to defend him keeps looking silly in the process. After all, Ted Leonsis has only doled out one multi-year free agent contract in his brief tenure as team owner, to Blatche. This, of course, amongst other positive pixel puffery.

After the game, Blatche was equally putting on a show. He implored, to the media, mind you, that he wanted the ball more in the post.

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Now that NBA the season is upon us, the most oft-considered repercussion of the compacted schedule has been for whom is it an advantage. Fresh legs? Sharp minds? Old teams?

On media day Flip Saunders was asked if a youthful team brings any benefits to a scrambled environment in the aftermath of the 2011 lockout. ”I think if you have youth, you’re going to say yes, and if you have veterans, you’re going to say yes,” he said, implying that you can cook the perspective to whatever degree you like.

As with any NBA season, normal length or not, if a team is hit with the injury bug too harshly or with bad timing, it can significantly affect results. With a slate of 66 games in just 122 days, injuries are now more likely. Neither young nor old are immune. Sure, less aged muscles can recuperate faster, but those benefits are not as effective without proper time to recover.

“We just have to make sure that they can get the proper rest when they’re not playing,” said Saunders, “and so that’s going to be a main focus of what we’ll try to do too.”

“We got to really listen in and focus in on film session and listen to what the coaches are saying because there’s not going to be a lot of time to practice on the floor,” said Rashard Lewis, a veteran of the last NBA lockout, the shortened season afterward being his 1998-99 rookie campaign with the Seattle Supersonics.

Saunders also likened the compacted schedule, which for Washington includes 16 back-to-back sets and two occurrences of three games in three days, to an “AAU phase,” since players at that level are used to playing three games in a day, or even nine in a weekend. But cognitively speaking, Saunders might not want to make such a comparison, because the Wizards are susceptible to playing more like an undisciplined AAU team instead of scouring report students.

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“Know your roll!”

Former Washington Bullet Ledell Eackles, as relayed in :07 Seconds Or Less by Jack McCallum, once wrote, “Know your roll!” on a chalkboard as a member of the Miami Heat, in an attempt to inspire the team. Yes, “roll” and not “role” — the irony easily realized if you know Eackles’ issues with rotundness during his playing days.

But in terms of NBA players “knowing their roles” on the court… What, exactly does that mean? No, really. Because I’ve never quite understood it past being pseudo-code for: ‘Some guys are trying to do things they are not supposed to be doing, nor are capable of doing.’ And maybe that’s enough, although all the talk about knowing roles can still be confusing.

A player knowing his role in basketball makes sense, at one level, as all positions in the game are free-flowing. Sure, you have point guards and centers, but even the lines between those have blurred over time. Basketball is not like baseball where action is often solely focused on one person throwing the ball to a sole person responsible for hitting it; there’s sharing in basketball. Have you been to Lob City yet? (And to a lesser extent, John to JaVale Township?) Nor is basketball like football, where assignments on both offense and defense are specifically outlined. Or even hockey, where one guy’s role is to mind the net, others are more specifically geared toward defense or offense.

Basketball, with its diluted assignments, can thus be confusing when it comes to roles. Positions 1-5 can all score within the offense, or at the drop of a hat with a sudden change in possession. Players do need to know some sort of role for team structure, but even saying that seems overly robotic, and counterintuitive to how fluidly equal the game of basketball is meant to be.

Whatever it all means, it’s no surprise that the young Washington Wizards have a lack of understanding when “role” talk makes its way to the airwaves, i.e., who should be following the offense more rigidly, who is able to improvise and ad lib, and at which point of the game, quarter, or shot clock all these players should be performing within their capabilities.

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[What does John Wall smell? - photo: K. Weidie]

Media members tend to attach themselves to keywords or catch phrases and then shape narratives around them. Guilty as charged. The Washington Wizards franchise has especially provided an abundance of excellent catch phrases over the years.

Recently, you have “pixels” via the web tech-savvy Ted Leonsis (and now, likely “erudite“). From Flip Saunders, we’ve had “Style over substance” as a JaVale McGee descriptor. Going back further, Gilbert Arenas helped popularize the term, “Swag.” Now most feel that word is overused, how oddly fitting.

“Just like Groundhog Day,” Antawn Jamison used to say. From “Get buckets son!,” via Oleksiy Pecherov to “I Love This Game!,” the NBA’s 90s motto that Gheorghe Muresan famously said in broken English over the television airwaves on draft night 1993, some phrases have been more relevant than others. And I’m failing to mention dozens of them, as they pertain to the Wizards.

It is unforeseen where Flip Saunders’ recent “popcorn players” parable/anecdote will fall on the spectrum, but it elicited one of the more revealing quotes from John Wall that I’ve heard. Because we all wonder, how exactly are stars like him wired? And while Wall’s words don’t exactly reveal anything about the inner workings of his neurology, they do show what he cares about: playing every basketball game like it’s his last.

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Talk is cheap, and perhaps so is reading. And in retrospect, all the electronic pixels and printed typeface in the world can be just as meaningless as spoken words, as they pertain to future promises and the game of basketball.

Thus, people will readily point out that this is at least the fourth consecutive year of corner-turning expectations for Andray Blatche. Some have given up on him. Some continue to have hope. What’s evident is that he might finally break through toward a specific destination of achievement, or he won’t.

In his post lockout press conference, Washington Wizards coach Flip Saunders mentioned that he and team VP of basketball administration Tommy Sheppard gave Blatche a book on leadership this summer, before the lockout. When asked about that book at training camp this past weekend, Blatche could neither remember the book’s title, nor much of the leadership advice it offered.

“I only read like half of it, because after a while, it was like, ‘OK, alright, I got the message,’” Blatche said with a sheepish grin on his face. He went on to talk about the standards of leading by example and making those around him better. This piggy-backed words from Blatche reflecting that he now has become tired of not being a leader, tired of being on a team more known for goofiness, and tired of playing losing basketball.

“Playing around haven’t gotten us no where,” Blatche said. “All the games is out. I’m 25-years old now, this is my seventh year in the league. This is my time for me to step up and try to have guys follow me on the path I want to go. And the path I want to go is winning… just the total opposite of last season.”

For what it’s worth, Saunders couldn’t remember the title of the book either.

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I often sarcastically harp that I’m one of the “lucky” few who has watched every single Washington Wizards game either in person, live on TV, or via DVR over the past few craptastic seasons, but Wizards T.V. analyst Phil Chenier has seen almost every game in person, home and away, going on 26 years.

The former Bullets Star has an unassuming and steady game-calling style. His commentary is sharp and void of the preachy “back in my playing days” modifiers, which are so tiresomely prevalent amongst ex-jock pundits. (Looking at you, Jim Palmer & Rob Dibble.)

His pregame “Phil-osophy” segments are usually on point and lack cheesiness. Chenier’s calm diction is in stark contrast to having to suffer through Mark Jackson’s “mama there goes that man again” refrains and overall dull observations throughout the NBA playoffs.

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Bunch old Wizards in the NBA Finals, this we know. Unfortunately, two couldn’t play in game three last night due to injury, Brendan Haywood and Caron Butler, so they sat on the bench in nice suits while a cat to the far left stuck some finger guns up his nose.

Speaking of finger guns, what is our old pal Gilbert Arenas doing here?

His Twitter @agentzeroshow explanation: “I got on my mo hawk for shawn M..if he can wear a mo hawk durn the nba finals I guess I can wear in my house”

More Former Wizards?

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I should have known that the NBA Draft Lottery was not going to fall in the Washington Wizards favor when I walked into the media area.  Two members of the Cleveland Browns, Joshua Cribbs and Joe Haden, who are from Washington, D.C. and Fort Washington, MD respectively, were sitting at a table with former Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar.  Maybe under different circumstances Cribbs and Haden would have donned the new colors of the Washington Wizards, but on this evening, their roles were to be good luck charms for Dan Gilbert.  They were ensconced in Cleveland Cavaliers gear – the former pseudo-rival of Washington which also happened to be the team that eliminated the Wizards the last time they were fortunate enough to make the playoffs

Two hours later, Dan Gilbert, his charismatic son Nick, Kosar, Cribbs and Haden were posing for pictures in front of the ESPN camera, and celebrating the fact that the Cavaliers had won the first pick of the 2011 draft.  The Wizards, who were represented by last year’s number one selection John Wall, were left with the sixth pick, despite having the fourth-worst record in the NBA.

Despite the disappointing draft position, there were still some positives for the Washington Wizards franchise.  As I wrote for the DCist, in just a short period of time Wall displayed the type of confidence and leadership that the Wizards braintrust probably expected when they drafted him first just one year ago.  He worked the room, he joked around with his fellow 2010 draft classmate Greg Monroe, as well as Kyrie Irving, who figures to the first pick of the 2011 draft class.  He was equally comfortable in between Toronto Raptors President Bryan Colangelo and Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson; Wall even mentioned that he asked Mayor Johnson about his role in keeping the Kings in Sacramento.

Here is Wall speaking confidently on his summer plans, his opinion of some of the players in the draft and his expectations for his fellow teammates among other things:

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The highlights and good times from John Wall’s rookie year represent the icing on the big ol’ cookie (or cake) that vested hype-machine types gladly diddle themselves to while resting assured on pillows encased with media & PR mints at night. Fodder for rainbows, puppy dogs and ice cream, but relatively useless to Wall himself. He doesn’t seem to take comfort in digits and puffery. Rather, he’s the sort wired to be driven toward success by frustration and failure, i.e., he’s a non-believer in the injury/rebuilding excuses readily applied by some around him. Nor does he appear to possess a complacency or apathy toward loving the game of basketball as some of his teammates have so often conveyed. He actually appears to despise such attitudes. At least this is what dime-store pessimists such as myself optimistically believe.

No, it’s not ‘John Wall Wednesday’ here at Truth About It.net, although there could be a subsequent related post coming this evening that would make it three in a row about the 2010 No. 1 NBA Draft pick. But, you see, no biggie when it comes to the franchise pillar. Wall’s inaugural season has barely been put to rest as his NBA future looks to gainfully go from embryonic to full-on fetus mode. And then who knows… a crawl, walk or sprint into the postseason seems inevitable. Rookie year perspective is a prerequisite, yet no one will know how to properly assess Wall’s 2010-11 until a couple/several years from now. In the meantime, let’s take a videographic look at the experience of the rookie’s emotions through his carefully considered and well-trained quotes to the media covering his team, the Washington Wizards. Dissect this one way now and be ready to reconsider down the road.

{photo: K. Weidie, TAI}

There were varied reactions to the airing of ESPN’s Fab Five documentary this past Sunday.  Some people (like myself) were young impressionable college students when Michigan’s Fab Five rose to fame, and were captivated by everything they did — whether it was good or bad.  Others (like a friend of mine who is a Duke fan) watched the documentary and were reminded of all the negative feelings they felt toward Michigan out of loyalty to their team.  And of course, I’m sure there were some who watched with relative indifference toward the Wolverines, and simply enjoyed the stories, interviews and old clips of exciting basketball.

There are current NBA players who were much too young to watch and experience the play of Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Jimmy King, Juwan Howard and Ray Jackson.  They may know about the later pro careers of Rose and Webber, and they definitely know of them via ESPN, TNT and NBATV, but they have no recollection of their college days at Michigan.  They probably know Howard as a contributing bench player for the Miami Heat, but they don’t remember the goatee’d one running up and down the court in maize and blue. King and Jackson probably don’t even register on their radar screens.

So in the ten minutes I had in the Oklahoma City Thunder locker room prior to their drubbing of the Wizards Monday night, I asked Kevin Durant, Daequan Cook and Cole Aldrich about the documentary and the Fab Five in general.  All three players were under the age of five when the Fab Five was taking the NCAA by storm, and I was curious to hear their musings. Plus, the chemistry of the Thunder overall seems to be identical, if not very similar, to the chemistry of those 1991-1993 Michigan teams. I asked each of them three questions:

1. Did you see the documentary
2. What did you know about the Fab Five, and what were your impressions about them and their game, and did they influence you?
3. Do you see similarities between them and this Thunder team

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The lead from a New York Times article published on April 15, 2005:

Five years ago, Andray Blatche was a laughingstock as a basketball player. Today he is considered a probable first-round draft choice in the National Basketball Association.

‘Late Bloomer Is Ready to Join N.B.A. Early’ by Mitch Abramson continues:

Blatche did not play organized basketball until he was in high school, and he was on the junior varsity until midway through his sophomore year at Henninger High in Syracuse.

Unlike wunderkinds like LeBron James and Sebastian Telfair, who were labeled prodigies almost from the moment they picked up a ball, Blatche failed miserably at first.

“He wasn’t very good as a ninth grader; I’ll be honest,” said Tom Atkins, his junior varsity coach. “He didn’t take adversity very well. He was pretty emotional, just a tall clumsy kid who didn’t know how to play the game yet – very raw.”

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The Wizards have struggled this year, no question about it. The team has won just 13 games and is still hopelessly searching for its first road win. Their next opportunity for that elusive victory away from home comes on Sunday, February 13 versus the woeful Cleveland Cavaliers — a team nursing a 24-game losing streak.

Back on October 20, 2010, the crew at Truth About It.net gave their “crystal ball visions” of the Wizards’ regular season record for 2010-11. Here is what they looked like:

• Kyle Weidie – 34 wins
• Rashad Mobley – 30 wins
• Adam McGinnis – 40 wins
• John Townsend – 40 wins
• Arish Narayen – 41 wins
• Beckley Mason – 36 wins

I might choose to pass on the Buffalo wings and beer for the Super Bowl, instead opting to find a spot on my couch with an extra helping of Washington Wizards crow. This team is headed nowhere fast this season … but regular season performance in one year isn’t necessarily predictive of success and achievement in the next.

On the lighter side, here are the ten biggest single-season turnarounds in NBA history:

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Not all is well in Wizards land these days with the team’s 0-21  road losing streak approaching a record level for futility and receiving unwanted national attention, a key player publicly feuding with the fanbase on local sports radio, endless injuries, more gossip surrounding their jettisoned ex-superstar and now D.C. is digging out from a heavy thundersnow storm. Now, there’s no better time for a positive distraction.

Awhile back, I spoke with several Wizards about technology. My questions included asking them about Internet usage, favorite web sites, if they’re a PC or Mac guy, where they go online for news and whether they Google themselves. Find out which player loves the website Media Takeout, which one admits to Google-searching his name, who only gets the news from his wife and who searches his name on YouTube.

Part two of the technology interviews will be forthcoming and will cover the players’ thoughts on social media, what type of cell phone they roll with, and how many read sports blogs (hint…not many).

Websites Mentioned: Read more »