[Note: Obviously I would have liked to post this piece pertaining to Friday night's win against the Magic, the first home game after Gilbert Arenas' suspension, before Sunday's game against the Hornets ... but life happens and time is my enemy.]

Gilbert Arenas’ corner locker sat relatively empty. A couple pairs of shoes, straightened, likely by someone other than Arenas, a rubber training/physical therapy band, and an autographed basketball card of Sam Cassell taped to the back wall were all that remained. Lonely stood the area of the locker room where the media used to congregate, waiting and salivating for Gilbert to preach in his unfiltered, matter-of-fact, unguarded superstar kind of way. Not that night. Maybe not ever again.

Before the Wizards faced the Magic on Friday evening, those around the Verizon Center spoke of Gilbert in the past tense. Understandable since the banner outside of the arena featuring Arenas was removed, his jerseys taken off shelves of souvenir stands, and his image scrubbed from promotional videos and the WashingtonWizards.com website. A dramatic reaction from the franchise or a necessary message to Arenas and fans? It’s not like Gilbert’s image was completely purged. There’s still a framed photo of Arenas in the media lounge. Several pictures of him are still prevalent on a wall collage right outside of the locker room. But I can’t help but think the actions taken were more grandstanding in mind than reason, especially when a local news station was so conveniently there to film the banner removal.

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Brendan Haywood

On needing a win …

“We’ve dug a hole enough, one that seems like it’s too big, but it’s not because we’re going to keep fighting, we going to keep chipping away, and hopefully we’re going to make this playoff push.”

Mike Miller

On passing instead of shooting …

“Believe me, I hear the fans telling me to shoot more, whatever, but you know what? Passing the ball and getting the ball poppin’ is something that when you see gets going, it’s like a domino effect. Once it gets poppin’, if you saw tonight, we got it going early, and now everyone wants to do it. And it’s fun basketball. That’s how you’re supposed to play and it’s fun to win.”

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flickr/The CJM

On draft night, there were many frustrated rumblings on Bullets Forever over Ernie Grunfeld failing to land (or go after) Vince Carter. Not only that, but Carter was allowed to go to the reigning Eastern Conference champion Orlando Magic.

With Hedo Turkoglu opting out, unlikely to return to Orlando, who knows if the Magic will be better off with Carter … many assume yes. I’ll be curious to see if Stan Van Gundy uses Carter similarly within the offense as he did Turkoglu, creating for others off the high pick and roll.

And if Rasheed Wallace goes to Orlando (which probably means that baby ‘Sheed is backing off demands of $8 million a year), they could be very scary. Tumultuous with Wallace the home-wrecker, buy scary nonetheless.

But in terms of the Wizards, should Grunfeld have gone after Carter?
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Just like last Wednesday’s game against the NOLA Hornets, I attended Friday night’s game against the O-Town Magic and forgot to set my DVR to compose a game blog later. But twitter tweets provide a similar account and save me the time from having to watch a loss….again – suffered enough of that this season. So, here are the tweets from last night’s game with some guests.

Other stuff:

[Wizards-Magic Game 33 Blog]

[Ball Don't Lie]
Caron Butler looked really bad in the first half of this loss. Truly bad. Like, “he still must be injured”-bad. So when I clicked over in the third quarter, only to be told that Tough Juice was in the midst of what turned out to be a 21-point scoring quarter, it kind of took me by surprise. Then you remember that this is Caron Butler that we’re dealing with, and it all kind of makes sense.

[Wizards Insider]
Just a strange, strange game. The Wizards set a franchise record by scoring only six second quarter points but were still in the game with two minutes to go. After Antawn Jamison nailed a three-pointer to draw them within four, the Magic closed with an 8-4 push that included two Jameer Nelson drives to the basket, two Dwight Howard free throws and two Nelson free throws.

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Wes Unseld Jr. whispers sweet coaching nothings into the ear of Ed Tapscott

Songaila makes his first start of the season……and I know some may be griping about the Lithuanian at the 5 spot, but history tells us that he does play the best defense against Dwight Howard…..then I saw this, which was via this.

Q1

Of course, Dom McGuire handles the jump ball, and loses anyway.

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I’ve been a little MIA over the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s nice to take a step back from the computer to hang with family…and that’s been graciously guided by severely limited internet access.

So the Wizards lost games 2 and 3 of the Tapscott era….ho hum. I have yet to read all reactions to losses to both Orlando and Atlanta, and I only was able to watch the Wizards face the Magic from a bar because it was on national television, but the indication seems to be that no one is surprised.

Yea, Dwight Howard is a bad man. In his time on the court against the Wizards this season, he pulls down a rebound every 2.43 minutes, attempts a free-throw every 2.61 minutes, and makes a FG every 3.84 minutes. Not many teams can stop Howard, and the Wizards are especially bad at doing so.

But it boils down to the fact that this Washington team is still not very good, just as indicated by their game performances all season. They’ve fallen short of pretty much everyone’s expectations, even those knowing that Gilbert Arenas would be absent. I would be more disappointed at failing to meet expectations if the team were not trying hard, if they weren’t displaying the want to win. For the most part, the Wizards are making an effort, but for some reason, things just aren’t clicking.

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By now, you’ve heard about the bloody eye Caron Butler received in Orlando on Saturday night. They even made a movie about it on Bullets Forever. So why bring it up again? Well, to point out that’s not just any old juice leaking out of Caron Butler’s eye….that’s Tuff Juice. If you head-butt Caron, does he not bleed? Of course he does….but that doesn’t mean the ref will blow the whistle. With Caron Butler, ‘no blood, no foul’ need not apply.

Orlando Pulse, blurred vision for the Washington Wizards
[flickr/Kyle May]

Had on the Washington Wizards-Orlando Magic game as I was getting ready to go out on Saturday night. Thanks to my laggard adoption of DVR technology, I figured I could just watch it again later and hack out a game blog.

But as the walloping swelled, it became more and more evident that I’d never be watching the game again. And a game blog? You’ve got to be kidding, right?

I’m certainly distraught about the beginnings of this 09-09 season, but surprisingly, any anger I should have is subdued as if my drinks were being drugged.

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Ben Q. Rock covers the Orlando Magic at his blog, Third Quarter Collapse. One thing I know about Ben is that he is all over the place, all of the time. Thankfully, Ben had a couple minutes to answer some questions about the Magic in anticipation of tonight’s matchup for the Wizards in Orlando. Enjoy.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the offseason moves. To recap: the Magic drafted shooting guard Courtney Lee, signed free-agent shooting guard Mickael Pietrus, and signed free-agent point guard Anthony Johnson. Pietrus is obviously the highest-profile addition, as he instantly won the starting job vacated by Maurice Evans. Pietrus brings three-point shooting and defense, as Evans did, with the added bonuses of being taller, younger, and more athletic. Right now, he’s not rebounding as well as he should, and his tendency to foul makes his defense problematic, but he’s been a real boon to the offense. I really like the signing so far.

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