Posts for category ‘nba’

photo from nba.com/wizards

Silly, zany, wacky…..all terms used to describe Washington Wizards media day. Laptops are even blowing up because of it.

>> DeShawn Stevenson is swagger jacking Lil’ Wayne and claiming originality…..Lemme guess, Stevenson’s next wrist band will say, “Misunderstood ain’t gotta be explained,” or perhaps “Bling, Bling.” (Just go listen to ‘DontGetIt’ (some call it ‘Misunderstood’) on Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter III – or just check the lyrics here.)

>> The key part of the body is the wrist:

• DeShawn Stevenson is debuting his ‘Wristbands That Don’t Make Sense’ line (above link from the DC Sports Bog).
• Dee Brown has a superman wristband.
• Antonio Daniels did not have surgery on his troubled wrist, but it’s feeling okay….even though he will wear a light brace.

Read more »

The main stream headlines read, Beasley fined $50,000 for involvement in Rookie Transition Program incident [ESPN.com], saying that NBA Rookie, Michael Beasley, “originally failed to cooperate,” but “eventually chose to reveal that he was part of the incident.”

What incident you say? Well, you should know as it’s been covered here: NBA FanHouse (Matt Moore), and here: Hardwood Paroxysm (Ron Mahoney), with photos here: The Big Lead.

Basically, the blogosphere has used the NBA more than doubling the fine of Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur for Beasley to deduce that he was hiding in the closet, most likely kicking it to Method Man and Redman, and acting like a horny teenager….sounds like a fun party, except the wrong place, at wrong time.

Beasley tried to keep his involvement under wraps, but facing David Stern carries more consequence than facing an AAU coach, high school principal, or even parents. The Commish is going to hit that pocket book….or most likely in Beasley’s case, a Sponge Bob wallet attached to his jeans with a chain.

Did Beasley snitch on Arthur and Chalmers? Not really, they already got caught red-handed. Did Beasley snitch on himself? Eventually. And Carmelo Anthony at one point of his life would not have approved, but we all have an ‘eventually.’

Read more »

I’ve been working on a piece about Eddie Jordan and his rotation size, specifically in comparison to the rest of the league and how it may or may not relate to team success in the NBA. The research is taking longer than I thought, so….spawned by a Slam Online blog entry today, I wanted to assess the Wizards role players for the upcoming season first.

In “Know Your Role,” John Krolik highlights five types of role players (plus Robert Horry) that every team wants. How do the Wizards stack up? Well, let’s see.

1. The Mistake-Free Backup Point
This one is easy….Antonio Daniels is even cited as an ideal example. AD is a leader who is willing to put his body on the line and the team first. In my player evaluation of Daniels, I cited negatives such as inability to shoot and defend. However, with Arenas back and Antonio going back to the bench, those inefficiencies will be somewhat masked in the bigger picture. The key theme is the steadying veteran presence Antonio provides as the point guard leader of a young second unit.

2. The Bona Fide Sniper
This is an big area of concern for me. Gilbert Arenas is the team sniper, but he’s no role player. Gone is last year’s sniper in Roger Mason, who will fill the role for the San Antonio Spurs. Sure, Nick Young will be expected to provide an offensive spark off the bench, but I’ve never been confident in his ability as a long distance threat. Are you telling me that the Wizards will look to Oleksiy Pecherov to be the unconscious jacker from deep? I sure hope not, and that’s assuming he’s not reporting for D-League duty during the upcoming season.

3. A “Three-and-D” Shooting Guard
Krolik cites DeShawn Stevenson as fitting this bill and I couldn’t agree more. This is where I really respect Stevenson for his personal player development in adding the three-point shot to his repetoire. It’s funny that at times, DeShawn seems to have a penchant to taking ill-advised shots (and perhaps this was accentuated last year with Gilbert’s offense absent), but at the same time, most of my observations tell me that DeShawn is a relatively selfless player on the offensive end and is well aware of his role on the team. Dominic McGuire, altough more of a SF and lacking trey-ball range, strikes me as a role-player-in-training in this area. Off the bench, I think McGuire will be able to defend multiple positions, and judging from his summer league progression, could bring a threatening mid-range offensive game.

Read more »

Yesterday, Matt, the Hardwood Paroxysmist, along with Trey, the Blow Torchist, released their highly anticipated NBA blogosphere periodic table.

Washington Wizards blogs are well represented among the 110 NBA blog elements:

• WizzNuttz – Symbol: Wz, NBAtomic number: 17, Category: Absurdities
• Gilbert Arenas’ NBA.com Blog – Symbol: Ga, NBAtomic number: 58, Category: Rare Player Blogs
• Bullets Forever – Symbol: Bf, NBAtomic number: 72, Category: Naismithian Eastern Metals
• Gilbertology – Symbol: G, NBAtomic number: 82, Category: Other Generalists
• Truth About It – Symbol: Tr, NBAtomic number: 109, Category: Naismithian Eastern Metals

[enlarged image]

Stealing a cue from Gilbertology, where Jake has discovered that the ‘G’ sister element in the real world is lead, the sister element for Truth About It is meitnerium. How exciting! Meinerium is a synthetic metal, has only been made a couple times, is highly radioactive, has an unknown color (although it’s probably metallic green, silver, white, or gray), and has a half-life between 2 and 20 milliseconds. Basically, not much is known about meitnerium so nobody uses the stuff……but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to create a new superhero or combat aliens one day.

Read more »

flickr/kk+

Now that the greatest Olympics of my lifetime (of 28 years) has concluded, it’s time for me to wonder, why do team sports get slighted in terms of medal events?

The dedication it takes for one to succeed at an individual event is truly amazing. All of the worldwide buzz and attention shed upon Michael Phelps and his accomplishment of eight gold medals is more than justified. At no point have I felt over-saturated with the media coverage surrounding Phelps.

However, something must be said about the unity and cohesion it takes to succeed as a team. It’s a display of the true human spirit of being able to work together to accomplish one goal. In my opinion, this is more difficult to achieve than striving for Olympic success alone….if only slightly, because my intent is not to subtract from individual competition.

Focusing on swimming, there are 14 individual medal events and three “team” relay events for both men and women. In comparison, basketball and other team sports have only one shot, each for men and women, in a tournament style medal chase. I’m concentrating on basketball because it is my favorite sport (and this is a Washington Wizards based blog), but basketball is also unique compared to other team sports in that you can practice many skills of the game by yourself. Granted, 12 total gold medals are doled out to each individual member of the winning basketball team.

Read more »

Over on Bullets Forever, the summer project is to recount past franchise curiosities. Robert Pack, Jim McIlvaine, LeDell Eackles, Tim Legler, and Haywoode Workman have been covered to date. There are many good players still left to remember, but there’s one particularly interesting character who we all forgot……

Going through the Bullets cards I collected as a 90s youngin’, I came across the gem(s) below. Larry Stewart, was he really a rookie sensation? Stewart wasn’t known to possess a lot of skill, rather he was a hustling, hard-working, versatile 6’8″ big man who made the most of his ability. Making it to the NBA when no one thought he would was, in fact, sensational…….but what’s happened to Larry Stewart since?

33>32

High School in Philly
Hailing from Philadelphia, Stewart starred at the famed Dobbins Technical High School. In 1985, the duo of Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble led Dobbins Tech to the Philadelphia City Title before heading to USC together in the fall of that year (and later, Loyola Marymount in late ’86). Dobbins has also produced Doug Overton, Dawn Staley (USA Today’s female high school player of the year in 1989), Linda Page (who scored 100 points in a game in 1981), and Horace “Pappy” Owens (’79 McDonald’s All-American and current assistant at LaSalle).

Overton and Stewart were teammates at Dobbins, taking over after the Hank and Bo Show ended. They lost in the runner-up game of the ’87 Philly City Championship their senior year. In 2004, Ted Silary of the Philadelphia Daily News named his 30-Year Philly All-Star Basketball Teams; Overton made 3rd team all-public and Stewart made honorable mention all-public.

Read more »

Back in the saddle with only a couple ’07-08 Washington Wizards evaluations to go (Caron Butler and Eddie Jordan). My take on Antawn Jamison’s season is below, head over to Bullets Forever to see what the Pradamaster and JakeTheSnake have to say.

Previous Entries:
Etan Thomas | Oleksiy Pecherov | Dominic McGuire | Nick Young | Andray Blatche | Roger Mason |
Darius Songaila | Antonio Daniels | DeShawn Stevenson | Brendan Haywood | Gilbert Arenas

The 2007-08 season was unquestionably Antawn Jamison’s best as a Wizard. He stayed healthy when others could not, appearing and starting in 79 games while playing more minutes (3,060) than anyone on the team, almost 500 more minutes than runner-up DeShawn Stevenson. All this burn for the second oldest Washington Wizard, who would’ve thunk?

At times, I’ve tried to refer to Jamison as “The Gentlemen,” but for the Wiz, he’s “Mr. Everything.” AJ led the team in points scored and points per game (21.4), was second in steals (106), first in total rebounds and per game (10.2, also good for 10th in the NBA), and third in three-pointers made (120).

In fact, I’ll go ahead and say that 07-08 was the best of Jamison’s career. Sure he averaged more points per game twice when he was with Golden State, but he’s never averaged a double-double before. And the only year in which his PER (20.3) was higher was when he was 6th Man of the Year with Dallas in 03-04 (21.2), and in that year, he averaged 9.7 less minutes per game.

Read more »

When Gilbert Arenas’ blog dropped the last week, I was all set to write a post on the past tumultuous relationship between him and Kwame Brown. However, I became distracted by Gilbert’s absurd lack of social responsibility. [Side Bar: I do realize that Gilbert's blog (or at least the one that some dude transcribes for him) spawning other bloggers to write blog posts (in some cases multiple) about his blog post could be considered absurd as well....and I'm comfortable with that possibility.]

What Arenas said about Brown and his migration to Motown seemed to be words of encouragement for the 26-year old, seven-year NBA vet.

I like that deal for Detroit and for Kwame. He’s in a quieter city now, he’s 26-years old, he’s on a veteran team, he’s growing up. In the past in D.C. and L.A. it was a case of him being a big kid in a big city, now he can settle his career down. You know that Sheed and McDyess and those other bigs will help him develop and this should be the best time of his career because in Detroit, the bigs get touches in the offense.

Don’t think that the Kwame Brown that was in Memphis is the real Kwame Brown. When you get traded, so much emotion goes into it and leaving a No. 1 team to come into a team with a bad record halfway through the season is a tough adjustment.

In the past he had the spot light on him because he was a No. 1 pick and he was in these big markets, but now he can just go out and play hard and blend in. This is going to be his year.

Read more »

Perhaps Josh Howard is not being pointed in the right direction, while Dirk Nowitzki
is off to make more videos of him preventing drug use with a magic wink.

I was kinda willing to give Josh Howard a pass for his weed smoking radio proclamation. Sure, for his own sake, he should have kept his mouth shut. And of course, throwing NBA colleagues under the bus was stupid. But at least he told the truth…….or lied less.

Back home in North Carolina and running a basketball camp, one would hope that Josh Howard avoid being the anti-role model for the kids. Nope, he decided to street race his black Lexus against a silver Volkswagen, and get caught by the police. ESPN is reporting that Howard was going 94 in a 55. Speeding and reckless driving was the case that they gave him.

The first thing that came to mind was the eight counts of vehicular manslaughter recently charged to two Maryland men. Back in February, eight bystanders were killed as a result of an illegal street race on Indian Head Highway just outside of Washington, DC.

Then, there’s the Bobby Phills incident. Which make me wonder, would Brad Miller do something like this? I don’t know, but something tells me that Josh Howard should be added to this list from Pyle of List. Read more »

Wow, Joe Dumars is a desperado……can the signing of Kwame Brown be seen as anything other than an act of desperation?

cake via flickr/panduh, mugshot via wizznutzz, although this pic found by Jake on BF is much better

The Pistons have been tied to several potential blockbuster moves this summer, whether it be for Carmelo Anthony, Josh Smith, Tracy McGrady or Ron Artest. [side note: The 17th pick of the '04 NBA draft which was shipped from Detroit, via Milwaukee and Denver, to Atlanta in the Rasheed Wallace trade was used by the Hawks to select Josh Smith.] But nothing has come to fruition since Joe Dumars built “big splash” expectations by deeming everyone available (with perhaps Jason Maxiell and Rodney Stuckey as the lone exceptions).

So now, after being on the latter end of “win or go home” in the Eastern Conference Finals for the past three years, this is Joe D’s answer. A guy in Kwame Brown who once, at the age of 24, destroyed a stranger’s cake, getting it all over the man, before ducking into a limo like a hoe, has been anointed to push the Detroit Pistons over the top.

Good luck with that one Motor City. Will Kwame finally find his way under consummate vet, Antonio McDyess? Or will his attitude travel the path of Rasheed Wallace? How will any of these guys affect Walter Sharpe? In any case, $8 million over two-years is not exactly a low-risk move.

One might say that only time will tell. One could also wonder what the Pistons could have done with $4 million per instead. Furthermore, one can vote on if they think Kwame will be a success in Detroit (like other former Wizards) or not.

Read more »

Gilbert Arenas is the Brett Favre of blogging. He claims he’s going to take a hiatus, then gets sentimental and jumps right back in the game. In his latest entry, Agent Zero drops no love in the heart of Brew Hoop city.

Richard Jefferson going to Milwaukee …. HAHAHA! Oh man, now that is funny. When I heard that, I started laughing. Oh man, did I start laughing. You know why? Because every player hates Milwaukee. Nobody wants to live in Milwaukee. I’m sorry, Milwaukee, to come down hard on you, but no one in the NBA wants to play in Milwaukee.

The verbiage no doubt has the ears of Milwaukee (more on that later)…..and Gilbert will no doubt get booed the next time he ventures into Cream City……a budding rivalry between two NBA teams? (also considering of this or this and this) Some will claim that a rivalry is not a rivalry when the results are lopsided (such as this recent thing between the Cavaliers and the Wizards, you may have heard about it). They are wrong.

Rivalries exist on different levels: territorial (Duke-UNC), classical (Lakers-Celtics), instinctual mascot hatred (Redskins-Cowboys), league divisional (Cubs-Cardinals), etc…..there are a variety of rivalries for a diverse set of circumstances. Not all need to be predicated on wins and losses, although glory and defeat are a main factor. Rivalries exist for numerous on and off court reasons and can be temporary or stand the test of time.

Rivalries can form when one set of fans has a reason to dislike another team or player. Fans in Portland and Phoenix weren’t exactly endearing towards Arenas when he targeted them for scoring milestones. And there can’t be love for Gil from the Durham end of Tobacco Road. Boston Celtics fans? Furgetaboutit.

Read more »

The Washington Wizards came up short in summer league game number two, just as they did in game one. This time, the youngsters of the Philadelphia 76ers prevailed. You can find the blog for game one against Portland on Bullets Forever….along with an in-depth analysis of JaVale McGee’s defense from that game. As for game two, the show is below.

Quarter One

Andray Blatche isn’t ready for the tip to start. Great.

First curiosity….JaVale McGee isn’t starting, but I don’t think it means much…. Eddie Jordan simply wants to see Andray Blatche at the center. Dominic McGuire is at the 4 spot, and Gary Forbes steps in at the 3. Dee Brown and Nick Young are the guards.

Read more »

Getting hyped over a Washington Wizards NBA Summer League game? You betcha…..and why not?

Sure you can go check out the Game Blog on Bullets Forever, as well as the box score….but below, you will find some select comments from the World Wide Web.

Game 2 against the Philadelphia 76ers will be shown on Comcast on Wednesday at 8 pm DC time….and on NBA.com as well (30 minute delay I believe).

“I want to be a better defender. That and learn the plays better.”
- Nick Young [Lang Whitaker's favorite summer league quote so far]

—————

“He [Andray Blatche] lost concentration a lot on the glass and allowed his man lots of offensive rebounds. Then, there’s the last possession, where he had the ball knocked out of his hands, allowing the Blazers to rebound Bayless’ missed free throw. It encapsulated everything maddening about Blatche. He can look so physically imposing and yet be so mentally weak.”
- Pradamaster, Bullets Forever

—————

Read more »

Normally, Gilbert Arenas might be the last, but not the least, Washington Wizard to be evaluated. But that’s not the case this year…..Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison formed an alpha dog duo this past season. My thoughts on Agent Zero are below, head over to Bullets Forever (coming soon) to check out what the Pradamaster and Jake The Snake have to say.

Previous Entries:
Etan Thomas | Oleksiy Pecherov | Dominic McGuire | Nick Young | Andray Blatche | Roger Mason |
Darius Songaila | Antonio Daniels | DeShawn Stevenson | Brendan Haywood

This past season provided me, along with others, a lion’s share of negative thoughts about Gilbert Arenas. Unfortunately, many of those others allowed such ideas to consume the previous good will built by Agent Zero to the point where they no longer wanted Gilbert on their team. I will not allow myself to forget what I’ve learned from the past.

For one, I’m a believer in Gilbert Arenas. He came from humble beginnings and has successfully overcome every real and perceived slight handed down upon him. I remember seeing Gilbert Arenas play live in college from the opponent’s end of the court way back in December of 2000. That day, Mississippi State defeated 10th-ranked Arizona, in Tuscon, in ‘Zona’s own Fiesta Bowl Basketball Classic tournament, for the first time in its 16 year history. That Wildcat team featured the likes of Arenas, Richard Jefferson, Jason Gardner, Loren Woods, Luke Walton, Eugene “High Socks & ‘Fro” Edgerson, and team leading scorer, Michael Wright. Gilbert dropped 14 points, but I barely remember him being on the court……he surely didn’t live up to scouting report expectations. Gilbert Arenas? Who’s that dude? Lo and behold…..almost seven years later…….I’m writing blog letters to the guy.

Even back in December of ’07, when the Wizards were 8-5 and I was imploring for Gilbert to learn from his striving teammates, negativity filled the air, especially on the Washington Post’s Wizards Insider. The Wizards are no doubt better without Gilbert Arenas and Ernie Grunfeld should immediately get rid of the bum for a bag of nickels and a pouch of Big League Chew……I’m paraphrasing what “they” were saying. The argument continued until the end of the 07-08 season and beyond. Should I get into it now? Nope, not gonna do it.

Read more »

Gentleman Jamison securing his Wizards legacy?

Isn’t the information age amazing? Faster…..less clicks…..aggregators…..email updates…..knowledge is flying in front of our eyes like the bugs surrounding stadium lights. One way or another, we are all receptors of the information dissemination. But where does the information come from, and how does it vary so much?

EuroBasket may or may have not given us the impression that Spiros Vondas and the Greeks were after Antawn Jamison. Then, around 85% of Wizards fans on Bullets Forever believed that there was a 70% or greater chance that Jamison would be back with the Wiz. Seemed like the sensible move…..some even have said yes to Jamison and no to Arenas. AJ is that important.

Then came the eve of NBA free agency. Mike Jones of the Washington Times started at 1:55 pm reporting that Jamison would get a 4-year deal averaging $11 million per season ($44 total). The Washington Post’s Ivan Carter got in on the action around 4:42 pm; his sources said Jamison was close to reaching a 4-year, $48 million deal. ESPN’s Mark Stein was in on the game too, outlining plans for a 4-year, $50 million contract. The Times and the Post quickly followed suit with $50 million updates.

However, Ivan Carter’s update on Wizards Insider said:

Jamison said the negotiations went smoothly for the most part and while he wasn’t too detailed about the specifics of the deal, my sources tell me that it is structured so that his first year cap number is less than $10 million.

Read more »