Limbs get tangled all the time in the NBA. But for some reason, when it involves tangled arms, you can depend on a two things: arms from two opposing players will become inexplicably intertwined so fast that you’d think elastic were involved, and the result is going to be tension filled until there is separation.

Sometimes the tangles and locks are unintentional. Sometimes the maneuver is enacted by a foe with the simple intent of getting under someone’s skin by quite literally, getting under their skin … knowing that referees are more likely to see and respond to retaliation rather than the instigator’s act. And the instigator can be an offensive or defensive player.

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{Wall vs. Paul - photo: K. Weidie}

I’ve been a Philadelphia Eagles for over 25 years. I’ve endured ups, downs, mediocrity and everything else associated with loving a team too much. But because I’ve lived in Washington for most of those years, and NFL League Pass is still a relatively new invention, I’ve seen more way more Redskins games than I have Eagles games — which means I saw plenty of Joe Gibbs in his heyday.

One of the staples of the Gibbs era was his ability to make halftime adjustments based on what the other team was or was not doing. Part of this ability was based on his stellar assistant coaching staff, and part of it was that Gibbs often paid attention to even the smallest of details.

New Orleans Hornets coach Monty Williams is from the Washington D.C. area (Oxon Hill, Maryland to be exact), so maybe he was somehow inspired by Gibbs last night, because his team’s second half play was key to the Hornets’ 92-81 victory.

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Andray Blatche’s play is becoming a thorn in the Wizards’ side. Sure, he puts up numbers here and there. Sure, he’s only whatever young age people keep citing as an excuse. He’s also induced boos from the home crowd on more than one occasion … and for good reason.

I’ve seen grown men, eyes reduced to glowing red from rubbing in despair at his ineptitude on defense (and I wasn’t looking in the mirror). It’s an abomination to the game of basketball, I say. And that’s why I’m here, simply as a concerned person for the game. There will be more to dissect and observe about 7-Day Dray’s defense, but let’s take a look at the equivalent of 4,000 words about his bad help defense on a particular hand-off in Saturday night’s 92-81 Wizards loss to the New Orleans Hornets.

Blatche’s man, David West, is in hand-off mode to Rashard Lewis’ man, Trevor Ariza. Lewis is trying to stick his hand in there to keep this from happening … and maybe Lewis’ own defense got him a bit behind the 8-ball in this situation, but it looks like Blatche will need to help nonetheless.

Yet, Blatche has yet to move his feet in this next shot.

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A D.C. pic, commentary and links …

[Seeing D.C.'s Chinatown - K. Weidie]

Michael Lee has a good feature piece in the Post about Hilton Armstrong.
[Washington Post]

Armstrong also spoke with us on Saturday about the differences between the offense he participated in with Chris Paul in New Orleans and what’s been developing here with Flip Saunders and John Wall in Washington; and he compared Wall and Chris Paul a bit. Here’s video of that:

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This is Capt. Jeff Bower, been with the ‘force for years … too long to count. He was a Lieutenant forever, but then finally said, “I’m getting too old for this sh*t,” the prerequisite about of times and Bam! … he was promoted to Captain. You’ll never find him without a wad of chaw tucked in his cheek … Chattanooga Chew is the preferred brand, but he’ll settle for Brown’s Mule should the situation become dire. Cap’n Bower has often impressed with his ability to drink coffee and eat donuts while he’s working on a fat tobacci wad. Otherwise, he holds the distinction of being from Pennsylvania while also looking like he’s from Pennsylvania.

In another life, Bower is the current head coach/GM of the New Orleans Hornets and coached Rik Smits at Marist.

This is Rufus McKenzie. Rufus has looked the same exact way since the sixth grade — haircut, body-type and all — except that he’s now bigger, much bigger. Rufus was “discovered” outside of a Louisiana Wal-Mart where he was accepting a challenge to see how many shopping carts he could pick up at once. He could tell ya how many he lifted, but then he’d have to kill ya. Ever since, Rufus has been a bodyguard/roadie on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. He’s also holds the Arkansas state record for amount of Lil’ Smokies consumed in one settin’ (that’s “sitting” for you city-folk). Again, he could tell ya how much he ate, but he’d have to kill ya. Read more »

Well, the Wizards lost again on Sunday, nothing new. Thing is, they actually looked decent, as they did on Friday, but shot themselves in the foot, if you will, with 19 turnovers. By the way, go read this interesting piece on True Hoop regarding the NBA and gun-play analogies.

Stepping back, it’s still hard to fathom how surreal the deplorable state of the franchise is. Whether it’s Gun-Gate related or not, every day more of the shit show emerges from the sewers, literally. Tales of Gilbert Arenas taking a dump in the shoe of Andray Blatche … I mean Christ, how immature can you get?

Let’s see, what else? Caron Butler, while off games are okay, is still a quandary — hey, Caron wanted to be “the man” and then got all sad with his second fiddle when Arenas returned, but now that Arenas is gone again …

Of course, unfortunately it seems that Caron’s definition of being “the man” involves taking bad shots and halting ball movement. I don’t mean to unfairly pick on Butler, but again, for someone who all but rested his laurels on defensive improvement before the season, it was interesting, as pointed out to me by Mike Prada of Bullets Forever, that on Friday against the Magic, Butler was matched up against Matt Barnes while the just returning Mike Miller had to take on Orlando’s big gun, Vince Carter.

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Well, I’m not doing a game blog for the Wizards-Hornets match-up……which was soooo last year……because I actually attended the game. I’m down South visiting family for the new year, and my pops lives a couple hours from New Orleans (he’s a Hornets fan), so it was natural that we attended the game.

So in place of a game blog, me and my amateur photography skills present a photographic slide show of what I saw:

Game Observations:

• Gilbert Arenas was on the bench during the first half……I can’t remember if he was there for the 3rd quarter or not, but he was definitely absent for most of the 4th and down the stretch.

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Jeff from CelticsBlog.com is doing the grunt work to put together a comprehensive NBA preview from bloggers ’round the ‘sphere. The Atlantic Division Preview was first, and now the Southwest Division is out. Here are the highlights from the participating bloggers for each team:

Dallas Mavericks

[Mavs Moneyball]
The single biggest move made in the offseason was the dismissal of head coach Avery Johnson and the hiring of Rick Carlisle. The Mavs have the luxury (or curse) of having their core team signed for some time. This continuity will certainly help the team transition under a new coach, as they only need to adapt to him rather than a bunch of new faces.
Prediction: 55-27

Houston Rockets

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Before last night….I was all about Chris Paul for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award. And if I had to vote right here, right now, it would still be CP3. (by the way, I wrote this on November 13th 2007).

But the match-up between Kobe Bryant’s Lakers and Chris Paul’s Hornets was dubbed the game that decides the MVP race (sorry Bron Bron, you lost to the Bulls….no dice), much less an important game for Western Conference seeding. The Lakers won…..so yea, I’ll follow the crowd.

Actually, I’d rather not…..what I’d rather do is stop hearing all the bitching and moaning from those in the ‘Kobe for MVP’ court.

SIDE BAR: Advisors/Handlers/Latin Mami Wife of the Kobster:

Kob, to get back on track….you need to get the public loving you again, you gotta get gangsta with it (excuse me, I mean ‘wit’ it).

Yea papi…….you gotta get on the net and blog it out…..get ‘viral’ with it…..make a video of you jumping over a car-ra. (I don’t know Kobe’s wife, but imagine Rosie Perez’s accent in White Men Can’t Jump.)

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Back in the country, but taking more flights to more places, I was unable to catch the Wizards-Hornets rematch live or on TV. Thankfully, my friend Chris the Hockey Fan picked up the coverage again:
—–

They stopped the bleeding a little bit on Friday but this team is still free falling and needs to get some wins in a hurry if they are going to keep their sixth spot in the playoffs.

Missed the first half due to an early start and the fact that the game is on Comcast plus. I did catch the end of the first half in which the Wizards stretched their lead to thirteen with some great shooting that included back to back 3’s by Pecherov.

Jamison is leading the Wizards in scoring with 13 but watching DeShawn Stevenson to see if his big night on Friday is the sign of things to come down the stretch.

3^rd Quarter

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