Two initial thoughts upon hearing “strong” Gilbert Arenas trade rumors (via: Yahoo!, Orlando Pinstriped Post, Washington Post):

1) So what? If he’s traded, he’s traded. If he’s not, he’s not. Arenas has had a colorful past in D.C. that will always be remembered, mostly good … but it wouldn’t be colorful unless there’s some bad, and that will be remembered too.

Gilbert has come back relatively quietly this season (aside from emo acts, the fake knee injury, or shoe poop stories). Whether truly humbled, who knows, but he’s at least playing the part. The struggle with whether he should stay or go should now be released, regardless of if the rumors become true or not. People will surely struggle with how to remember him, many will dramatically paint broad pictures with broad brushes … just remember him.

It reminds me of a fight I once had with my girlfriend. It got pretty heated, and in a dead serious moment she looked up at me and said, “I hate to get all Mike Miller on you, but it is what it is.” And then the fight was pretty much over. I cracked up because she had the perfect way to break the tension, and get my attention, rending the conflict silly in the big picture. Then we moved on.

Otherwise, I know everyone would’ve liked to have that 2009 fifth overall pick and Ricky Rubio or Stephen Curry, but without Mike Miller, we wouldn’t have been able to add the absurdity of a repeated sports cliche as a way of moving on into the lexicon of this basketball franchise’s history and beyond. Thanks Mike Miller, thanks a lot.

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The Wizards take on the Raptors in Toronto tonight, still aiming to win their first road game of the year … and they’ll be doing it without Hilton Armstrong.

In a November 24 poll, when the Wizards were 0-6 on the road instead of the current 0-8, 33-percent of voters said the Wizards would notch their first road win tonight against the Raps. My dad recently told me that he thought the Wiz would get their first roadie in Sacramento — in that case, you’ll have to wait until December 8, when the Wizards would face the Kings with an 0-11 record on the road. The NBA: Where Amazing Happens.

Anyway…

Let’s look back and break down the play of the night from Monday’s game versus the Miami Heat. This one involves none other than Gilbert Arenas and Andray Blatche running a pick-and-roll, one where Blatche actually rolls to the basket. Imagine that.

Also imagine something else for a second … the Orlando Magic discussing a Vince Carter for Arenas swap with the Wizards, at least this is what’s being reported by the Orlando Pinstripped Post (h/t: Bullets Forever), also indicating that the trade could involve Blatche, Rashard Lewis and Daniel Orton as well. Read more »

Poor Vince Carter. Above, he can be seen shooting a basketball before a recent meeting between his team and the Washington Wizards in the District of Columbia. He didn’t play in said game against the Wizards, as Carter is wont to do — not play in games due to injury, that is.

Poor Vince Carter. He’s getting paid $17 million this year. He’s previously quit on a team from Canada according to some (Like A Bosh), he could keep his current team, the Orlando Magic, from winning a championship, and he seemed to be ever so slightly perturbed that the photographer taking these pictures, aka me, was taking these pictures.

“They’re supposed to be out here already?,” blabbered Carter to an assistant coach. I appeased the man by walking away upon detection of his annoyance at such a disturbance. Sorry Vince.

I guess it was just too much for Carter to stomach, as he is currently not exposed to opposing crowds aiming to thwart his jump shot attempts with noise. The soft clicking of photos being taken. From a distance. For a couple minutes. What a distraction. Poor Vince Carter. Read more »

No one likes moral victories. They aren’t supposed to happen in professional sports, at least not acknowledged. Moral victories? Those are for the college underdogs, the 15 or 16-seeds in the Big Dance.

But if you’re the Washington Wizards, fighting hard against the Orlando Magic to the point where the game was decided by a Gilbert Arenas missed runner in the paint (after being stuffed like turkeys on Thanksgiving night in Atlanta), you’ll take it as one to grow on.

“Well, we competed,” Flip Saunders said, almost reluctantly, after his team fell 100-99 in the waning seconds. “Had opportunities, I thought we could have very easily hung our heads when we got in the situation and got down 12, but fought back, had some great individual play.” The coach relented his answer before even being asked a question at his post-game press conference.

Wizards fans can only hope the players see the type of effort displayed against Orlando as more positive bricks in their project of rebuilding. Saunders had an excellent game plan and his players worked hard to implement it. But the little things made the difference on Saturday night, according to the Wizards’ coach.

“It’s just the little things,” Saunders noted. “We wanted to wrap [Dwight] Howard up, not let him get layups. We gave him too many layups.”

“I mean, he is a beast,” the coach later continued about the gargantuan Orlando center. “You know, you gotta grab him with both arms and try to hang on and hope that they call a foul and you don’t get hurt.”

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[Daniel Orton receives coaching instruction on his shot from Magic assistant Brendan Malone.]

Friday night after the Orlando Magic defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers, 111-100, Coach Stan Van Gundy was very upset about the brand of defense his team had played. The Magic led by as much as 18 points in the third quarter, but they allowed that lead to whittle away to eight points, and they never truly put the Cavs away despite the victory.   Here’s what Van Gundy had to say after that game:

“I saw very few good things defensively. We were terrible. Another 47-percent game. It’s the same old thing. With us right now, when the scoring is easy, we won’t guard, and that’s why we can’t put games away. We play one end of the floor at a time. So, we’re going to be in these challenges all the time.”

Last night against the Wizards, the Magic found themselves in a similar situation.  They jumped out to yet another big lead of 14 points, but in third quarter the Wizards shot 53-percent, and they even took the lead from the Magic.  If it weren’t for a big Dwight Howard putback toward the end, and a last second missed shot by Gilbert Arenas, the Magic could have easily lost the game.

Still, Van Gundy’s post-game comments (comments the media waited outside the locker room for over 30 minutes to hear I might add) were a lot more positive than they had been the previous night: Read more »

This is a Washington Wizards blog, and even though we have a segment entitled, “From The Other Side”, where we grab comments and interviews from the opposing locker room, we still try to make sure most of our content is Wizards-related.

However, there are instances when I get an audio or video clip that is too good to pass up regardless of whether it has anything to do with the Wizards or not.  Tonight happens to be one of those instances.

Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy have been engaged in a war of words during this Thanksgiving week. First, Jackson hinted that if that Miami Heat continued to struggle a “Van Gundy situation” could emerge and current coach Erik Spoelstra could be fired.  Van Gundy shot right back by saying Jackson was “inappropriate and ignorant” about what really happened in Miami.

After a morning shootaround in Utah yesterday, Jackson offered up a bit of an apology:

“It was an off-handed remark about if things continue to go poorly for Miami, what might happen.  But, obviously Stan felt that he had to say something. Unfortunately he got defensive about it. I didn’t mean to do that. I should apologize because I do know about his situation.  Stan was going home to be with his family and that was his reason for leaving. I have no idea about the rest of it; why he came back out after retiring and being with his family. But, that’s his decision and fine.”

Prior to tonight’s Wizards/Magic game, Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel and David Aldridge of NBA TV asked Coach Van Gundy to respond to Phil Jackson’s words:

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No John Wall, no Vince Carter as the Wizards put their 5-2 record at home to the test against the best team they’ve seen yet in the friendly confines of the Verizon Center. But without those two, there are still plenty of story lines for the holiday hangover matchup on NBA TV — JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche vs. Dwight Howard, Gilbert Arenas versus Jameer Nelson, Kirk Hinrich versus the sure-to-get-booed J.J. Redick (or Arenas and Hinrich guarding the other way around), and the opening night blowout in Orlando hanging over Washington’s head. Question is, will this game be any good? Exactly.

Let’s go to the pre-game video where Flip Saunders and Andray Blatche discuss:

• Flip talks about his team in general, playing against good opponents home and away.
• Blatche talks about what the team is focused on with the opening night loss in Orlando and the Thanksgiving night loss in Atlanta in mind, and how this Wizards team approaches Dwight Howard’s effect on defense.
• Flip talks about the progression of Nick Young and his role coming off the bench (note: the newly acquired Alonzo Gee will be starting at the three spot with Wall out due to a bruised left knee — he joins Gilbert Arenas, Kirk Hinrich, Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee in the starting lineup).

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The Wizards are what we thought they were. They also showed a side that we didn’t imagine them to be. Or perhaps naively didn’t consider.

The goal over the summer was to get bigger, tougher … in comes Kevin Seraphin and Trevor Booker via the draft. Unfortunately, the rest of the front-line is much too frail. Of course, that was magnified by the juggernaut Magic, but frail in every sense nonetheless.

And it was evident that the team was short of shooters coming into the season, again, magnified without Gilbert Arenas for the opener. The following charts express long distance experience coming into 2010-11:

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My DVR knew what was happening. At some point very late in the game, it decided to stop recording the Wizards-Magic in favor of a show it’s programmed to record, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In the process, the game as captured up to that point got lost in the DVR stratosphere, putting a halt to my ability to go back and further analyze the game visually.

Probably for the best though, re-watching the low-lights of a 112-83 blowout loss isn’t exactly the most productive thing in the world. In most senses, it’s a game that Flip Saunders and his team (and Wizards fans) should just forget and move on (but not without an intense film session, one would hope — after all, Washington has to face Orlando three more times this season).

But in other senses, there were some very concerning displays last night. The season’s debut of several players who have been with the team the longest represented nothing more than the status quo, which either means little progress was made by them over the summer to more closely connect to the game cerebrally, or that they just have a low capability/potential to do so in the first place. Observations on those players and their situations will surely come (and you can read some thoughts from Rashad already).

No, this post is dedicated to the only player who really played worth a damn Thursday night. When your average Joe looks at the box score, he might assume that Cartier Martin got all of his points in garbage time. No sir. One only needs to look at a huge block Martin had against Dwight Howard to know that’s not true:

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As a Washington Wizards blogger, I really never thought I’d write this, but for some perspective on the Wizards loss to the Magic tonight, fans should look no further than LeBron James and the Miami Heat.

Despite all the promising offseason moves the Miami Heat made, there was a lack of chemistry on display in their opener against the Celtics. Wade, Bosh and LeBron were battling unfamiliarity, Mike Miller was injured, there were jitters,  and they were facing a  Celtics team whose core had been together for three years.  The Heat looked out of sync much of the night, and although they were in great position to win the game towards the end, they fell just short of victory.

That night, everyone picked the Heat apart, and discussed why they couldn’t win it all and why they would not dominate as so many of those same writers and bloggers had picked them to do before the season. Then the very next night, the Heat rolled to victory over a Sixers team who presented much more favorable match-ups, and the opening night loss to the Celtics was temporarily forgotten.

So let’s bring this around to the Washington Wizards.

As Kyle pointed out earlier in the week, the Orlando Magic present matchup nightmares for this Wizards squad.  McGee is not strong enough to guard Dwight Howard, Blatche isn’t quick enough to guard Rashard Lewis, no one on the Wizards roster can guard a motivated Vince Carter, and Jameer Nelson is savvy enough to cause problems for rookie John Wall.  When you throw in the fact that Gilbert Arenas was unavailable due to injury, this match up had all the ingredients of a blowout..and it didn’t disappoint.

The Wizards shot and defended horribly, they never utilized their strength, which is the running game, and they were blown out of the gym 112-83 by a team that promises to contend for an NBA title.  But it’s just one game.  Saturday night they play an Atlanta Hawks team that isn’t nearly as good, and then on Tuesday night, Arenas will be back (hopefully) and they will play a 76ers team that’s weaker than Atlanta. The bottom line?  There’s no need to panic. Read more »

We’ve seen Shaun Livingston throw down some surprising dunks since he joined the Wizards. I’m not even sure the double-clutch two-hander he threw down against Pau Gasol and the Lakers (posted below) is his best one. No matter how much I now know he is okay, I still cringe every time I see him slip at the end … because of the whole injury thing. I thought Livingston’s dunk against the Jazz was better (also below).

But did you see that shot Livingston hit over Dwight Howard? To put it simply, it was sweet … some Dwyane Wade/Michael Jordan (but taller and skinnier) type stuff. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to become too familiar with Shaun’s game before his devastating knee injury, but I’m glad I’ve got a chance to see his skills as a Wizard since.

Let’s pause for a second to check out that shot over Dwight Howard: [another angle and more after the jump]

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Quotes, notes, observations and pictures from the Wizards’ 121-94 loss to Orlando.

Seconds away from tip-off, there looked to be a surprisingly crappy crowd in Orlando … oh wait, they’re playing the Wizards on a Wednesday night. Also, Stan Van Gundy got a pre-game ‘t-shirt nap’ in front of reporters.

{1st Quarter}

From the start, Andray Blatche looked lethargic, just jogged to spots on offense and defense. Oh, wait, maybe I should be more optimistic. Okay, we’ll say he was “pacing himself.”

9:50 >> Fabricio Oberto and Dwight Howard get a little testy when jostling for position in transition … Oberto was called for a foul, but you can tell Howard was babyishly making extra curricular contact. Steve Buckhantz pointed out the “testy” nature of Orlando. Fabrico proceeded to bait Howard into an offensive foul on the very next play.

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A couple pre-game photos of the Orlando Magic courtesy of site photographer Adam Douglas.

Cheesin’ … as usual.

The Polish Hammer.

Va Jay Jay.

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I managed to survive the recent heavy snowfall in D.C., and all the cutesy names people were calling it — #SNOMG, Snowpocalypse, etc. — but in the process, somehow found myself taking a little break from writing/blogging. But now I’m back, and hopefully a bit refreshed and motivated to keep on keepin’ on through the rest of this season nightmare.

Apologies if, at times, I tend to get a little negative/overboard on this site, or on Twitter (mostly Twitter) … and no, I’m not writing this as a reaction to JaVale McGee, via Twitter, dubbing myself, Mike Prada of Bullets Forever, and Michael Lee of the Washington Post, “haters” after Friday’s game against the Magic, also suggesting that we should work for TMZ. (JaVale did this after re-Tweeting something that each of us had Tweeted, links below). Actually, I’m not reacting to anything anyone has said to me, just doing a little self-check here.

But back to McGee for second, I really don’t think anyone was “hating” on him, but rather commenting on game observations/understandably reflecting on frustrations. But if the feelings of young JaVale got hurt, then I suppose apologies are in order. I responded to his call-out with a couple Tweets of my own, nothing defensive, but mostly with a some classic music tracks. Others chose to remain silent with, perhaps, the intent of approaching McGee in person. All and all, it’s really a shoulder shrugging, no biggie situation. In other words, I could care less.

But back to my, at brief times, penchant for negativity (again, this is mostly on Twitter). It happens, oh well.  One must find a way to vent about witnessing frustrating, unacceptable effort while not going overboard … in addition to acting as a balance to the always positive light emitted from official team outlets (or the non-bias of main-stream media outlets). That’s what each of those entities are supposed to do, but speaking specifically in terms of the former, there are only so many ways to polish up a pile of crap before giving up because of the stink.

I’ll try to stay medium, but there’s no guaranteeing. Calling things like I see them, that’s why this blog is named Truth About It in the first place.

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[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.

Meanwhile, in the locker room before tip-off, the scene was business as usual. Antawn Jamison was getting himself hype by dancing and signing to his ipod like he usually does. When I asked Mike Miller about his new haircut, DeShawn Stevenson jokingly chimed in, “That’s Mike,” going on about how he’s known Miller since they were teenagers, when Miller had short hair and diamonds in each ear. Stevenson also spoke of a recruiting trip he took to the University of Florida when Miller was there. He said he knew right away he didn’t want to go there because Billy Donovan, whom he described as “strict as a [blank],” made him run suicide drills as a high school senior. One might chuckle, thinking Stevenson could have used some structure in his life back then, but that’s the past and I’m not here to judge … at least this time. Other Wizards were going through their usual routine, getting ready to do their job and play the game they love. The scene was less somber than what I expected, if at all.

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