{flickr/Keith Allison}

I saw it coming. Most probably did. In August, Brendan Haywood understandably and predictably caught some heat when he associated (via his blog and a subsequent radio interview) an irrelevant act by Stephon Marbury with being gay.

And last Friday, he wrote this:

All I’m saying is that Elin better be glad she’s married to Tiger Woods instead of Chris Brown or this whole story could’ve been reported differently!

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The Wizards play the Thunder at 8 pm tonight in Oklahoma City. I’ll be Twittering and perhaps chatting a bit on ESPN’s Daily Dime.

We’ll see if the Wiz have the consistency, energy and focus it takes to win. Word out of Oklahoma is that the Thunder practiced their zone offense at shoot-around today.

Watch out for that Thabo Sefolosha cat. His on-ball defense is something to get excited about … when not playing the Wizards, obviously. It won’t be easy for Mike Miller or Caron Butler, whomever Thabo is guarding. That means … no dribbling around and trying to force things, Caron.

Brendan Haywood will also being going against his old buddy,  Etan ‘The Poet’ Thomas. Wizards Insider has more on the game’s matchup.

Finally, it’s Zero vs. Zero tonight, as my fellow ESPN TrueHoop Network blog, Daily Thunder, points out. Russell Westbrook vs. Gilbert Arenas … hopefully it will be fun to watch (and Gil’s not throwing up stink bombs from deep).

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via Mike James’ Twitter …

But he seems like such a nice guy!…

{via Ned Dishman, WashingtonWizards.com}

Well … the preseason ended on a poor note Friday in Chicago. Meh. At least the Wizards’ preseason mantra of “It’s just the preseason” can no longer be used … cheers all around. Read more »

First action item: ESPN CHAT

I’ll be chatting/answering questions about the Wizards on ESPN.com today along with J.A. Adande.

The session starts at 2 pm EST, you can click here to go to the live chat page.

Second action item: PODCASTING

Mike and Jake of Bullets Forever, along with myself, took part in a Wizards variety show/preview Podcast with Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm … which is part of the ESPN TrueHoop Network and one of the premiere general NBA blogs on the web. It gets slightly choppy a couple times with a delay, and I actually got cut off from the conference call twice … hey, those are the breaks. But the Podcast was a lot of fun to do and may thanks goes to Matt for putting it together.

One thing I’d like to clear up … when I got cut off the second time, after I was dialed back in, Matt made a joke about how he was telling Mike and Jake that they were better bloggers than me. Then you hear a voice say “I don’t agree.” That wasn’t me in some LeBronsian moment of self-touting douche-baggery (as sometimes it was hard to tell who was talking). That was actually, I believe, Mike Prada. And I would, in turn, like to disagree with Mike. He has built an absolutely stellar community of Wizards fans … I mean, Bullets Forever is ‘the’ original Wizards blog. Although on occasion Mike and I don’t see eye-to-eye, I always enjoy his analytical train of thought and reasoning. Mike and the whole crew at BF do absolutely excellent work.

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flickr/Keith Allison

In one clip [Stephon Marbury] cries uncontrollably for 5 straight minutes with no shirt on while his homeboy rubs his shoulders – why, I don’t know?! In another clip, he eats Vaseline, claiming his throat is sore and that this would solve the problem. Not to be outdone, he has another clip where he dances to a song called “Barbie Doll!” That was very disturbing. If I was on his team, there’s no way I’m getting undressed in front of him after watching that…

When Brendan Haywood blogged the above quote a couple weeks ago, it struck me as something that could be interpreted as slightly homophobic. But at the time, no one really caught on.

Since the comment seemed relatively subtle, I withheld from drawing conclusions, wondering if it would eventually garner more attention … likely unwanted attention. Perhaps leading Brendan to conclude, like his teammate Gilbert Arenas, that blogging can be a “double-edged sword.”

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Between hitting up the John Legend concert Friday night, going out for some fresh oysters at Hank’s Oyster Bar on Saturday, followed by a night on the town (really, the oysters at Hank’s, especially the ones from Fanny Bay, BC, Canada, were awesome), and then getting trounced in softball on Sunday afternoon (honestly, I think the final score was 24-2), I didn’t have much time to dedicate to the Wizards this past weekend.

I was able to make it through the T-Wolves game Sunday night, and take notes on it, but fell into a slumber before I was able to watch the Wizards against the Clippers or Knicks, both of which, I understand, were much better efforts from the D.C. boys. Oh, and Andray Blatche didn’t play in either game. Nick Young sat out of Sunday’s game against New York as well.

I aim to watch both of the remaining games tonight and subsequently post notes/observations, and then hand out some summer league grades. But until then, here’s the big media dump on what others have said:

Wizards vs. T’Wolves

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From the going-ons of Dinner Bells, Transformers, bidding adieus, and locker room clowin’ on this site, below are your hump day links from the Wizards world wide web in the past week or so.

• As of right now, the Wizards will be paying $6 million in luxury taxes.
  [Wizards Insider]
• Caron Butler grew up with a rapper named ‘Mr. Wicked’ who used to say “NBA” to him every day in the hallways of high school.
  [Hoop Doctors]
• Is Antawn Jamison the next Alex English?
  [The Secret Weapon]
• Is Nick Young a goner?
  [Bullets Forever]
• Ernie Grunfeld went on the radio with some junkies.
  [Krem's Sports Blog]
• ‘How To Make A Dagger’ by Steve Buckhantz.
  [DC Sports Bog]
• What did the Wizards sell for $2.5 million?
  [The Secret Weapon]
• Are the Wizards jogging in place?
  [Stet Sports]
• Andray Blatche has a new nickname: “Summer League”
  [We're Off To See The Willards]
• Tom Hammonds scores 24 points in a game? This has to be some sort of fantasy.
  [Bullets Forever]
• It’s a landslide, the Wizards should go back to wearing Amercia’s colors.
  [Mr. Irrelevant]
• The Wizards radio will be moving from the Danny Snyder controlled WTEM 980 to the CBS controlled 106.7 WJFK — not sure what this means, but it’s probably a good thing.
  [DC Sports Bog]
• “Mission Accomplished” for the Washington Wizards?
  [WashingtonWizardsBlog;  mission accomplished comedy via @matthartwig]

Finally, Brendan Haywood is blogging again … this time bidding farewell to Michael Jackson. He writes: Read more »

The dust from yesterday’s trade has somewhat settled, but the building is still under construction.

So after my initial thoughts, the first set of web reactions, and Brendan Haywood’s musings, it’s time to go through the second run of Miller/Foye trade react quotes.

And remember, Ernie Grunfeld is likely not done dealing … especially judging by his quote in USA Today: “We might get out of (the draft) altogether. Very seldom do you get a 32nd pick who’s going to come right in and help a veteran ballclub.”

Of course, this could mean drafting someone and selling them for cash (as the case with Billy Walker to the Celtics last season), or packaging it with Mike James’ expiring contract for some sort of help down low (please be the latter, please be the latter).

Here goes…. Read more »

Coming off last night’s trade snap reactions from this very site, here are some initial quotes from ’round the Internets (and I’m sure there will be more), but first….

Mike Miller has a monkey … or at least he used to.

Back when he was with the Orlando Magic, Miller had a Java Macaque, which is one of those tiny lil’ monkeys that’s almost like having a kid. Miller would change its diapers, attempt to wean it off the bottle and onto people food, etc.. The monkey, Sonny, had his own mini-playground and would sleep in the bed with Miller every night. The story on the Orlando Magic website even says that Java Macaques can grow to have the intelligence level of a six year old human baby … strange.

But alas, don’t expect to see ‘Sonny’ at Ben’s Chili Bowl or sitting on Abe Lincoln’s lap any time soon. True Hoop’s Henry Abbott, who wrote about Miller’s monkey long ago for HOOP magazine, reported on TH in December of 2007 that Miller had to let Sonny go because he was trying to raise two real babies, his sons Mason and Mavrick.

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I’m tired of Tony Kornheiser’s “haha, look at me and my self-depreciating ‘comedy’ when I really have an over-inflated ego the size of Shaq’s dumps” shtick … it’s been stale for a while now.

People tell me that long ago, he used to pen some great stuff …. and I even remember reading some of said stuff. But Kornheiser is becoming the epitome of a bitter old codger who I aspire not to be when I get older.

Tony Kornheiser is nothing but a hater.

Of course, I write this with the caveat that as a ‘blogger’, I have “hated” on some people/things, i.e, LeBron James, but I do so comfortably knowing that I’m no where near the jerk/dick Kornheiser is, especially in terms of his unabashed and unreasonable hatred of “new media” … such as blogging.

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