Kevin Durant sure had himself a nice night in his Redskins-colored Nikes: 44 points, an M.V.P. award, and a win for D.C. over L.A.. Goodman League over Drew League, at Capital Punishment. For such a hyped event, the ending was fitting — the hometown team winning by one point, 135-134, in a game that had exciting plays, expected misses, uncontrolled flow far outweighed by entertainment (thanks in part to Goodman commissioner Miles Rawls being master of ceremonies), and the comfort of it all coming down to free-throws (especially those previously missed in abundance), and a controversial blocking/charge call that went in Durant’s favor over James Harden. How ‘NBA’ of the game indeed.

There were some hiccups around the event in total — trouble with the online streaming of the game, I’m told; crowds battled heat and unorganized entrance procedure (many with tickets seemingly were turned away due to oversold capacity, a refund for which organizers are claiming they will give). With such a small gym for an exhibition with nationwide fanfare, I was surprised some of the results and complaints weren’t worse. Otherwise, at all points the players and attendees were well within safe confines (and the fire code it seems).

Washington is a basketball town, in spite of and alongside of it being a Redskins city, as Durant’s shoe color choice goes to communicate. Hugh “Baby Shaq” Jones, local street ball legend and hometown fan favorite next to Durant, admitted before the game that he was not a Redskins fan, to no surprise likely jibing with a random polling of D.C. faithful.

“I’m sorry, I’m a Washingtonian, but I’m not a Redskins fan,” Jones said when I spoke to him before the game, the desire to know which NFL football team he was a fan of was immediately, and inconsequentially, lost. But basketball or Redskins, which is more important to the District?

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[via thebasketballchannel.net]

I did a preview of Capital Punishment for ESPN Los Angeles with a run down of several participating players from each of the Goodman and Drew rosters. So check it out please.
[ESPN LA]

Nick Young won’t be playing, via Michael Lee.
[Wizards Insider]

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 Commentary, links, and other things that might be of interest…

[Miles Rawls, commissioner of D.C.'s Goodman League, hopes his boys backup the trash talk against opponents from L.A.'s Drew League this Saturday.]

Well, it’s just about here… the highly anticipated matchup between out-of-work NBAers (and others) from the East to the West. Capital Punishment, to be held at D.C.’s Trinity University, will pit the Goodman League versus the Drew League on Saturday evening. Yea, I know, you’ve heard about it. I’ll be there. Lots of people will be there. In fact, Trinity could be an aboslute circus, but what would this whole event be without one?

Beckley Mason did a great profile of Goodman League commissioner Miles Rawls (the above photo of Rawls that I took accompanies his piece from the ESPN.com NBA home page).
[TrueHoop]

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Links, commentary, stuff…

Andray Blatche. You might be aware of his various exploits that seem trapped in an devolving time continuum.

Blatche, inherently, is a sympathetic figure. He literally loafed into an NBA career, to the envy of millions, by likely being just smart of enough to realize that if he worked just a little bit to enhance his natural talents, he would get there. And he did.

He’s not a bad guy, nor is he misunderstood like a lot of athletes like to claim. It is, however, true to an extent in that lay people, the “commoners” to which LeBron referred in his infamous quote, don’t know the pressure of money, exposure, expectations, high critique, and high reward, which I am assuming is widely accepted in bounties of tangible goods and women. But to say that some of these pro athletes are misunderstood is to say that they, themselves, are complicated figures. Often, we know, that is not the case. Rather, it’s their situations within the business of the game they love (or “like”) to play which provides varying complex ways to digest someone who is simply human.

Blatche is a human after all. He means well, but the means by which he gets caught up in “the life,” as some like to call it (being a highly paid professional athlete, that is) doesn’t always bode well for him. Whose fault is it? Well, according to my own sliding scale of reason, the older Blatche gets, the more he is solely to blame for his situation(s).

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If it weren’t for the NBA lockout, I probably would’ve watched last night’s exhibition basketball game online just the same. It was either on a very small frame with fair resolution or via more disturbed pixels on a full computer screen blow up, but it was basketball. Basketball involving very good players. Namely, John Wall. It didn’t poetically go down-to-the-wire, but for brief spells, it was enjoyable to watch, even on that small screen streaming from the website of www.wkyt.com television station.

The Dominican Republic national team, coached by University of Kentucky head coach John Calipari, beat a team assembled of former UK disciples who are now locked-out NBAers 106-88 at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. Confusing connections? Certainly.

The Pros, a team name eligible to be sponsored by Bud Light in a college atmosphere, featured Wall, his former UK teammates Eric Bledsoe and DeMarcus Cousins, along with Rajon Rondo, Tayshaun Prince, Keith Bogans, and Nazr Mohammed. They started off with a burst of over-excelled activity, perhaps due to lockout inactivity. They’ve all played in other summertime Pro-AMs, but none of them like this, on a stage against legit, more consistent competition and in front of 24,000. Their desire to give the Rupp crowd a show was clear, but still with knowledge that it wasn’t going to be like their other individual forays into summer hoops, highlights of which courtesy of YouTube mix-videos.

The Dominican Republic team featured some pros themselves — Francisco Garcia, Al Horford, along with another guard familiar with Kentucky, Edgar Sosa, courtesy of time spent playing at the University of Louisville, with Garcia — and they didn’t come to tool around. The D.R. team had been working hard under Calipari’s tutelage for the last two weeks in Lexington. They preparing for international competition at the FIBA Americas tournament set to start in Argentina at the end of August.

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[pic via isport.cz]

I remain on vacation, visiting both Amsterdam and London for the first time. But while I’m enjoying time away from work and the Internet (for the most part) with my summer holiday, the Wiz Kids of the NBA are living a summer of uncertainty. That clearly hasn’t stopped them from enjoying themselves, but that also hasn’t precluded them from searching for a way out of the fog — see reports on Trevor Booker’s flirtation with an Israeli professional basketball team.

In any case, it does help to know what the Wiz Kids are doing with their spare time — what else do we have to do? And as covered in the previous TAI post, professional athletes are more available in the off-season than ever before, mostly on their own accord. Before I left, I wrote a piece for the DCist, ‘Where The Wiz Kids Summer’, that was posted on Monday. (It did not, however, cover the most recently drafted Wiz Kids, such as the Jan Vesely you see above.)

Click here to check it out if you will. Until next time…

[Fort Stevens Rec Center - NW Washington, DC - photo: K. Weidie]

As I get ready to take an extended summer vacation off to a location across the ocean, I can’t help how different this NBA summer feels. Yes, the lockout… But I’m also thinking about NBA players — who they are, how they are, where they are. Oh yea, and they’re also jumping across the pond lately.

NBA players are… themselves, for better or worse. Real people. I’ve known this. Covering the Wizards closely over the past couple of seasons has enforced this. It’s not breaking news.

It’s the coverage and opt-in exposure surrounding professional athletes as a whole, much less NBA players, that is vastly different now. Although, delving through the late David Halberstam’s brilliant book The Breaks Of The Game — about the world of pro basketball and the 1979-80 Portland Trailblazers — has helped me realize that while the times change fast, many principles simply get updated and don’t change much.

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The Sacramento Kings closed out their season with a very emotional home loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. At the time, there was a strong possibility that it was last game in Sacramento after 23 years as the team‘s owners, Joe and Gavin Maloof, looked to move the franchise to Anaheim, California. The Kings broadcasters broke down on air, and fans organized a protest by refusing to leave the arena after the contest’s conclusion. Kings players returned to the court to address their adoring fans. There was great sense of empathy amongst sports fans online in seeing a team ripped away from a fan base.

Former NBA player and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, husband to controversial ex-DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee, made a last ditch attempt to save the team in California’s Capital City. His presentation to the NBA was more impressive than the Maloofs‘, the potential TV money from their deal with Anaheim being inflated. Money discrepancies are not surprising with the Maloofs since their bad financial dealings have led them to this current predicament and their financial stake in Palm Casinos Resort, which is now down to a paltry 2-percent.

Johnson was able to convince the NBA’s relocation committee to give him a chance to secure a funding plan for a new arena, and after the Maloofs pulled their bid to relocate, the Kings will remain in Sacramento for at least 2011-12.

When the move appeared imminent, I caught up with Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders and swingman Maurice Evans to ask about their personal experiences playing in Sacramento. In the video below, Saunders talks about the Sacramento Cow Bells, and Evans provides a funny antidote about a passionate Kings fan that still supports him every time he returns.

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Sabermetrics. They have been a continous hot topic of conversation in modern sports circles, recently sparked (and fueled) by Jonah Lehrer’s Grantland column, The Math Problem. Lehrer argued that while sabermetrics — the computerized measurement of statistics, in this case basketball data — can be extremely useful at times, the allure of definitive measures of production leads us to ignore the oft-underrated intangibles. Worse, the popular obsession with quantifiable sports values has resulted in shortsighted personnel decisions. The horror!

But this post isn’t about the great paradox of sports statistics nor whether dismissing math in sports is the right call. It’s about how Washington Wizards 2011 draft pick Jan Vesely played on paper — was he a slam dunk in Europe or something less spectacular?

The Wizards brass had their hearts and minds set on adding the 6’11” combo-forward to the roster for over two years, so I wanted to take a look at what attracted the team’s attention (assuming, of course, that the front office dabbles in advanced hoops data).

Our friendly neighborhood basketball statistician, ESPN.com’s John Hollinger, has determined that there is a predictable relationship between how a player performs in the Euroleague and how he will compete as a rookie in the Association. When transitioning to the NBA, a Euroleague player’s pace-adjusted per-minute stats will be affected as follows: Read more »

Future basketball historians may heavily sway their chronicles toward the 2009-10 Washington Wizards season. The infamy surrounding the heavily dramatized whirlwind that was Gilbert Arenas, locker room guns and court cases, and the losing that magnified it (or that it magnified) will go down in D.C. lore just as much as team media guides will gloss over the affair.

Meanwhile, Arenas continues to be in the contradictory mode of ‘they wanted me out, but I gave them plenty of reasons’ on Twitter. He is very ‘woe is me’, while claiming a lesson has been learned. If only Arenas knew how to not keep himself from proving maturity when it counts.

The abrupt end of one long-running and significant ownership era resulting from the passing of Abe Pollin will only add to the natural sensationalizing of ’09-10. But old flames — the one time poster boy and the patriarch of D.C. pro basketball — passed by new sprouts on their way out.

The 2010-11 season, on one hand, as another lottery year for the franchise, might be as forgettable as the rest. But a change in ownership is a very important event. Just think about how crucial ownership is to your opinion of the Washington Redskins.

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