[Ex-Wizard Brendan Haywood is heading to the NBA Finals, and now he's finagled two hats to prove it.]

The last ex-Washington Wizard* to appear in the NBA Finals used to be Larry Hughes. Not anymore. Hughes, a Wizard from 2002 to 2005, played for the Cleveland Cavaliers in game one of the 2007 Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. He scored two points on 1-5 shooting with two fouls and three rebounds in 23 minutes; the Cavs lost 85-76. In game two, Hughes missed all five of his field-goal attempts, didn’t score a point, and tallied two turnovers, two assists and two rebounds in 20 minutes; the Cavs lost 103-92. Dealing with foot issues pertaining to his plantar fascia, Hughes didn’t play in games three and four as the Spurs swept LeBron James in his only Finals appearance to date.

Now that the Dallas Mavericks have beaten the Oklahoma City Thunder for the right to represent the West in the 2011 Finals, three more ex-Wizards will be playing for the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Antawn Jamison, who always kept a picture of the NBA’s championship trophy in his Wizards locker (now it’s John Wall’s locker), is probably really happy for his ex-teammates, but most certainly in a ‘I wish it were me’ kind of way. And if you want even more of a storyline as Brendan Haywood, DeShawn Stevenson and Caron Butler (okay fine, I’ll include Brian Cardinal, another former Wizard (2002-03)… so, four ex-Wizards), head to championship holy ground with Dallas, consider all the history those three most recent Wizards have with one potential opponent, the very same LeBron James, this time of the Miami Heat.

All but calling him a cry-baby, Haywood once led to LeBron being labelled “They trying to hurt me” James. With Stevenson, you can pretty much begin and end with him calling James overrated, and then Jay-Z coming to James’ rescue with a blown whistle on a diss track. Oh, and there’s also that back-and-forth gossip girl thing between the Stevenson and James, thanks to Drew Gooden’s loose lips. So yea, DeShawn and LeBron pretty much hate each other. Butler mostly aimed to remain neutral through the familiarity the Wizards used to have with James’ Cavaliers via first round playoff matchups in three straight seasons from 2006 to 2008.

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A moving picture GIF for fake 3-D effect (don’t get dizzy), with links and commentary…

[Lafayette Elementary School, NW Washington, D.C. - photos: K. Weidie]

Links.

I recently took part in a ‘Word on the Street’ sports roundtable put together by Ben Standig of CSNWashington. My pick for the Preakness didn’t come through, but I still stand by the rest.
[CSNWashington]

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[Brendan Haywood has a lot of reasons to smile now, even if he is just getting 17 minutes off the bench, and sometimes struggling, for the Dallas Mavericks. Winning and a playoff future helps a lot.]

[Andray Blatche, on the other hand, is going through a lot of personal struggles, mostly on the court which has bleed into off-the-court moments, which are magnified by losing. Blatche has missed the last two games because of what's being noted as a hip injury and was unable to face Haywood on the court on Saturday night.]

Brendan Haywood walked into the Wizards locker room to see some familiar faces. Most of them weren’t Wizards players. He greeted a couple team personnel of various sorts and then looked across the room to where his locker used to be.

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The Washington Wizards play the Miami Heat in Florida tonight, and the division rival will make a return trip to Washington on December 18th. Read below to win tickets to that game.

I’m relatively apathetic toward LeBron James. It’s not that I no longer don’t like him in a double negative manner. It’s just that after he further exposed to the national scene what Wizards followers knew the whole time, his villain status lost value in my eyes. LeBron is not really worth caring about, although one would most certainly rather him lose.

So, in honor of CyberMonday … and LeBron’s first trip to Washington, D.C. as a member of the Miami Heat coming up on Saturday, December 18th, Truth About It.net would like to send you to the game. And because you are likely shopping online today, why not get something for free (courtesy of the good folks at StubHub)?

>LeWho? The Miami Heat

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ESPN’s John Hollinger and Chad Ford recently completed the latest edition of their ‘Future Power Rankings.’ (Found here, requires ESPN Insider). Like previous versions, they begin their rankings with the following introduction:

The Future Power Rankings are ESPN Insider’s projection of the on-court success expected for each team during the 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons.

Each of the NBA’s 30 teams received an overall Future Power Rating of 0 to 1,000, based on how well we expect each team to perform in the three seasons following this season.

In determining the Future Power Rating, Hollinger and Ford rated each team in five categories. The sum of those ratings = a team’s Future Power Rating. From the article, here is an explanation of each category: Read more »

Links and a picture (or two) …

[The reluctant dad, preparing to chase - Logan Circle, Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

@LINKS

It’s about roles, not positions.
[Bullets Forever]

John Shuhmann writes about JaVale McGee’s chances with Team USA:
[NBA.com] Read more »

Did you know that basketball players are evidently harder to “maintain” than football players? …. Whatever that means.

Okay, let’s step back for a second. If you live in the DMV area, you’ve undoubtedly seen commercials for Eastern Motors. They usually feature Washington Redskins but more recently have branched out to include the likes of Alex Ovechkin. The commercials have reached cult status around these parts, just check out the Easterns YouTube channel.

Combine famous athletes doing silly things with a catchy jingle and you get plenty of blog-worthy instances, along with genius branding efforts which have netted Easterns a lot of money.

Hell, the fact that Eastern Motors is simply targeting shiny, new 33-year old Redskins quarterback Donovan McNabb is blog-worthy … courtesy of Dan Steinberg and his DC Sports Bog.

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The Pick and Roll is a staple of many NBA offenses. The Wizards, in particular, starved when it came to defending P&Rs in 2009-10.

Once again turning to Synergy Sports Technology, we learn that as a team, the Wizards defended the P&R ball handler 1,128 times in plays that ended with a FGA, TO or FTA. This accounted for 12.6% of the team’s defensive plays. Defending these plays, the Wizards gave up 0.89 points-per-possession (PPP), which is tied for the most allowed in the NBA.

Against the Wizards, the P&R ball handler shot 43.2% on field goals and scored 42.9% of the time, which is the second highest scoring rate allowed in the league.

Conversely, the Wizards had to defend the P&R roll man 406 times and fared slightly better in the PPP department.

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A collection of mostly Wizards-related web links.

>> Andray Blatche is still looking for a wifey, or whatever. He made an appearance at the Shadow Room last Thursday (above pic: Andray is the guy on the left on whose knee that other guy’s elbow is resting).
[DC Fab]

>> Brendan Haywood says they handle things more professionally in Dallas than in D.C. So, break out your diary and classify bitching and moaning owners sitting courtside wearing a jersey t-shirt of the team they own as professional.
[DC Sports Bog]

>> Zydrunas Ilgauskas kept the Wizards #17 jersey that he never wore.
[Wizards Insider] Read more »

On April 22nd, I held a Wizards trivia contest to win one of two copies of Stumbling On Wins: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports by Dave Berri and Martin Schmidt, or some Wizards swag … which, as you can see from the pictures above is a pair of fuzzy Wizards/Zephyrs dice. Fancy, huh?

First, congrats goes to Thomas Pruitt and Wade Smith, the only two respondents to answer all nine trivia questions right. They both win a copy of the book. Also congrats to Marc Salmon, his email address was randomly selected from the entire pool of entries. Marc gets the lucky dice.

Now let’s go over the questions, answers and a bit of team history. In case you didn’t take part in the poll, I’m posting the answers at the bottom so you can take a guess at the questions if you feel so inclined.

#1 Which coach led the Washington Bullets in their ’97 1st round playoff matchup against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls?

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