{photo by Adam McGinnis}

News broke during the Los Angeles Lakers’ 103-89 victory over the Washington Wizards that Lakers guard Sasha Vujacic will likely be traded to the New Jersey Nets. Via CBS Sports:

The first step, agreed to in principle Tuesday, is a three-team trade in which the Nets get a first-round pick from the Rockets and another one from the Lakers. New Jersey sends Terrence Williams to the Rockets and Joe Smith to the Lakers, who send Sasha Vujacic to the Nets, the people familiar with the framework of the deal said.

Vujacic, nicknamed the “Machine”, had fallen out of the Lakers’ rotation this season with the new additions of Steve Blake, Matt Barnes and the improved play of Shannon Brown.

The trade cannot officially go through until Wednesday, so Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson was unable to comment in his post game presser, but he did slyly remark that they could us a big guy named John Doe in a hypothetical question about adding Joe Smith.

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[Editor's note: While I was out in Las Vegas for the summer league, I caught up with David Thorpe to discuss Yi Jianlian, who Thorpe trained earlier this summer in Florida. Below is what I gathered from my initial discussion with him. Unfortunately, the second part of the discussion was nowhere to be found on my recorder, evidently replaced by around 42 minutes of summer league gym sounds instead. Oh well, I'll try to catch up with Coach Thorpe for a follow-up at some point, but I can't thank him enough for what he has already provided. -Kyle]

{image via bscup.tom.com}

His friends back in China call him “Lian,” says David Thorpe, NBA analyst for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. and executive director of the Pro Training Center in Clearwater, Florida. Thorpe has worked with countless NBA stars, college prospects and overseas basketball talents. And for five weeks earlier this summer, he worked with new Washington Wizard Yi Jianlian.

Back in February, when things were beginning to meltdown for Jianlian in New Jersey — his minutes per game stayed high at 30.8 over 13 games, but his averages dropped to 9.2 points on 34.1% shooting and 7.5 rebounds; this was down from 33.2 minutes, 15.4 points on 42.9% shooting and 6.7 rebounds per over 18 total games in December and January — the player’s group of advisers, including agency Lagardère and agent Dan Fegan, started talking with Thorpe.

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{flickr/Buou}

Mere minutes after the introductory press conference of 2010 draft picks Trevor Booker and Hamady N’Diaye ended, rumors began to surface that Ernie Grunfeld had another trade up his sleeve to absorb the Wizards’ cap space while gaining misspent potential in the process.

The team has officially announced that they will acquire 2007 sixth overall draft pick Yi Jianlian from the New Jersey Nets in exchange for Quinton Ross. New Jersey will also send Washington “cash considerations,” estimated to be $3 million.

Ross recently exercised a player option that will pay him $1,146,337 next season. Jianlian is set to make $4,050,499 in 2010-11 with a qualifying offer of $5,403,366 for 2011-12.

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I could have taken a number of quotes from the above video of locker room interviews after Saturday night’s loss to the Jazz and turned it into the title of a post.

“Obviously it’s not any fun, you know it’s frustrating.” -Mike Miller

“Well obviously you have fun playing basketball, but you play to win.” -Mike Miller again

“We all have jobs, you know. My job is to play my game and to do my job.” -Andray Blatche

“I don’t feel like the freedom is there to … if I get physical, I don’t get to be able to be physical back, offensively at least.” -JaVale McGee

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{flickr/Bari D}

The last time the Wizards faced the Nets in New Jersey, Earl Boykins hit a game winner with 0.4 seconds left. The first time these two teams meet this season was the Wizards’ home opener in D.C., an old-fashioned blow out. Different times back then.

So, the Wiz are 2-0 against New Jersey this year, but haven’t faced them since the team was blown up … nor have these two teams faced since Michael Wilbon supposedly said that New Jersey would go undefeated against this current Wizards team (at the time, Josh Howard was still healthy — see the comments section of this post). Ok, so that has yet to be determined, but I will go on record saying that Wilbon is full of hot air regardless.

But in anticipation of today’s game in the Garden State (6 pm est start time), I exchanged a brief Q&A with Mark Ginocchio of the fellow TrueHoop Network blog, Nets Are Scorching.

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After a horrible start, the Wizards, a rather dysfunctional team themselves, came back to beat the New Jersey Nets, the worst team in the NBA. Good for them. For the 81-79 win, Flip Saunders need the 5’5″ Earl Boykins, a mid-November pick-up, to hit a jumper with 0.4 seconds left. Jarvis Hayes, a former Washington Wizard, badly missed a shot at the buzzer for the Nets.

The secondary storyline to the Earl of Last-Second Heroics is the fact that not one of the Wizards’ starters, Randy Foye, Mike Miller, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison and Brendan Haywood, scored in double figures, something that hasn’t happened to an NBA team so far this season and perhaps beyond.

The starters combined to shoot 15-42 from the field and not one of them finished with a positive plus/minus (-14, -1, -7, -11 and -5 respectively in the previously given order).

Other the other hand, the reserves, Boykins, DeShawn Stevenson, Nick Young, Andray Blatche and Fabricio Oberto, were responsible for 43 of the Wizards’ 81 points. Boykins (15), Young (10) and Blatche (14) were the double-figure scorers for Washington and each reserve finished with a positive plus/minus (+17, +4, +7, +13 and +7 respectively in the previously given order).

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{Post Game Locker Room Video}

{Best Web Cuts}

There’s so much out there on the web … to filter through it all, I provide the best web cuts from the Wizards-Nets game:

[Mike Jones - Wizards Outlet, Washington Times]

Andray Blatche was feeling good tonight, and for good reason. After the game he got dressed in a snazy suit and tie, accented by giant diamond studs and to top it off, a pair of dark shades. He playfully strutted through the locker room and joked that he didn’t feel like doing an interview, then bust into a laugh and sat down and said, “Alright, let me get for real. What’s up, y’all?”

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flickr/The CJM

On draft night, there were many frustrated rumblings on Bullets Forever over Ernie Grunfeld failing to land (or go after) Vince Carter. Not only that, but Carter was allowed to go to the reigning Eastern Conference champion Orlando Magic.

With Hedo Turkoglu opting out, unlikely to return to Orlando, who knows if the Magic will be better off with Carter … many assume yes. I’ll be curious to see if Stan Van Gundy uses Carter similarly within the offense as he did Turkoglu, creating for others off the high pick and roll.

And if Rasheed Wallace goes to Orlando (which probably means that baby ‘Sheed is backing off demands of $8 million a year), they could be very scary. Tumultuous with Wallace the home-wrecker, buy scary nonetheless.

But in terms of the Wizards, should Grunfeld have gone after Carter?
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I’ve been sitting on this post for a while, almost since Eddie Jordan got fired from his gig with the Wiz. Well, now that he’s at the helm of the Philadelphia 76ers, this is an appropriate time as ever to publish.

My feeling is that a majority of Wizards fans think Jordan was unjustly fired (or at least weren’t dancing in the streets when he departed), and that even more wish him well.

Count me among both of these groups. Although, when he was terminated, I wasn’t like, “OMG! What an injustice!”

I was more disappointed with the entire landscape of the team, and later resigned to it just being ‘one of those things’, and in the end, maybe it was best that both parties moved on. But we’ll never really know.

In any case, here goes my tribute to Jordan’s basketball career (to date).

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[photo source: flickr/dskciado]

This is Eduardo Alonso Nájera Pérez, a Mexican victim. Probably not of the swine flu, but definitely a victim of capitalist America’s NBA luxury tax, which is designed in a rather socialist manner to penalize those who spend more money.

Many have wondered where Denver would be if they still had Marcus Camby, who was sold to the Clippers for a 2nd round pick. But watching the energy, hustle, and scrapiness of the Nuggets, led by the Birdman Anderson, it’s easy to see how a big like Nájera might fit better than the frail Camby.

Nuggets coach George Karl hated to see the Big Mexican sign a 4-year $12 million contract with the Nets this past summer, but Kiki had an edict from cost-cutting owner Stan Kroenke (even though anyone might question giving that much to a 32-year old). Still, Kroenke and his wife, a Wal-Mart heir, are both on the Forbes billionaires list (Kroenke is ranked 205 and worth a meager $3 billion).

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