The Washington Wizards unveiled their new look and feel on Tuesday during an event held on the team’s practice court. The feedback on the fresh gear has been universally positive and hardly anyone is showing remorse for the Wizard man logo dying a slow death. While I am more concerned about the team avoiding another bottom five NBA finish for a fourth straight season, I understand the significance of the franchise moving the brand into a modern direction with the Monumental ownership group. The red, white and blue colors will hopefully provide the tormented fan-base a much needed boost.
The following video contains footage of the debut, Wizards owner Ted Leonsis’ comments on the change, Jordan Crawford’s feelings about the uniforms, and an assessment from fans buying new merchandise at the team store on the day of the unveiling. Enjoy.
[Apologies to the fan whose name and info I was unable to gather.]
This is Mike Bibby, son of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 32-year old member of “Team Dime” and post-game interview backwards hat wearer. Such an unwilling member of the Washington Wizards Bibby was, that on Monday he surrendered a scheduled payment of $6.2 million dollars for the 2011-12 season so he could relinquish hammer and hard hat contributions to Ted Leonsis’ rebuilding project. The Washington team owner subsequently called it, “a piece of unexpected and positive news for our franchise.”
Bibby might have avoided giving his only post-game home locker room interview as a member of the Wizards after a loss to the Dallas Mavericks last Saturday night had I not stopped him as he made his way toward the exit; most other members of the Washington professional basketball press corps were busy giving their attention to another member of Bibby’s now former team. In his answers, Bibby referred to the young Wizards team more as “they” than “us” — understandable, supposedly.
In the exclusive video below, Bibby talks exclusively to those allowed access to the Wizards locker room and answers a question, exclusively asked by someone else, about getting into the scoring record book for the Washington Wizards, in a less than exclusive manner (as I’ll soon explain).
{John Wall looks for Kevin Seraphin - photo: K. Weidie}
{Wall looks for a trailing Andray Blatche - photo: K. Weidie}
In contrast to John Wall dropping a Rookie-Sophomore game record 22 assists on Friday night, an NBA team achieving single digits in assists over the course of a regular season game is a pretty rare feat.According to the Basketball-Reference.com database, it’s occurred just 194 times since the 1986-87 season (the extent of BBR’s game box score database). So in roughly 0.3-percent of NBA games over the last 25 seasons. And of course, your Washington Wizards did just that on Wednesday night in Orlando, tallying a mere eight dimes divided up amongst Kirk Hinrich, who had three, along with one each from and John Wall, Kevin Seraphin, Josh Howard, Andray Blatche and Hilton Armstrong.
Teams have now put up a single-digit assist total five times this season. The Orlando Magic dropped five assists in a 26 point loss to the Miami Heat in just their second game on the 2010-11 season (the day after Orlando blew out the Wizards by 29 points in their season home opener). The Magic also had just nine team assists in a 80-74 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on December 6, 2010. The Portland Trailblazers had eight assists in a 100-86 loss to the New York Knicks on January 11, 2011. And surprisingly enough, Chris Paul’s New Orleans Hornets put up a league season low four assists for a team in a 88-70 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on December 12, 2010.
The faces on the cardboard classics below say: “Hey man, we’re trying over here.”
I’m not sure I believe them all. Or maybe one is trying more than the others … at least as much as a frozen facial expression can indicate. But who’s trying the most? Or which player’s face from the past provides the most hope in the present for the future? Study carefully and vote in the poll below.
This Skybox basketball card commemorates Darrell Walker‘s rebounding prowess as a guard for the Washington Bullets in the early 1990s. In ’90-91, Walker led all guards with 7.8 rebounds per 36 minutes, amongst those who played at least 15 minutes per game and achieved at least 400 rebounds. When strictly looking at per game stats, according to the search results at Basketball-Reference.com, Tyrone Corbin of the Minnesota Timberwolves averaged more rebounds per game as a guard, but he was more a swing-forward to Walker’s true ability to play the point. [Note: Rounded, both Walker and Magic Johnson averaged 7.0 boards per game in '90-91, but Walker was a fraction above Magic.]
In Washington Bullets/Wizards franchise history, according to BBR, only four guards have played in more than 60 games in a season, averaged over 25 minutes per game and over five rebounds per 36 minutes. Those players were: Larry Hughes (’02-03 to ’04-05), Michael Jordan (’01-02 and ’02-03), Darrell Walker (’88-89 to ’90-91) and Earl Monroe (’67-’68).
From the BBR database spanning from 1946-47 to the present day, only two NBA guards have appeared in more than 70 games, had a Total Rebounding Percentage (TRB%: an estimate of the percentage of available rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor) above 13-percent and a Defensive Rebounding Percentage (DRB%) above 20-percent.
Those two guards are Jason Kidd (2006-07: 13.2 – TRB%; 20.8 – DRB%) and Darrell Walker (1989-90: 13.4 – TRB%; 20.4 – DRB%).
[People joked how Saturday's win in Washington over the Celtics was a road game, but Andray Blatche found some friendly fans courtside to celebrate with after the game ... I doubt he'll get the same reception from Spike Lee in Madison Square Garden tonight.]
{photo: K. Weidie}
The most losses an NBA team has achieved in an 82-game NBA schedule?
The 1990-91 Sacramento Kings went 1-40 on the road … the 2010-11 Washington Wizards are halfway there, in the loss column at least.
But as history is, well, history … the one road win for those Kings came against the Washington Bullets in Landover, MD on November 20, 1990. The zinger is that the 34-year old Bernard King had 45 points that night, but the Bullets fell 87-82 — they played in front of a reported 6,105 fans at the Capital Centre (from Sam Davis’ game report in the Baltimore Sun).
Ted Leonsis has been extra attentive toward celebrating the history of his new pro basketball franchise. There was the establishment of an official team alumni association back in early October 2010, headed by Bob Dandridge, among several other events featuring franchise greats — such as alumni appearances at the team’s training camp fan fest, having Earl Monroe speak to the team at training camp, co-hosting viewing parties with alumni association members at Kevin Grevey’s restaurant in Falls Church, VA, recognizing various association members (Dandridge, Grevey, Jack Marin, Kevin Porter and Michael Adams) at a home game in December and having Elvin Hayes visit with the team on a recent two-game road trip in Texas. The older fans I’ve spoken with absolutely love this stuff.
Now, the team has announced that they will unveil a new trophy case near section 100 before Friday’s game versus the New Jersey Nets. The case, according to the team press release, will feature new graphics and a refurbished Tiffany & Co. trophy celebrating the 1978 championship. A picture of the case, courtesy of the Wizards’ official FaceBook page, can be seen above. Another can be found on the Wizards.com website.
Leonsis is going above and beyond the call of duty, which makes a recent visit from Peter Vecsey’s slinging fecal matter regarding an inaccurate report of his that Unseld was “stripped” of his season tickets by Leonsis all the more curious … or not, because it’s Peter F-ing Vecsey. Dan Steinberg covered this incident extensively on the DC Sports Bog and Leonsis posted a response on his blog as well. Essentially, through this incident, Vescey further exposed himself for the ugly wart that he is … which we pretty much already knew. So, who cares? Vescey just needs to go away.
Moving on past that noise, in my research of the forgotten 1976-77 NBA dunk contest, I came across a YouTube user, WiltatKansas, who had posted a couple videos of Wes Unseld in high school. The first video below is of the 1963 Kentucky state championship between Seneca (Unseld’s high school) and Dunbar. The second is of the 1964 Kentucky state championship featuring Seneca versus Breckenridge County. Seneca won both games.
Fact: No one composing this blog post knows where Christian Laettner is today. I’m sure someone knows, just not me. Here are a couple of pictures from when Laettner was last seen playing for the Washington, D.C. professional basketball franchise, with whom he appeared 206 games over three-plus seasons…
(disclaimer: most, some, or all of these pictures have come here courtesy of the Internet, a place(s) that you can get to by typing letters in the The Google.)
Here’s Laettner shooting a lay-up, except for the wrong way:
The Wizards are 0-6 on the road so far on the season, but they are treating faithful fans to a 5-2 record at home. The last time the team started 0-6 away from home came in 2008-09, they won road game No. 7 against the New Jersey Nets on December 2, 2008. The worst before that came in 2006-07 when the Wizards started 0-8 on the road before beating the Knicks in New York on December 6 … and actually, that represents the worst road start in franchise history.
The 1961-62 Chicago Packers, technically the first season in franchise history, actually started their season 0-8 “away from home” — in that their seventh game of the season versus the New York Knicks took place in the neutral territory of Detroit, Michigan. The Packers won their eighth “true” road game, ninth “away from home” against those same Knicks in New York on November 21, 1961.
Of course, current team personnel doesn’t consider those two seasons in Chicago (’61-62 as the Packers and ’62-63 as the Zephyrs) as part of the franchise’s history that counts. If they did, we’d be celebrating the franchise’s 50th season in existence this year. Instead, as a member of the Wizards’ PR team informed me a while ago, the franchise’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated two years from now, marking half a century since the franchise arrived in Baltimore, instead of when they actually started bouncing balls on courts.
What do you write after a team shoots 65.8% (50-76 field-goals) on their way to a 114-83 win over the Wizards?
Chalk it up to the Boston Celtics being a great-passing veteran team at home and the Wizards being a non-passing, relatively inexperienced team on the road and move on, I suppose.
Oh, lest I forget a stat fact that you’ll surely be made aware of by others: the Boston Celtics had 32 assists, the Washington Wizards had 31 made field-goals.
But let’s go back to this field-goal percentage thing. It’s kind of like winning in overtime when you didn’t deserve it … a win is a win.
