Jordan Crawford and Cartier Martin work on their corner 3s during a post-practice shooting drill after the morning session of Washington Wizards training camp day one.

Last season the Washington Wizards attempted 329 corner 3-pointers, 16th most in the NBA. The Atlanta Hawks led the league with 464 3-point attempts from the corner and the Spurs were next with 453 attempts.

Washington made 132 of their corner 3-point attempts, good enough for 40.1 percent and seventh best in the NBA. Atlanta made 39.7 percent of their corner 3s and San Antonio made 41.9 percent; the Golden State Warriors led the league in shooting 45.6 percent on corner 3s.

One could easily deduce: Hey, the Wizards need to shoot more corner 3s. From a tweet of NBA.com’s John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) in September:

Here’s a fascinating one: The league leader in assists on corner 3s was, by far, John Wall (77). Rondo was next w/ 59.

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The Set.

Media Day has been over for several hours and the Washington Wizards have been officially media’d. Quotes, images and pixels of various natures have been broadcast. Hope has been expressed. Do we have the talent to make the playoffs? Yes. How will we come together as a team? We will see, that’s what training camp is for. Will it be tough without John Wall (and Nene to some extent)? Yes, but we’re going to try anyway.

Could one simply tell, from an affair such as media day, that the Wizards are a more mature, professional team? That’s the gut feeling. Have a conversation with Nene, Emeka Okafor, Martell Webster or Trevor Ariza — there’s a difference compared to other teams in recent memory. Now young Wizards have guys they can look toward, knowing their experience, knowlege, and professionalism will provide answers they can trust. There is still as much uncertainty as to what these 2012-13 Wizards will do on the court as the last couple of seasons, but there’s much more of an underlying sense of confidence that they can stay together and tackle any adversity, that they can deflect any punches instead of simply rolling with them.

Make no mistake, until they prove themselves otherwise in the win-loss column, these are still the same Wizards. But it’s a changing franchise. And this year is a new team – the freshest start Les Boulez have had in about a decade.

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Truth About It.net will turn a whole five years old at the end of this October.

Hard to believe/interesting. Nonetheless, over the life of the site from the 2007-08 season to 2011-12, we’ve seen/lived/suffered through 131 wins, 263 losses, four coaches, two owners, one GM/team president, one Phil Chenier mustache removal, and 56 total players (amazingly, 48 players over the last three seasons).

You may have heard of ESPN’s #NBArank project, now in year two. Now hear of #WizardsRank, where we rank each of those 56 players during Truth About It.net’s five-year run.

TAI anonymously polled 27 members of the Wizards pixel establishment — from mainstream media to new media, TAI staffers included, to a few pixel consumers (readers of the site) — and got 17 responses.

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Numbers, via Flick user mervynchua

People like to rank things and then argue about them.

In a world defined by — and dependent on — math and structure, maybe debating numerical assignments given to people, things, movies, etc. in nonsensical manners makes us feel human.

It’s a tame way of bucking the system (except when said debates lead to fights). Rankings and such especially hold immeasurable value in the sports and entertainment world, as they’re often cycled and recycled in a regurgitation of pixels. But also, comparisons are, well, sort of fun.

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ShareBullets: Links and stuff…

Couple of reports on the Wizards summer league roster:

Steven Gray

Via HoopsHype, Gray will be a Wizard in Vegas. Gray might best be described as a west coast, guard version of Etan Thomas, right down to the hair (at least in college). A feature by Dana O’Neill on ESPN.com tells of his Pacific Northwest, granola upbringing, his acting in college at Gonzaga, and his trip to Africa as part of a leadership program. In 2011, Gray and the Zags were taken down by The Jimmer and BYU in the NCAA Tournament; Gray had 18 points on 6-for-16 shooting and seven assists. Gray spent his “rookie” season in Latvia with up-and-down numbers.

FWIW, some Latvian stats: 44.3% on 3-point field goals with averages of 12.3 points and 24.5 minutes in 15 EuroChallenge games; 33.7% 3P, 10.9 points, and 21.4 minutes in 18 Baltic League games; and 46.5% 3P, 9.9 points, and 20.3 minutes in 23 Latvian League games.
[stats via eurobasket.com] Read more »

Some people, ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz for instance, have argued that the NBA should kill the draft. The system is broken, teams are tanking, lottery teams stay lottery teams… The fix: End the NBA draft and have all rookies enter the league as free agents. Why? Well, the NBA is a “business,” free market this-and-that, yada-yada-yada…

However, in constant attempts to analyze the NBA as a business — “It’s a business,” often being a canned talking point of players and team personnel alike when unable to explain the real reasons behind a maneuver — people forget that one of the first principles of business is that the customer comes first (or that the customer is always right). Whatever the case, will somebody please think of the children?

Yes, free agency rumors and the current mass, social media dissemination of them can be fun for fans, but only media members (and maybe a few teams attempting to cloud their intentions), really benefit from the noise.

The NBA draft is for the customer. Well, it’s for the players, too. And, it also benefits the league’s marketing of itself and its individuals. So, there’s no need to muddy ceremonial pomp and circumstance with dollars and cents. Because if there are league-wide issues with the way the business of basketball functions, there are other ways to resolve them aside from eliminating one of the NBA’s most-covered events.

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[NOTE: Truth About It.net 2011-12 Player Reviews continue, where we take a look at the past, present and future of those players who have touched the Wizards franchise during the 2011-12 lockout-shortened season. Now, we review a player who has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Washington Wizards—Cartier Martin. TAI's Adam McGinnis and John Converse Townsend look back on Martin's 17 games in a lockout-shortened season. -Kyle W.]

Player Review Index:  Morris Almond (we’d like to)  |  Andray Blatche  |  Trevor Booker  |  Brian Cook (maybe)  |  Jordan Crawford  |  Maurice Evans  |  Rashard Lewis  |  Shelvin Mack  |  Cartier Martin  |  Roger Mason Jr.  |  JaVale McGee  |  Nenê  |  Kevin Seraphin (coming soon)  |  Chris Singleton  |  James Singleton  |  Ronny Turiaf (meh)  |  Edwin Ubiles (we’ll see)  |  Jan Vesely  |  John Wall  |  Nick Young

PAST

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Newly Stoic Nene. 

[The DC Council -- After each Wizards game: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the bench, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is over the table. Game 66 contributors: Rashad Mobley (@Rashad20) from behind the television screen and Adam McGinnis (@AdamMcGinnis) and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It) from the Verizon Center.]

Score

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[The DC Council -- After each Wizards game: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the bench, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is over the table. Game 65 contributors: Ryan Gracia (@rgracia2378), John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend) and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It).]

Score

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On Saturday night in South Beach, the Washington Wizards beat a LeBron James/Chris Bosh/Dwyane Wade-less Miami Heat team, 86-84. The Wizards improved to 17-46 on the season without Trevor Booker, Roger Mason Jr., Andray Blatche and Rashard Lewis, as Ted Leonsis might remind you (playing without Blatche… very funny, Ted). Showing signs and giving hope that this current set of players is more worthy of playing together as a team going into next season, the Wizards now hold the second-worst record in the NBA after the seven-win Charlotte Bobcats and before the 20-win Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Hornets. With three games left, beating the Heat also gives Washington their first three-game win streak of the season. The Wizards won three in a row once late last season over the Cavaliers, Bobcats and Pistons. Prior to that, a streak of three wins or longer hadn’t been accomplished since victories over the Heat, Bulls and Pistons in April 2008. Below is the reaction to that rare third win.

M.V.P.

With nine assists and zero turnovers in the fourth quarter (13 and five on the night), how could I not give the MVP to John Wall (especially after I spoke bad about his passing on Twitter)? Also, credit the strength of Nene’s hands and his ability to finish with agility; four of Wall’s assists in the final period were off pick-and-roll action to the Brazilian, including the game-winning layup with 0.5 seconds left. But, ultimately it was John’s blazing bursts of speed that Mario Chalmers could not touch which gave the Wizards better chances, and the win. Wall still has major lessons to learn about creating and seeing passing lanes, and his jump shot continued to look bad (0-for-5 outside the paint; 13 points on 6-for-11 FGs), but he was active on defense (four steals) and put his body on the line to draw a key charge against Udonis Haslem late in the game. Wall had what it took to win on this night.

X-Factor.

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