[D.C. Council: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the subs, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is on the table. Game No. 11, Washington Wizards vs Charlotte Bobcats; contributors: Dan Diamond and Sean Fagan from the Verizon Center and Kyle Weidie from behind the T.V.]

John Wall couldn’t watch. Chris Singleton still made the second of book-end free throws with three chances at the line, sending the game into double-overtime. Read more »

[Bobcats of yesteryear. Credit: TAI's Adam McGinnis]

Whether or not the Wizards win on Saturday night—and that’s TBD—something unusual already happened at Verizon Center: The Charlotte Bobcats came to town with a winning record.

How rare is that?

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Here to provide the DC Council Opening Statements for Washington’s sixth game of the season against the Bobcats in Charlotte are TAI’s Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It) and guest Spencer Percy (@QCsportscrave), who writes about the Bobcats for the TrueHoop blog Queen City Hoops. John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend) also drops in with a game prediction.

Wizards Starters (0-5):

A.J. Price, Bradley Beal, Trevor Ariza, Trevor Booker, Emeka Okafor

Bobcats Starters (2-3):

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Chris Jackson, later Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, was the third overall pick in 1990. Where will the Washington Wizards go with the No. 3 overall pick in 2012?

Over the weekend reports surfaced from news outlets in both North Carolina (The Charlotte Observer) and Ohio (The News-Herald) that the Cleveland Cavaliers, who hold the fourth overall pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft, will trade up with the Charlotte Bobcats, who own the second overall pick. Charlotte would reportedly get the 24th pick from the Cleveland as part of the deal. Such a move by Michael Jordan’s Bobcats could screw the draft hopes of the Washington Wizards.

Coming off last week’s trade for Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza, Washington’s camp may have revealed a preference for Bradley Beal out of the University of Florida, leading their old nemesis, the Cavs (who are targeting Beal themselves), to believe that they’ll have to sacrifice an asset to get their man. And there’s nothing the Wizards can really do about it other than settle for what’s left.

People, myself included, might make something out of Washington’s draft preference — a pick that, if chosen wrongly, could significantly setback rebuilding — resting in the hands of former Wizard Jordan, but it would be a smart move by the Bobcats. Charlotte GM Rich Cho, as well as the team’s vice chairman, Curtis Polk — who used to be an agent for David Falk, a former rival of the Washington franchise and Abe Pollin — are smart people. They know that Charlotte needs just about everything, and if this means trading down to settle for two out of three prospects being available between North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes, Kentucky’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Kansas’ Thomas Robinson (along with getting the 24th pick, which comes with more value to a team like Charlotte), then the move is a no-brainer. If Wizards fans want to be irked at someone screwing them, it should be directed toward Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert and not necessarily Jordan. Both are easy targets in any case.

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ShareBullets: A Q&A with Kemba Walker and some links…

Before Monday’s Wizards-Bobcats game, I headed to the Charlotte locker room while it was open to the media. Tumbleweeds. The Cats’ beat reporter from the Charlotte Observer wasn’t even sent to cover the game. Go figure. In any case, upon my entry into the threshold, some eyes turned toward me, and then quickly looked away. I could’ve sworn that Kemba Walker immediately looked at me, deadpanned, and said, “No.” Can’t blame the Bobcats players. Not. At. All. But, Kemba did end up speaking with me — perfectly willing and perfectly nice about it, he was. So here that goes…

KYLE WEIDIE: Going from winning a championship at UConn to being on the worst team in the NBA, who is giving the best advice on how to deal with the drastic environment change and what are they saying?

KEMBA WALKER: “Nobody really, just the people that’s around me on an everyday basis, like my coaching staff, Rod Higgins, just everyone who’s just been around … my teammates, just doing a great job of keeping me positive and making sure that, regardless of the losses, that I’m still getting better.”

Do you tell yourself anything… anything extra to get motivated to play? Read more »

Someone had to be the first to throw a flagrant elbow after the Ron Artest-James Harden incident. And if Vegas had set odds, Charlotte’s Tyrus Thomas, a guy who recently got in a physical confrontation with his coach, might have been one of the favorites. Last night in Washington, he delivered.

No, it wasn’t a violent, or even wholly, apparently intentional blow. If you were following Twitter at the time, you might have even seen comment that Thomas delivered a phantom elbow to the chops of Washington’s James Singleton, that he didn’t really connect. And, perhaps, that the referees had found their first post-Artest victim of hyper-senstitive, swift reaction (although Artest — Metta World Peace – has yet to receive game suspension punishment from the league himself). Let’s watch…

Hard to concretely tell from that video. And personally, I didn’t see the play unfold while attending the game at the Verizon Center. But the refs immediately hit Thomas with a flagrant-2 technical foul and stopped the game for a more in-depth video review. Not long after they were done watching, Thomas was ejected from the game. A muted elbow swing or not, the referees obviously saw enough to make an educated decision. What they heard, however, likely played an even larger role in the punishment than the visuals.

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Break out the Yakety-Sax, the slide-whistle and whatever other devices you need to comically convey a professional(ish) basketball match-up between the 12-44 Washington Wizards and the 7-47 Charlotte Bobcats … it’s time for the Lottery Toilet Bowl! Before you potentially watch basketball action that will likely later lead you to using an abrasive scrub on your retinas, John Pettice (@BobcatsPlanet) of BobcatsPlanet.com, along with TAI’s Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) and Ryan Gracia (@rgracia2378) are here to provide three answers to three questions. Let it begin, I think…

#1) How are the Wizards/ Bobcats actively trying to tank?

DIAMOND: Whether by intention or injuries, the Wiz are ramping up PT for the lackluster Jan Vesely (averaging 32 mpg in April) and the bench mob, while cutting back on John Wall’s minutes. Wall played less then 30 minutes in two of the past three games — that hasn’t happened since January. I had to recheck Charlotte’s depth chart — I love the Association but couldn’t come closing to naming the ‘Cats starting lineup off the top of my head. Apparently a guy named “Cory Higgins” is getting major minutes and just led them in scoring. That is all.

GRACIA: The season is effectively over for both teams. There’s a better chance that the players have already begun planning for their summer vacations (because, ya know, it’s either that or blow it in the club), than begun planning for an undefeated end to the season. These are two very young teams with little playoff experience between them. So with the playoffs already out of the picture, they may question the importance of continuing to play hard and therefore may not give their utmost effort for every play … to put it nicely.

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Washington Wizards power forward Andray Blatche has never been considered a high riser, but he is a legit 6’11″ with super lanky arms. This season Blatche’s subpar vertical is more noticeable than ever, and he consistently struggles to finish from close range. According to HoopData.com, Blatche is shooting a career-low 58-percent at the rim (31-53). Against the Charlotte Bobcats on Wednesday night, he attempted a season-high nine field-goals at the basket, but missed four of them. This is why Andray’s one-hand power slam last Sunday on Jermaine O’Neal of the Boston Celtics created so many “Woah, did that really just happen?” reactions. Enter opposing power forward Tyrus Thomas of the Bobcats and his 469 career blocks. You’re probably getting a feeling where this is headed.

Thomas tallied nine swats against the Wizards last night, five of them came at Andray’s expense. Thomas’s block party on Blatche sparked cascades of hometown boos upon the maligned Wizard, a commonplace in the Verizon Center these days.  Even though Blatche ended up with a solid performance — 17 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, two steals and only one turnover while sitting out the entire 4th quarter in Washington’s 92-75 victory — most fans will remember how ‘Dray looked like a 45-year old trying to jump, not a 25-year old.

Thomas nearly recorded a triple-double, which impressed Charlotte head coach Paul Silas. The NBA veteran who played in 1,254 career games and coached 828 then referenced a famous one-liner of a former GOP Presidential contender when talking about Thomas’ night:

“I thought it was 9, 9, 9 on this thing right here [final box score]… talk about Herman Cain, but it was actually nine, nine, thirteen. He scored thirteen points and nine blocks and nine rebounds. That is pretty awesome.”

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With a 97-91 win over the Bobcats in Charlotte on Sunday evening, the Washington Wizards propelled themselves into the territory of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls circa 2002-03, the last season that saw an NBA team have only three wins on the road, both mentioned teams having achieved the feat. Worth noting, however, that the Bulls finished 30-52 that year, the Cavaliers just 17-65. Also worth noting, the Wizards have three road games left — at Indiana, at Boston and at Cleveland — so three on the season might not be the magic number.

Cleveland was admittedly tanking to get LeBron James in 2002-03. Enough said. And that Chicago team, fresh off taking a young point guard in Jay Williams in the 2002 draft to pair with the promise of Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Jamaal Crawford and Marcus Fizer, had all the hope in the world. It only took about eight more seasons with middling success and another rebuild for Chicago to become any sort of playoff threat. And if you EVER see John Wall on a motorcycle…

The Wizards are now 20-56, significant because they won’t tie a franchise record for least wins in an 82-game season at 19. They currently have the third worst record in the NBA after Cleveland’s 15 wins and Minnesota’s 17 wins, but with six games left, they are dangerously close to falling back in the lottery odds with Toronto at 21 wins, Sacramento at 22 and New Jersey at 23.

The Players.

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The most frustrating part about the Washington Wizards is that on the road, their main, young players often lose so much focus, concentration and aggression … and it clearly affects the team as a whole. Guys like Andray Blatche, Nick Young and JaVale McGee are young — 24, 25 and 23 respectively — but they’ve now been in the league a considerable amount of time and should not be going through break-downs so frequently and consistently.

One reason I think Wizards fans are tired about hearing excuses about age is that you have guys like Kevin Durant (22), Russell Westbrook (22), Al Horford (23), Kevin Love (22), among others, around the league playing at much more solid, dependable levels. Is it the type of mental player Ernie Grunfeld is drafting? Is it the player development? And none of this is to say that these players haven’t made improvement over the years, but it’s been a very painstaking process. Does the scouting process need to be re-evaluated? Is it already being re-evaluated? One can only wonder if the correct calculations are being made between the potential a talented prospect might bring and hubris notions from team management that they can change the mindset of such talent that might actually have a longer struggle on the path of mental development.

In any case, pounding on the mental rocks of those Wizards is starting to ache in the heads of those having to watch the games.

I used to frequently do game blogs (or game accounts) on this site. I stopped doing them so much because they can be tedious and long. On Sunday, I meticulously watched a recording of Saturday night’s Wizards-Bobcats game in several chunks, re-watching most all plays multiple times and documenting what I saw. Hopefully it will give a good depiction of what went on in the game beyond the box score and other game accounts. Unfortunately, it’s the chronicling of the Wizards’ eighteenth road loss of the season in 18 tries, a 104-89 defeat at the hands the Charlotte Bobcats without Gerald Wallace. Read more »