Here to provide the DC Council Opening Statements (formerly “Need to Know Basis”) for Washington’s third game of the season in Boston are TAI’s Rashad Mobley (@rashad20) and guest Jeff Clark (@celticsblog), who writes about the Celtics at the SB Nation blog CelticsBlog, along with an additional game prediction from Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It).

Wizards Starters (0-2):

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

Celtics Starters (1-2):

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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 »

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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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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Everyone is talking about Courtney Lee’s missed ‘layup’ that would have won the game for Orlando. Some even compared it to Nick Anderson missing four late free-throws  in game one of the 1995 NBA Finals, also played on June 7th  [via Slam].

Mentioning Nick Anderson sounds very “woe is us” from Orlando. Thing is, true fans aren’t making the association, rather some professional MSMers.  These hacks need to be called out:

1) D-bag from the AP [via Sports Illustrated]:

A shot that couldn’t have been much easier.

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