Posts tagged ‘david stern’

Representatives of the owners and players emerged from the umpteenth NBA lockout negotiation session on Wednesday (actually, Thursday — this one was of the 12-hour variety, 1 pm to 1 am), with an agreement to continue to negotiate on Thursday. Neither black nor white smoke emerged, but rather a bunch of smoke blown up our collective butts. That and the telltale sign from covering media via Twitter: ‘Two different press conferences, you know what that means.’ It means no basketball.

No news is not good news, it’s no news. Yet, people are forced to look for silver linings, some citing the mere fact that NBA commissioner David Stern “stopped the clock” (his words) on a previously given ultimatum of a 5 pm Wednesday deadline (for a player acceptance of the owners’ offer) as a positive sign. Afterward, neither side could publicly say whether progress was made.

“I can’t characterize whether they showed flexibility or not in certain system issues,” said player rep Derek Fisher. “Nothing was worked out today,” said Stern. Media sources have, however, indicated a semblance of progress. “Progress was made on three system issues,” wrote the Twitter account @WojYahooNBA.

When asked by Howard Beck of the New York Times if the NBA was in a position where they could give the players some semblance of what they want (in terms of in exchange for a 50-50 Basketball-Related Income (BRI) split) Stern said, “I don’t know how you would define ‘some semblance’.” Exactly.* Nothing appears as it seems, or vice versa.

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Links, commentary, strange connections, and silly photos of Gilbert Arenas, randomness…

Bryon Russell will be forever cemented into Michael Jordan lore. You know exactly why. And evidently, Russell holds a solid spot in Washington Wizards/Gilbert Arenas lore as well.

Because of Jordan’s last shot as a Chicago Bull, a game six and championship winner that took place in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 14, 1998, which came courtesy of a Jordan push-off of Russell and subsequent burial of the Utah Jazz, Russell and Jordan will always be connected. The moment has been in/on video games, video game commercials, posters, artwork,  t-shirts, books, and captured via wide-ranging multimedia design. No one has been, and perhaps no one will ever be, more remembered for having a basketball shot hit on them. The rest of it travels down an unexpected road.

After the shot marinated in basketball history for over four years Russell teamed up with Jordan on the 2002-03 Washington Wizards, a team surrounded with strife and disaster that failed to even make the playoffs in Jordan’s final NBA season. Russell averaged 4.5 points and 3.0 rebounds over 19.8 minutes per game and appeared in 70 contests. Russell then joined the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers, a team that epically failed to be a team in the NBA Finals against the Detroit Pistons. No championship for Bryon. Russell played 16 total minutes during that playoff run, the swan songs for the careers of Karl Malone and Horace Grant, and the end of the Kobe/Shaq era; Gary Payton was also involved.

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It’s not like the Washington Wizards official website was ever a beacon of circus fun where you’d lose hours of your life trapped in an Internet conundrum of entertainment — where food, water, family members, and bathroom breaks have no bearing on quality of life. Nope, it was not like that at all.

And in this post-lockout world that NBA fans find themselves in, buried under the fecal matter of rhetoric from both sides of the aisle? Well, the Wizards website looks a bit different, much worse, and now most aptly compared to the sports fandom of an 11-year old girl (no offense, 11-year old girls).

You see, with this lockout, NBA teams have been required to scrub all images of their players from their http:// (there are legalities involved, etc. — read this report by TrueHoop’s Kevin Arnovitz) — the imagerial evisceration of post-suspension Gilbert Arenas seemed to develop over days, this other thing… overnight (although, after weeks of planning).

Let’s take a screen-shot review… Read more »

The basketball world knew who the Washington Wizards were going to select with the sixth pick in the NBA Draft well before David Stern took the podium.

The Wizards, longtime fans of Jan Vesely since his emergence on the international scene in 2009, had considered selecting him in last year’s draft, before he decided to return to his Belgrade-based club Partizan for another year. And on draft afternoon, the paper trail spoke louder than ever. The Wizards’ sales department had invited staff members from the Czech Republic embassy to the team draft party in downtown Washington.

Now, while the selection might not have mystery, the player certainly was. To some extent, Vesely was misrepresented—even undervalued—having been surrounded by the popular, though incomplete, rhetoric from just a handful of available scouting reports and YouTube highlights. But the wing from Ostrava, Czech Republic, who has played basketball professionally since he was 16 years old, was the perfect pick for the Wizards. But you don’t have to take my word for it, consider head coach Flip Saunders’ review: Read more »

[Editor's Note: Beckley Mason has contributed to Wizards player previews on TAI, this is his first piece. You can read more about him here. - Kyle]

In late-September when Wizards owner Ted Leonsis spoke publicly about the NBA owners’ position heading into the 2011 CBA agreement, he quickly learned that David Stern will not accept anyone breaking the company line in the form of a 100 Grand — a fine, not the candy bar. As owner of the Washington Capitals, Leonsis has come to appreciate the benefits of the NHL’s hard salary cap rules.

“In a salary-cap era — and soon a hard salary cap in the NBA like it is in the NHL — if everyone can pay the same amount to the same amount of players, it’s the small nuanced differences that matter,” Leonsis told the press at a breakfast reception he hosted for the business community in Northern Virginia.

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CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell recently revealed that in late December 2009, the NBA suspended production of retro Washington Bullets merchandise as a result of ‘Locker Room Gun-Gate 2009-10: A Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton-John Wayne-Peter Vecsey Story.’

Now, Rovell reports that, “the league has approved licensees to make retro Bullets items again.”

In TruthAboutIt.net’s never-ending quest to search for the truth, about it, site investigators have discovered the behind the scenes process of removing Washington Bullets retro items from production. The following footage has never been seen before, ever. I’m talking never. Except for now.

Click the image below to begin your journey
(RSS feed readers, you have to actually come to the site … it’s an animated GIF ‘n’ stuff.) Read more »

Gazo the Prankster just never made it to the big screen, or internet screen, or any screen. But you could certainly tell that the cartoon rendition of “Gazo” was modeled off the same blueprint as Gilbert Arenas.

On Friday, in the aftermath of the mythical Gazo the Prankster serving as a character witness for Arenas (via The Washington City Paper), the mold for the cartoon appeared in cartoon form … well actually, “illustrated” with some sort of art medium.

It’s not exactly the Gazo the Prankster kids might watch, but the courtroom sketches of Gilbert may be the closest we ever come to seeing him in cartoon form. Here they go.

Here, Arenas seems to be shrugging his shoulders, with a tinge of Alfred E. Neuman. The cartoon version of Judge Robert Morin seems to be an elder Keith Olbermann-looking kind of fellow, with perhaps a little bit of a perm up front.

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A random political protest in Dupont Circle

In case you missed it last week, NBA commish David Stern strolled into a Harlem barbershop and displayed a skill he’s masterfully crafted, that of the silver-tongued politician. Watch for yourself.

I love how he tells almost everyone “you are right,” before making his own point, or says things like “good question,” while avoiding being patronizing.

Funny, when I say those things in public I come across as a condescending S.O.B. … guess I shouldn’t be telling the homeless guy ‘good question’ after he asks me for some change.
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David Stern’s Dream Scenario:
Blake Griffin to the Wizards and Ricky Rubio to the Knicks
(that’s right, Stern would rather Griffin in DC than OKC)

Well folks, we made it … to NBA Draft Lottery evening. It’s been a while since I’ve cared about one of these. Four years of Wizards playoff action did it’s job to erase some of the memories. And when the Wizards last won the lottery in ’01, I was away in college, a bit lost in my following of the team.

Part of me has been somewhat giddy as I’ve gone through today, knowing that there is a chance. But then again, I’m a Wizards fan … I’m pretty sure we will NOT be landing in the top two. Guess finding a balance between these two is keeping medium, as Jim Zorn would advise.

I’m not really a superstitious person … no consistent lucky charms, just an odd infatuation with May 19th (so much so that I ran the ESPN lottery machine 19 times today, results below).

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I really don’t care for Reggie Miller…..the television commentator. I certainly appreciated Reggie when he took down the hated Knicks with playoff heroics, once giving ol’ Spike Lee the choke sign, telling him to shut the eff up.

But Reggie on TV is just a spiraling, gangly, screeching, whiny sac of hot mess, and he’s often wrong too (well, maybe not often, but surely much more than should be allowed for someone in his position).

Reggie is no Mark Jackson, Doug Collins, Hubie Brown, or even his sister, Cheryl Miller, who is much, much better at her job.

I’ve heard some refer to Reggie as a “turd” and a “weenie bag”…and that’s just the censored opinion of the one person audience who is the tenant of my apartment.

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