Posts tagged ‘don maclean’

Let me take you back in the history of basketball, one which we are certainly NOT doomed to repeat. To the 1920s, Washington, D.C. ….

Photos via Shorpy.com.

[1925. Bob Grody & manager Ray Kennedy, Palace Laundry]

[Feb. 15, 1926. Washington, D.C. Palace team, entry in the American basketball league, being taught Charleston by Vivian Marinelli. Left to right: Kearns, Manager Kennedy, Conway, woman playing piano, Miss Marinelli, Grody, and Saunders]

Last week a D.C. neighborhood blog, New Columbia Heights, posted some very old photos of a Washington pro basketball team from the 1920s, the Palace Five Laundrymen.

The Palace Five played in the American Basketball League (ABL) from 1925 to 1927 and were owned by the racist former owner of the Washington Redskins, George Preston Marshall. Most interesting to me, they played in Columbia Heights, D.C., mere blocks from where I live today.

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The Wizards’ season is over. And while there will certainly be reflections on said season to come, sometimes you gotta look way back on the franchise’s history via the basketball cards I collected when my fandom was being cultivated by the early 90s Washington Bullets.

One Summer Don MacLean worked so hard that his game improved with increased confidence. Well, at least that’s what this fake headline Upper Deck card says after he won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award in 1993-94, his second season in the league.

After being drafted out of UCLA by the Detroit Pistons with the 19th overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft, MacLean was immediately traded to the Los Angeles Clippers with William Bedford for Olden Polynice and two second round picks. But MacLean didn’t stay in his Los Angeles hometown for long. In early October he was sent back East, again with Bedford, to the Washington Bullets for John “Hot Plate” Williams. Bedford was immediately waived by the Bullets while MacLean spent the first three years of his career in DC.

People used to call MacLean a gym rat. In November of 2000 as a member of the Miami Heat, MacLean became the first player to be suspended under the NBA’s steroid policy, which was in its second season of testing. As a result, Charles Barkley famously said, “I’ve seen Don MacLean naked, and he doesn’t use steroids.” The two never played together, but were both in the 1999 Houston Rockets training camp.

To be fair, accounts hold that MacLean was always a hard worker. Of course, those same accounts also hold that MacLean was an obnoxious John McEnroe type of character on the court. What accounts? “MacLean Deluxe,” which was written by Sports Illustrated’s Curry Kirkpatrick in February 1992 while MacLean was still at UCLA, comes recommended.

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When the DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg was in Vegas, he tweeted the question:

“Is mike miller the wizards’ best white player since….gugliotta?“

Dan later followed up in a Sports Bog post saying:

I was asking some of the other media members who would be the answer to this question: “Mike Miller is the Wizards/Bullets best white player since…..” There was no consensus. I will keep working on this. In a purely jesting, non-offensive way.

Steinberg’s nomination of Tom Gugliotta seems like a choice with which most of Wizards nation could concur. But thinking back, the organization hasn’t exactly had a history of illustrious contributions from the white man on the basketball court.

All of this got me thinking … and research would have to respond to these thoughts.

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The friendly bloggers (and their fans) at the Cleveland sports-based Waiting For Next Year have taken upon the task of creating a Mark Price-themed t-shirt (h/t Sporting News).

Price, the current Atlanta Hawks shooting coach, may still be right for Cleveland Cavaliers fans, but that’s far from the case for Wizards/Bullets fans.

A reminder of how the Cavs fleeced former Bullets GM, John Nash (from this May ’08 post):