[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. 20, Washington Wizards vs Los Angeles Lakers in D.C.; contributors: Rashad Mobley and Adam McGinnis from the Verizon Center, and Kyle Weidie from behind the T.V.]

Days Like This. Bradley Beal grimaces after a tough travelling call was made against him late in the game.

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This is former Wizard and current New Jersey Net assistant coach Popeye Jones. Enjoy him.
Make him feel at home.

[photo: K. Weidie - taken before the Wizards 2011-12 home opener vs. New Jersey]

The unknown Nene era kicks off in the swamplands of New Jersey tonight, where the unknown is even less known. And the basketball part of this draft lottery matchup between the 10-34 Washington Wizards and the 15-32 New Jersey Nets could also go in any number of unknown directions. Isn’t NBA basketball exciting? Tonight’s 3-on-3 takes a different direction in that it features all New Jersey Nets bloggers from the ESPN TrueHoop blog, Nets Are Scorching. Three questions, three answers with Justin DeFeo (@JustinDeFeo), Chris Hooker (@chrishooker9) and Devin Kharpertain (@uuords) starts now… Read more »

[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. Click here for cumulative DC Council 3-star ratings over the course of the season. Game 35 contributors: Adam McGinnis (@adammcginnis) and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It) from the Verizon Center, and Rashad Mobley (@rashad20) from the television screen.]

Score

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In going down 102-95 to an Orlando Magic team that appears to be suffering from mental fatigue due to uncertain cohesiveness, at least the Washington Wizards looked better at losing than they have in the past. Similar to the second half of the Milwaukee game, Randy Wittman opted to keep Nick Young and JaVale McGee benched in favor of a starting lineup of John Wall, Jordan Crawford, Chris Singleton, Trevor Booker and Kevin Seraphin. And while this unit struggled out of the gate, they did their jobs and stayed mostly within themselves.

Certainly there were mistakes. Furthermore, missed shots. All to be expected from young team making an earnest attempt while lacking size against a specimen like Dwight Howard and shot-makers who can be trusted to not disrupt the offense. Crawford caught fire with 14 points in the third quarter to go with four assists, giving him a hand in most of the Wizards’ 29 points scored in the period to Orlando’s 25. Once trailing by 17 points in the first half, Washington was down just 71-70 heading into the final 12 minutes. Unfortunately Crawford got cold in the fourth and went 0-for-6 from the field.

But John Wall picked up the slack. He scored 10 straight points for Washington after a timeout at the 10:27 mark of the last quarter when the Wizards were down 79-71. Wall capped his efforts with an assist to Mo Evans for a 3-pointer; it was a 13-4 run that tied the game at 83 with 6:56 left. But back-to-back threes by Orlando’s Jameer Nelson and Ryan Anderson after a Magic timeout at the 6:34 mark helped bury Washington. A long Nelson offensive rebound resulting in a Hedo Turkoglu 3-pointer that put the Magic up 100-91 with 1:32 left served as the dagger. But the point is that the Wizards fought, as a team, and with strong contributions from Booker, Singleton and a handful of others in addition to Wall and Crawford.

The Wizards SAID WHAT?

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[We've posted this before, but why not again? ... Patrick Ewing enjoying a pre-game Pop Tart.]

On any given night, you can turn on SportsCenter and hear the names JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard. McGee gets mentioned for his dazzling dunks and puzzling basketball decisions, and Howard, with his looming free agency sprinkled in with 20 point/20 rebound performances, is equally good ESPN fodder. Even as the Wizards and Magic prepare to face off for the third time this season, the names McGee and Howard are very much in the NBA news cycle.  McGee was benched during the second half of last night’s game against Milwaukee, and trade rumors with Howard’s name seem to be picking up steam. To get you ready for that and much more, Eddy Rivera (@erivera7) from the Orlando Magic ESPN TrueHoop blog MagicBasketball.net, and both Rashad Mobley (@Rashad20) and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It) from Truth About It, will give you three answers to three questions…

#1) Who has the tougher coaching job the second half of the season: Stan Van Gundy, who will have to endure “The Dwight Howard Situation” much like George Karl had to do with Carmelo Anthony last year? Or Randy Wittman, who is the coach of 7-27 team that has no shot of even sniffing the playoffs?

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Look, Dwight Howard has long known that he does not want to be a member of the Orlando Magic past this season, so does it matter that his current team is in such disarray, losers of four games in a row with Howard calling out his teammates for effort? Probably not. In fact, it likely prompts GM Otis Smith even more to make a move, but it doesn’t make him any less desperate. (Read: this painfully drags on for Orlando up to the March 15 trade deadline… Have a fun next six weeks Magic fans!) So with Baby Dwight wanting a cure-all change of venue, but not able to cure-all as Superman himself, his team takes on the lowly Washington Wizards tonight, with Howard likely preparing to be as proud as a schoolyard bully (Orlando is favored by 10 points). This 3-on-3 drill prior to possibly just one of Howard’s last 23 games in a Magic uniform includes Nate Drexler (@natedrex) of TrueHoop Network blog MagicBasketball.net, along with TAI’s John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend) and yours truly, Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It). Three questions, three answers starts now…

#1) Which stat is more surprising? That the Washington Wizards have a higher offensive rebound rate (ORB%) than the Orlando Magic (0.261 ORB% compared to 0.259 for Orlando; league average is 0.264)?  NOTE: WAS eFG% = 0.442, 29th in NBA; ORL eFG% = 0.495, 9th in NBA)….

OR, that JaVale McGee is shooting worse on free-throws than Dwight Howard? (McGee is at 0.433 this season, 0.600 for his career; Howard is at 0.460 this season, 0.592 for his career.)

DREXLER: This is tough, because neither of these surprise me all that much. I suppose JaVale getting out sniped by Dwight from the charity stripe takes the cake, though. Look, when you have two bigs who shoot 60-percent and below for their careers, no amount of badness should catch you off guard, but McGee is getting close to 30-percent land! The biggest surprise of all is that no matter how hard I try to convince myself that JaVale McGee has star potential it just isn’t so. Guy sure is athletic, though. Why is it that athletic guys can’t shoot free throws?

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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 6 contributors: Arish Narayen, Rashad Mobley and Kyle Weidie.]

Score

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Hello Orlando, the team with a close, recent relationship with the Washington Wizards, for obvious reasons vis-à-vis the Arenas-Lewis trade, but otherwise, they are in the same division, the NBA’s Southeast. And at that, Orlando has won 10 out of the last 12 meetings, both Washington wins coming in early 2010 (Jan. 8 in D.C. and Feb. 5 in Orlando) with a Wizards starting lineup of Randy Foye, Caron Butler, Mike Miller, Antawn Jamison and Brendan Haywood each time. Otherwise, Magic dominates Wizards. For today’s 3-on-3 we have Eddy Rivera (@erivera7) from the Orlando Magic ESPN TrueHoop blog MagicBasketball.net, and both Rashad Mobley and Kyle Weidie from Truth About It.net. Three questions, three answers starts now…

#1) With Dwight Howard in the balance, how anxious should Magic fans be over the state of their franchise? Will there be any solace in what they might eventually get for him in a trade?

MOBLEY: Magic fans should be feeling anxious. They went to the Finals with Shaq, lost to Hakeem and the Rockets and then lost Shaq to L.A., then gained Dwight Howard, went back to the NBA Finals, lost to Kobe and the Lakers. Before the season, when it looked like Howard was going to be traded to the Lakers for Bynum and Odom or Gasol, there were still reasons for Orlando fans to be encouraged.  Now all trade talks have slowed significantly, and threat of Howard walking for nothing looms large.

RIVERA: Well, the anxiety level will be at stratospheric levels until Dwight Howard makes a decision. The only consolation is that Magic fans already went through this exercise with Shaq in 1996. There’s a legitimate concern, with ownership eyeing veterans in any Howard trade, that the Orlando Magic will take the wrong path in trying to reload rather than rebuild.

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It began with Chris Miller of Comcast SportsNet Washington innocuously asking Wizards rookie Shelvin Mack what he likes to do with his teammates to relax. It ended up with team’s young superstar, John Wall, informing the media how Superman cheates at video games.

Mack boasted that he was the best gamer on the team, which Wall was later asked about, and he vehemently disagreed with the accuracy of Mack’s claims.

Wall then revealed that sometime during the lockout, he lost to Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic (for now) in ‘Call of Duty’ because Howard hired professionals. Yes, D12 brought in ringers to teach Wall a lesson, evidently resulting in repeated beat-downs.

[Note to all school kids out there reading this, especially my nephew Jacob McGinnis, becoming a video game pro is not a suggested career path ,and a NBA star employing you for this skill is highly unlikely.]

“My team got whooped in Call of Duty to Dwight’s team, but he cheated. He went and got these two guys that play Call of Duty all day long…like they don’t have a job. They got 30 kills every time. They just sit at home and play all day. They beat us bad…..they ranked in the nation. He (Howard) went and snuck, got those two on his team…Ringers got us. Every time you turned the game back on, we’re getting killed again.”

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As I left today’s All-Star practice media session, one of the workers at the Los Angeles Convention Center asked me what it was like to be on the practice floor with all the players and media.  I pondered for a minute, and then I told him to imagine what it’s like when a men’s college basketball team wins the NCAA tournament, and people frantically run on the floor.  Then I told him to imagine that he had to look for 24 people in that frantic crowd, while trying to get audio, video and whatever else was needed.

His one-word response? “Damn.”

Despite the madhouse that was today’s post-practice media session, there were uplifting and useful moments to be had.  The morning started with Justin Friedlander dunking home his 63,000th shot  to raise brain tumor awareness.  Justin was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor called an optic nerve glioma back in 2009, and he vowed to shoot 63,000 shots — one for everyone diagnosed with a primary brain tumor per year.  Justin, who hails from Rockville, Maryland, visited the Verizon Center last year prior to the Wizards/Pacers game, so it was nice to see him complete his journey.  All the coaches and players from both the East and West All-Star squads shook his hand, and signed a t-shirt for him. Very moving stuff.

Next, the East and West All-Stars conducted the kind of practice that even Allen Iverson would not turn down.  Gregg Popovich, who was mic’d up during the entire session, walked through some very remedial plays he planned on running in tomorrow night’s All-Star game, and then he just relaxed and watched like every other fan.  At one point he ran up to Blake Griffin and said, “I’m a huge fan of yours!” Griffin just laughed and said thank you.

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