Posts tagged ‘Ernie Grunfeld’

Washington Wizards, Minnesota Timberwolves… on a Sunday afternoon when you will likely be watching playoff football, the Wizards will be trying to secure their first win of the season. For today’s 3-on-3, we have Benjamin Polk from the ESPN TrueHoop Network T-Wolves blog, A Wolf Among Wolves, along with TAI’s Sam Permutt and yours truly, Kyle Weidie. Three questions, three answers starts now…

#1) That David Kahn fellow… Can the future of the franchise be trusted in his hands? And with Ricky Rubio playing well, how much credit does he get for taking advantage of Ernie Grunfeld by sending him the always underachieving Mike Miller and Randy Foye for the pick that brought Rubio to Minnesota?

PERMUTT: I don’t pretend to know whether Kahn can be trusted… and that’s what makes him such an entertaining GM.  He’s like the guy in your fantasy league who you secretly admire because he picks with no regard for predicted rank—except he has a real team!  As for Grunfeld flipping the fifth pick into Miller and Foye, I still say that was a solid move for both teams.  The fact that it turned into Rubio two years later is good for the T-Wolves (and Kahn), but Grunfeld shouldn’t be blamed.

POLK: You know, I really have no idea. Although Kahn has certainly made more than his share of personnel mistakes, I do feel like his rep as a bumbler has been exaggerated  by his abrasive personality and the weird things he says. That said, the Rubio/Miller-Foye trade is, in my opinion, the best thing he’s ever done. Now if he’d just found some way to avoid taking Jonny Flynn at six…

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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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Let’s do this again, shall we? The Wizards take on the Celtics tonight in the second game of their, home-and-home set, this one in Boston at 7:30 PM ET. And while Washington finally showed some effort in their fourth game of the season, some wonder if it was enough, or if they will simply improve upon it. If anything, it’s a chance for the Wiz Kids with their young legs to show they are capable of taking advantage of a veteran team. Three questions, three answers with TAI’s Adam McGinnis, Rashad Mobley and John Converse Townsend… 3-on-3 starts now…

#1. John Wall finally had a good game statistically against Boston in D.C. (19 points on 6-13 shooting, 7-9 free-throws with eight assists, one turnover and seven rebounds), but how good of a job did he do leading the team? How was his body language?

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“I’m a better player than the last time I was here, that’s for sure,” proclaimed Roger Mason Jr. on Monday night, after the fourth day of Washington Wizards training camp. Furthermore, he said, “I’m a better player than I was in San Antonio.”

At least this is what the Wizards are hoping for, but to what degree remains to be seen. Regardless of his chances to show himself as a player, Mason knows the role he signed up for in his return stint with Washington.

“My role is just to share some of the knowledge that I’ve learned,” said Mason. ”Learning from guys like Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, you know, pros… being with Amar’e Stoudemire. Those are things that I can bring to Andray Blatche, to let him know how Tim Duncan prepares for games. To let John Wall know how Tony Parker prepares for games. They won championships. So my role now is to come here and teach these guys what champions do.”

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[Roger Mason Jr. - via Flickr/Keith Allison]

It’s now being widely reported that Roger Mason Jr. — native son of D.C., attendee of Sidwell Friends/Good Counsel, UVA Cavalier — will soon sign with the Washington Wizards, making it his second stint with the team. Teams can officially sign players at 2 pm on Friday, just before training camp is scheduled to commence. The Post’s Michael Lee reports that Mason will be in Washington, ready to join the team.

How do I feel about this? Iffy, yet content. For one, the signing fits the Ernie Grunfeld mold. The Wizards team president values the presence of veterans, and even though the Wizards hopefully aren’t promising Mason too much court action, nor are overpaying him (the veteran’s minimum, they say, which is just fine), Washington likely offers Mason the most comfort and opportunity over other potential suitors. The Boston Celtics were also said to be interested in Mason; in that situation, Roger might’ve easily found himself relegated to those spillover seats behind the bench, following the inactive dress code, and wondering how and why.

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Big Bad John Wall wants to know. Beckley Mason, Rashad Mobley, John Converse Townsend and Kyle Weidie ask and answer hot topic questions about the Washington Wizards.

MOBLEY: Do we hold Ernie Grunfeld, Flip Saunders and the Wizards to any expectations during this abbreviated season, or do we just assume no significant strides will be made until next year?

MASON: My expectations for this team aren’t altered a bit. The summer is a time when, from a basketball standpoint, players need to be spending their own dime to work out with the best trainers possible. The lockout shouldn’t have affected that reality. Flip probably wishes he had more time with his newest players, but an extra week of training camp wasn’t going to solve the problems with McGee and Blatche, or help the Wizards to land a major free agent.

MOBLEY: John Wall has raised expectations for the Wizards with his play this summer, so it is entirely fair to hold Grunfeld and Flip to the same standard. But given that Grunfeld  hinted that he plans on using the amnesty clause next year, he may have bought both he and Flip an extra year.  However, if the Wizards win 25 games or less, a new coach/GM combo should reap the amnesty benefits.

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“Basketball in my country is not so popular, but after this night, I think — I hope, that the basketball will be more popular. I will do my best to help that.”
-Jan Vesely, Draft Night 2011

Jan Vesely wants to put Czech Republic basketball on the map. Good luck.

“The Czech media have been really lame covering the story,” direct-messaged Yon Pulkrabek via Twitter. I’d sent out a tweet wondering if any follower spoke Czech, and the instant world of the Internet connected us.

Pulkrabek says he’s lived in Prague permanently for the past decade, working as a translator, journalist, and editor. He grew up in upstate New York to Czech émigré parents and has been a fan of the Boston Celtics since the 1980s, keeping up with their recent success thanks to League Pass, streaming web video and his DVR. Now, Pulkrabek has taken an obvious interest in the Washington Wizards.

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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 »

The ESPN TrueHoop Network NBA Mock Draft 2011 is going down today. The first five picks are listed below and then it’s the Wizards’ turn, the decision made by a consensual agreement amongst the contributors to Truth About It.net. Keep checking back below the text of this post for updates on the entire first round.

1. Kyrie Irving, Cleveland Cavaliers [Cavs: The Blog]
2. Derrick Williams, Minnesota Timberwolves [A Wolf Among Wolves]
3. Brandon Knight, Utah Jazz [Salt City Hoops]
4. Jonas Valanciunas, Cleveland Cavaliers [Cavs: The Blog]
5. Kemba Walker, Toronto Raptors [Raptors Republic]

And with the 6th pick, the Washington Wizards select…

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A D.C. basketball court picture, some words, a link, some words about links, commentary, NBADRAFTGOOGLESEO, and some more links…

[Alice Deal H.S. - Washington, D.C. - photo: K. Weidie]

At the risk of sounding expected and generic in critiquing a general sports column meant to appeal to the masses that was unexpectedly generic (at least according to what should be expected of the Washington Post), I’ll point out Jason Reid’s column in the Post last Monday about this new and innovative concept in the NBA called “defense” (sometimes spelled with a capital ‘D’), and how the Wizards should, you know, draft for it, with a very long-winded introductory sentence to this bloggy post of links.

Reid’s lede: Read more »