ShareBullets: links, shares, stories, and irreverence…

The San Antonio Spurs recently released some new, alternate jerseys, which you can find modelled above by Kawhi Leonard. Here is what the Internet thinks of them:

Rick Pych, president of business operations, Spurs Sports & Entertainment:

The new design simply features our iconic ‘spur’ logo and it is positioned over the heart as it has such enormously deep roots with our team, fans and the entire community. It’s the first-ever NBA jersey logo without any writing or peripheral design on the front of the jersey…

Kelly Dwyer, Ball Don’t Lie: Read more »

Truth About It.net will turn a whole five years old at the end of this October.

Hard to believe/interesting. Nonetheless, over the life of the site from the 2007-08 season to 2011-12, we’ve seen/lived/suffered through 131 wins, 263 losses, four coaches, two owners, one GM/team president, one Phil Chenier mustache removal, and 56 total players (amazingly, 48 players over the last three seasons).

You may have heard of ESPN’s #NBArank project, now in year two. Now hear of#WizardsRank, where we rank each of those 56 players during Truth About It.net’s five-year run.

TAI anonymously polled 27 members of the Wizards pixel establishment — from mainstream media to new media, TAI staffers included, to a few pixel consumers (readers of the site) — and got 17 responses.

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Hamady N’diaye, left, at 2010 Wizards Media Day

You heard right, John Wall is the longest tenured Washington Wizard. He was drafted first overall in 2010; Kevin Seraphin and Trevor Booker were taken in the same draft, but acquired via trade. Wall’s 4,992 NBA minutes are also twice the number logged by JaVale McGee, the Wizard with the second most minutes played over the last two seasons. Yep, 32 players aside from Wall have donned a Wizards uniform in the 148 team games over the 26-plus months since the “Game Changer” was introduced to the District on a red carpet. By the beginning of the 2012-13 season, the total number of Wall’s teammates in Washington will have climbed to 37, at least.

All those boarding on and off the USS Wizards had memorable moments good or bad (or infamous). Mike Bibby played the least amount of minutes over the last two seasons, but did score a single basket for the Wiz, and Truth About It.net was there to capture his thought-provoking reaction. Mustafa Shakur saw 159 minutes of action, 24th most, and got a whole DC Sports Bog post dedicated to his jersey malfunction. Othyus Jeffers, 314 minutes, 21st most, is still remembered and missed by faithful followers of the team.

Hamady N’diaye played 83 total minutes, 28th most, and was also drafted in 2010 (56th overall), but spent much more time on the Verizon Center practice gym than he did under the lights of the main court. N’diaye, known as “H,” is still highly regarded by Wizards team executives. “Look at the meat hook!,” exclaimed one with endearment as N’diaye threw up a sweeping hook shot at the 2012 NBA Summer League in Las Vegas as a member of the Charlotte Bobcats; it missed.

What “H” is most remembered for is his positive attitude, his resilience during challenging life experiences, and his smile. Someone has to contrast the parade of bad characters who have hogged the attention of Wizards fans over recent seasons. What makes N’diaye’s story stick is that he comes from Senegal (discovered via the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders program); that he had to deal with escaping a questionable prep school basketball experience in the U.S.; and that he prevailed against the odds, graduated from Rutgers as the Big East Defensive POY, and got drafted by the NBA.

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[Fort Stevens Rec Center - NW Washington, DC - photo: K. Weidie]

As I get ready to take an extended summer vacation off to a location across the ocean, I can’t help how different this NBA summer feels. Yes, the lockout… But I’m also thinking about NBA players — who they are, how they are, where they are. Oh yea, and they’re also jumping across the pond lately.

NBA players are… themselves, for better or worse. Real people. I’ve known this. Covering the Wizards closely over the past couple of seasons has enforced this. It’s not breaking news.

It’s the coverage and opt-in exposure surrounding professional athletes as a whole, much less NBA players, that is vastly different now. Although, delving through the late David Halberstam’s brilliant book The Breaks Of The Game — about the world of pro basketball and the 1979-80 Portland Trailblazers — has helped me realize that while the times change fast, many principles simply get updated and don’t change much.

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[John Wall weaves his way to the hoop and draws a foul versus the Oklahoma City Thunder.]

It is axiomatic that the NBA is a copycat League, especially given the incestuous nature of most coaching/front office jobs. This season, there is a stunning lack of parity: eight teams have a realistic chance of winning the title (and that’s being a bit generous). The other twenty-two are either a) borderline top-tier, b) making aggressively mediocre moves, c) rebuilding, or d) owned by Michael Jordan. For rebuilding teams, the Oklahoma City Thunder are the gold standard.

An NBA front office can only pitch a Rebuild to a fan base for so long. Most passionate fans will eventually get tired of seeing a middling product on the court — there has to be ‘A Plan.’ Today, the language of The Rebuild abounds. Organizations are increasingly looking to the Thunder as a model that must be emulated in order to resurrect their franchises. Indeed, Oklahoma City’s ‘blue print’ is the prototypical example of a successful NBA rebuild.

Last year, the Thunder were a Pau Gasol offensive rebound away from forcing Game 7 against the Lakers. This year, at the trading deadline, Thunder GM Sam Presti added Kendrick Perkins to an already formidable, athletic front-court, presumably giving Oklahoma City the size to match up with any playoff contender. Hailed by many to be a case of Presti-fleecing-Ainge, the Perkins acquisition represents the culmination of a four year rebuilding process by the Thunder. After extending Perkins’ contract, the pieces are in place for several years of relevance.

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Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis transparently concedes rebuilds are messy and painful, as he asks fans for patience and faith while the roster is retooled for the future.  He forgot to mention the word that immediately came to mind after witnessing the Milwaukee Bucks 95-76 destruction of the Wizards on Tuesday night at the Verizon Center: Embarrassing. Those partaking in Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras festivities were better served than fans suffering through another demoralizing defeat.

Flip Saunders was disappointed that his backcourt did not respond to the challenge, Trevor Booker questioned the team’s heart, and John Wall admitted to playing terrible.

The Bucks, who the Wizards hammered just a few weeks prior, blew open a tight game in the second quarter and never were seriously challenged again. They toyed with the Wizards and were able to get any shot they wanted. Milwaukee has struggled with scoring all season, yet, they appeared to be high offensive juggernaut versus Wizards hapless defensive resistance.

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[Editor's note: Ryan Gracia is majoring in sports communication and journalism at George Mason University and freelances for work for TAI can be found here, here and here.]

{photo: A. McGinnis, TAI}

As my eyes wandered away from the court for a moment during Tuesday night’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks, a rarely-seen-before sight from my peripheral view quickly brought my attention back to the court. The Wizards’ 56^th pick in the 2010 draft was headed to the scorer’s table, getting ready to make just his fifth appearance all season. That sight got me smiling and fist-pumping – and definitely would have unintentionally gotten me on the Verizon Center “Fist Pump Cam” if it were happening then.

It wasn’t just the sight of Hamady N’diaye finally getting a chance to prove his worth that got me excited. It was simply seeing him jog to check in. Let me repeat: He showed excitement to play the sport he loves and actually jogged to the scorer’s table. N’diaye and his enthusiasm didn’t look like the typical substitute hopelessly aiming to show his rares amidst an unknown opportunity. But maybe the change turned out to be exactly that – hopeless at first, yet impactful in a 5:28 stint.

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This is Mike Bibby, son of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 32-year old member of “Team Dime” and post-game interview backwards hat wearer. Such an unwilling member of the Washington Wizards Bibby was, that on Monday he surrendered a scheduled payment of $6.2 million dollars for the 2011-12 season so he could relinquish hammer and hard hat contributions to Ted Leonsis’ rebuilding project. The Washington team owner subsequently called it, “a piece of unexpected and positive news for our franchise.”

Bibby might have avoided giving his only post-game home locker room interview as a member of the Wizards after a loss to the Dallas Mavericks last Saturday night had I not stopped him as he made his way toward the exit; most other members of the Washington professional basketball press corps were busy giving their attention to another member of Bibby’s now former team. In his answers, Bibby referred to the young Wizards team more as “they” than “us” — understandable, supposedly.

In the exclusive video below, Bibby talks exclusively to those allowed access to the Wizards locker room and answers a question, exclusively asked by someone else,  about getting into the scoring record book for the Washington Wizards, in a less than exclusive manner (as I’ll soon explain).

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When Ted Leonsis said there would be an increased emphasis on player development in his list of 101 Things (action item No. 29), specifically involving the D-League, Wizards followers gave a collective ‘We’ll believe it when we see it.’ Not so much in doubt of Leonsis’ words, but more so because they’ve been conditioned under the tenure of team president Ernie Grunfeld that development and building for the future was paid more of a whimsical, cursory attention, as the franchise’s number one team builder always seemed instructed to focus on winning in the now.

Not that Grunfeld and his team did not pay attention to the scouting and the draft, but rather, for a myriad excuses one could presumably always find (see: the Wizards’ D-League affiliate, the Wizards, being in Bismarck, North Dakota and/or supplying said team with players to develop wouldn’t best jibe with the intricate offensive system that past coach Eddie Jordan was trying to instruct). Essentially, the D-League has never been worth Grunfeld’s time, warranted or not, aside from sending down the likes of Peter John Ramos or Andray Blatche for a spell in the earlier days (2005-06), and when the affiliate franchise was much closer in Roanoke, Virginia (the Dazzle), or during last season when a franchise in flux was interested in taking a gander at cheap labor while likely appeasing the desires of league higher-ups to use the development league for it’s true intent.

In any case, upon surely leaving out detail on the past unknown team development protocol that will only be known to organization insiders, ideals toward positive future development efforts changed when 2010 draft pick (No. 56 overall) Hamady N’Diaye was assigned to the Dakota Wizards on January 5. But such a path to the basketball enlightenment for the one called “H” almost didn’t happen. Unsigned in the days leading up to training camp, sentiment from the team indicated that they’d rather N’Diaye take his talents overseas for a year or two, something those on the player’s side didn’t seem amicable toward. Rather than lose his rights completely, the Wizards ended up extending a contract tender to N’Diaye and ultimately signed him to the team for training camp and into the season. Now, after a taste of life in the big leagues, just a taste, Hamady works on his very raw skills in the landscape of bus rides and meager per diems.

In steps Joey Whelan.

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Happy Holidays and Happy December 24th. Whatever you’re doing today, hopefully your’e not working. And if you are, here’s to you. I’ll be kind of working … over at ESPN.com’s TrueHoop blog, I’ll be hosting the show today, kicking off the next six weekdays of various hosts from the TrueHoop Network. So throughout Friday I’ll be doing some things over there, and I’ll be doing some things over here at TAI. Thanks for stopping by.

As for the holidays … after all the feel-good stuff, one of the most important aspects of the holiday season is presents … gifts. Sure, just material goods, but also something our economy pretty much depends on. But we all know that presents are best when you enjoy giving them more than getting them.

Last year, I polled several Wizards about the favorite gift that they gave to someone else for Christmas. This year, I asked many of the players about some of the best, and worst, presents that they’ve ever received. It’s all in the video below …

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