{Mustafa Shakur scores his first NBA points. -Photo: K. Weidie}

Hours before taking on the Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics on Saturday, it was a given that Mustafa Shakur would likely suit up for the Washington Wizards and get his first NBA minutes. Tell Shakur the same thing that Saturday morning and he wouldn’t have believed you. In fact, he didn’t even believe his agent when he told him that he was being called up to the big time that day from the D-League’s Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

This wasn’t Ernie Grunfeld going after the same old stale veterans in a pinch. This was a legitimate prospect yearning for a chance and getting one from a rebuilding team … and the move was certainly not performed as a cursory, ‘We need to meet a roster minimum.’ Rather, it was a ‘Get ready to play kid … Kirk Hinrich is out and there’s no way we can exhaust John Wall with a ton of minutes.’

Shakur was inserted into the lineup at the 4:26 mark of the first quarter, after Wall picked up his second foul and with the Wizards down 24-11. By the time Wall was inserted back into the game at the 9:50 mark of the second quarter, the Wizards had held off Boston domination, keeping their deficit to a manageable 11 points. The Wizards were down 68-62 when Shakur checked in with 2:40 left in the third quarter and by the end of the period, Washington was only down 72-70. Shakur finished the game with five assists, zero turnovers, five points on 2-4 shooting, two rebounds and two blocked shots. His plus/minus of plus-6 was second highest on the team next to Cartier Martin’s plus-8.

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Marcin Gortat’s head is pretty stoic for the position that it’s in.

This was one of those weird times when some huge official arena flash went off while I was taking a picture … came out kind of cool though.

Before getting weirdly entertained by a white man from Iowa wearing Oakleys, in a January 20 chat on ESPN.com, John Hollinger wrote about Nick Young, when not even specifically asked about Young: Read more »

It’s struck me as odd when recently, before being traded to Orlando, Gilbert Arenas deferred to Josh Howard as a more vocal leader on the Wizards than him. Yes, the same Josh Howard whose past record will almost cause more scoffs than Arenas’ … the same Josh Howard who has played all of five games in a Wizards uniform since arriving via trade back in February, compared to Arenas, who appeared in 357 total regular season games with the franchise since being signed to D.C. by Ernie Grunfeld in August of 2003.

After a home game against the New York Knicks on December 10, Arenas was asked about the then forthcoming return of Howard.

“It’s going to help more in the locker room and on the bench because, you know, he has a strong voice. You know, I usually don’t say anything, but he’s more of a vocal person. So when we have those lulls like we did in the third [against the Knicks], he’s going to speak up,” he said.

When I asked Howard about needing to fill the role of vocal leader after the Miami game on Saturday, he said, “It’s different for me. I mean, I haven’t did this in a long time as far as college, and I led by example in Dallas as far as my play on the court. As far as being vocal, I have to remind myself that I can speak.”

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Before Tuesday night’s thrilling OT victory over the 76ers, I gathered up comments from JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche, Hilton Armstrong, Cartier Martin, Trevor Booker and Al Thornton about the Thanksgiving Holiday. I asked the players what they were thankful for, what food they would serve at dinner, about their fondest memories of the holiday growing up and got them to provide a short greeting to the fans.

Since the team is in Atlanta for a game against the Hawks tonight, they will eat a meal together Thursday afternoon. Thornton, who hails from Georgia, will be able to spend some time with his family and friends.

Enjoy the video and everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Before tonight’s Wizards-Grizzlies game, I briefly spoke with Andray Blatche about his All-Star ballot “snub” — JaVale McGee, Gilbert Arenas and John Wall made it, the Wizards’ most capable low post scorer and the face of many Monumental Sports & Entertainment banners didn’t (at least three players from each NBA team have to make the ballot, by the way). Here’s what Blatche had to say:

For Blatche’s response to recent comments made by ESPN.com’s David Thorpe that he is “the laziest great talent guy in the league,” head to the Washington Examiner.

[Shaun Livingston shows no fear going against the JaVale McGee tree.]

[Livingston ended up missing the tough shot ... but man, he and McGee are some lengthy dudes.]

Along with “no cheering in the press box”, and “no soliciting autographs from the players”, one of the rules of game-attending media says that we aren’t supposed to openly root for players. We are supposed to be as objective as possible so we can freely vacillate between criticism and praise, without worrying about offending our own sensibilities.

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Whether you’re in the NBA or not, what you eat and how your body reacts is kind of a big deal … but especially if you are in the NBA, or any other type of athlete. Just this season, we’ve seen Al Thornton playing with more hustle and explosiveness, partially due to his summertime consumption change of cutting beef, chicken and pork out of his diet. On the other hand, we’ve seen Andray Blatche struggle to get in playing shape, seemingly more than he should be after suffering a broken foot in June, due to his dabbling in late-night snacks.

Gilbert Arenas is a third case on the team, at least in terms of playing weight and getting into full game shape. Most of Arenas’ setbacks can be attributed the groin and ankle tweaks he experienced in preseason, which also caused him to miss the first three games of the regular season. When asked about how his knee felt after Wednesday’s home game versus Houston, Gilbert scoffed, “I haven’t had a knee problem for a year and a half now, so I don’t know why people keep asking about it.”

But otherwise, as John Townsend noticed in his ‘Player Lock’ on Arenas, he doesn’t exactly look physically comfortable on the court just yet, and that’s to be expected … as Arenas himself has admitted that he’s probably about 10 pounds overweight.

“Gil’s still a long ways away,” said Flip Saunders after Wednesday’s game. “He needs to lose some weight and he needs to just get practice time on the court to get his legs under him. Because when you don’t shoot well, he’s not shooting well, you don’t have your legs under you as much. Give him credit, he worked hard on the defensive end –tried to work — so it’s going to be a work in process. But what we can’t do is we can’t put him in situations where we start playing him too many minutes because we don’t want him to have any kind of an injury.”

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Plenty of professional athletes pull pranks. Plenty of regular people pull pranks. Gilbert Arenas didn’t invent the prank, he just was, perhaps, the best at it — the most prolific … because he’s a professional athlete.

Arenas’ varied pranks are infamous, and for a recent spell due to a horribly failed prank with guns that wasn’t really a prank, they became blemishes open for all armchair psychologists to analyze to their core, from a distance.

And then there’s pooping in someone’s shoe, an act that added a somber twist to Arenas’ locker room gun affair and his history of egregiousness excused by a franchise. Or in the least, it was Gilbert’s most memorable prank, which went from the punchline of comical stories among those in the know to something that was used to further indict Arenas’ character.

The proper term, kids, is defecation … in verb form: to defecate. And it was first properly used in reference to Arenas and victim, Andray Blatche, by Mike Wise and Michael Lee of the Washington Post in January 2010:

“Former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan and his staff privately intimated they felt undermined by Grunfeld when it came to matters of discipline with Arenas. Arenas, a notorious practical joker, often crossed the line of acceptable decorum. The example often cited was how Arenas once defecated in teammate Andray Blatche’s shoe during Blatche’s rookie season. His behavior often went unchecked and unpunished, said a former team employee on condition of anonymity.”

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What most impressed me about John Wall in his debut? His leadership. In fact, I wrote a whole piece about it for ESPN’s Daily Dime … and I’ll link that at some point soon. I’ll also have a bunch of pictures as I sat on the baseline to catch the experience of the game. There will be a bunch more to come on Wall and the Wizards, but until then, there’s a video below of post-game interviews featuring Flip Saunders, Sam Cassell, and of course, Wall (who was rather hard to get to … there was a TON of media in a small, concentrated area trying to interview him. To call it a circus wouldn’t exactly do it justice.) As usual, enjoy.

It’s tough to truly remember Antawn Jamison’s time in D.C., yet hard to do it enough. Wish I were around to cover him when times were good, but this year had to happen. Still, Antawn did it with dignity. He did it with class, emulating the owner he looked up to so much. An owner whose family is making a classy move with a free “Living for the City” Stevie Wonder concert for some of the people touched by Abe Pollin’s spirit for his community. Antawn was the Gentleman Jamison. He deserves an Unsilent tribute. Hence, Jack Kogod (aka Unsilent Majority) of Kissing Suzy Kobler, and occasional Wizards correspondent for Mr. Irrelevant,  (not to mention that he sits in some really good season tickets for a ton of Wizards games), agreed to share his thoughts. Here’s what @Unsilent had to say:

>>>>>>>>>

I miss Antawn Jamison more than I thought I would. When the house cleaning commenced I thought it would be Caron Butler I missed the most, but I was wrong. Of course I’m wrong a lot. I was wrong in my belief that the Wizards  should have held on to the fifth pick in the ’04 draft to select Luol Deng (although I couldn’t be too upset with any trade that sent Jerry Stackhouse packing), and I was wrong to think that Jamison wasn’t the right guy at the right time. It only took one season for him to prove me wrong. Jamison made his All Star Game debut in that first season, and he helped lead the Wizards on a fantastic turnaround. The Wizards won their first playoff series of my lifetime that year, and that wouldn’t have happened without Jamison.

A lot changed in the years between the ’05 playoffs and the ’10 trade deadline, but Jamison never did. Throughout his time in Washington he was the most consistent player on the team, and one of the most reliable performers in the entire league (defensive shortcomings notwithstanding). There is a reason why Abe Pollin considered Jamison to be the Wes Unseld of the modern Wizards, because he have all of himself to the organization. I hope for nothing but the best from Jamison, just short of winning a ring of course. Afterall, he is a Cav now.

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