Blake Griffin is not perfect, you know. He has the makings of just about every other great, but young player. After he does something, anything on offense (because he can often be seen lazily swiping at the ball from behind or watching the action on defense), Griffin trots down the court with a look on his face somewhere between a smirk and stoic, but more subtle.

Other times he glares at opponents (evident by the above picture of him staring down Yi Jianlian after the Wizard tried to take a charge against one of Griffin’s teammates, followed by Blake verbally encouraging Yi to, “Get the f*ck up”).

Griffin often hangs his mouthpiece from his lips and chews on it as he runs the floor or during a stoppage in play, the gnawing and teeth aiding the menacing conveyance Griffin seems to go for in order to counter his over-grown schoolboy looks. In a sense, Blake Griffin is kind of a dick.

But this is nothing out of the normal, superstars being dickish. Kobe will tell you. Jordan will tell you. Kareem will tell you. The persona on the court comes with the territory, and there should be no qualms with calling a spade a spade, nor calling Griffin a star in this just his second season in the NBA, first actually playing.

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What is JaVale McGee doing here?

The video below will answer that question and more…

{Eric Bledsoe streaks past the giving up JaVale McGee}

{ ...for a dunk.}

Eric Bledsoe, Los Angeles Clippers rookie guard and college teammate of John Wall, went through his normal pre-game routine before facing Wall’s Wizards on Saturday night. He went through shooting and dribbling drills with assistant coaches Howard Eisley and Robert Pack, he did a bit of on-court stretching, and he took time to joke around with teammate Ryan Gomes.  And when I stopped and chatted with him about John Wall as he walked from the court to the locker room, Bledsoe gave me the normal clichés that players love to give — for the most part.

“I know John and I are boys from Kentucky and all that, but we are still on struggling teams, and we both need to go out and play hard and focus on winning,” he said.

But then he came clean.

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Nothing has come easy for former, brief Washington Wizard Randy Foye since he joined the NBA in 2006. But the reversed-organed kid (Situs inversus for you doctors) from a rough neighborhood in cold New Jersey has always had cloudy obstacles to overcome.

A Kevin McHale draft day deal sent Foye as the No. 7 pick (via the Boston Celtics) from the Portland Trailblazers to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for the No. 6 pick, Brandon Roy. While Foye averaged a respectable 10.1 points per game and a December 2006 Western Conference Rookie of the Month award during his inaugural pro campaign in Minnesota, Roy enjoyed Rookie of the Year honors for the Trail Blazers.

As Foye steadily increased his scoring output in the coming years, Roy shot up the charts as a top player in the league’s top conference, making the Western Conference All-Star team as a reserve in 2008, 2009 and 2010. During those three years Foye’s T-Wolves shuffled through three coaches, never winning more than 24 games in a season. In Portland, Roy enjoyed team success under coach Nate McMillan, winning 30 more games than Foye in 2009 and leading the Blazers back to the playoffs after a five-year drought.

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People like to compare the hard times, and the glory, of one professional sports franchise to the next, especially the hard times. It seems to be an inherent need for humans make comparisons, however irrelevant they may be. Think of the females, and males, going out to a club or a bar who are unnecessarily judging each other by looks, good and bad. With so many pheromones in the air, the nightlife chase can be just as much of a sport. So when competition comes into play, we compare even more.

Are the Portland Trailblazers going through a more rough time than the Washington Wizards right now? Perhaps, because the expectation of their success was higher, but I don’t buy the excuse of getting spoiled by continued playoff appearances. Or the LA Clippers, the oft-compared West Coast counterpart of the Wizards? The toils of Los Angeles’ other team have been just as painful, except if Dan Snyder were the owner of the Wizards. Actually, Donald Sterling is probably worse than Snyder. Imagine that. What about the Houston Rockets? Had they come to grips that Yao Ming would never be the same only to have him suddenly gone for good as Wizards fans just experienced with Gilbert Arenas? At least Washington got … Rashard Lewis.

It’s hard to compare the strife of one team to the next because those situations have nothing to do with each other. They have to do with the fans and those in the affected city. So Washingtonians, raise a toast to Portlanders and Houstonians and some Los Angeleans, and vice versa, and also to all those maligned fans of other hapless franchises. And while you’re at it, raise a toast to China, where millions have perhaps lost a basketball icon in Yao … and are left with a currently injured Yi Jianlian to carry to torch. Before Saturday night’s game versus the Miami Heat, Yi spoke on the injury of his fallen comrade.

It’s hard to hear Yi in the video below, but he says that the broken foot Yao recently suffered, ending his season and potentially his career, was pretty upsetting. But Yi says that Yao is also tough with a strong heart and that he doesn’t think he’ll just walk away from the game. When asked if he thinks Yao will come back, Yi says, “I hope so.”

[Wizards 2010-11 Player Preview Index: Gilbert Arenas, Hilton Armstrong, Andray Blatche,
Trevor Booker, Kirk Hinrich, Josh Howard, Yi Jianlian, JaVale McGee, Kevin Seraphin,
Al Thornton, John Wall, Nick Young.]

The Summer.

-by Kyle Weidie

I think Al Thornton really appreciates his situation. Appreciates, as in understands it and will take the necessary steps to respond accordingly. Sure, Thornton likely would rather be playing with a secure extension and not heading into the qualifying offer portion of his contract in the Summer of 2011. But were it not for this situation, Al might not have the opportunity to become the player he could be, which is a great unknown … speaking of, what is it that Al Thornton does anyway?

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Here are my favorites of the photos I took during Monday’s summer league game against the Clippers, check photos from game one against the Warriors here. Wizards vs. Mavericks tonight at 8 pm est.

It starts with a John Wall pre-game dunk.

And then a jumper against former Kentucky teammate Eric Bledsoe.

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Between hitting up the John Legend concert Friday night, going out for some fresh oysters at Hank’s Oyster Bar on Saturday, followed by a night on the town (really, the oysters at Hank’s, especially the ones from Fanny Bay, BC, Canada, were awesome), and then getting trounced in softball on Sunday afternoon (honestly, I think the final score was 24-2), I didn’t have much time to dedicate to the Wizards this past weekend.

I was able to make it through the T-Wolves game Sunday night, and take notes on it, but fell into a slumber before I was able to watch the Wizards against the Clippers or Knicks, both of which, I understand, were much better efforts from the D.C. boys. Oh, and Andray Blatche didn’t play in either game. Nick Young sat out of Sunday’s game against New York as well.

I aim to watch both of the remaining games tonight and subsequently post notes/observations, and then hand out some summer league grades. But until then, here’s the big media dump on what others have said:

Wizards vs. T’Wolves

Flip Saunders apparently sent word down to the bench at halftime that he wasn’t unhappy with the shot selection or their offense, but that the effort simply hadn’t been good enough, and the second half certainly looked better, anyhow.
…..
After posting double-doubles in his first two games in Vegas, Andray Blatche was completely out of kilter. I didn’t have a chance to catch up with him, but he was matched up with Pecherov a lot in the early going, and it sure seemed to me like he was trying (and failing) to take advantage of his former teammate.

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I’ve been sitting on this post for a while, almost since Eddie Jordan got fired from his gig with the Wiz. Well, now that he’s at the helm of the Philadelphia 76ers, this is an appropriate time as ever to publish.

My feeling is that a majority of Wizards fans think Jordan was unjustly fired (or at least weren’t dancing in the streets when he departed), and that even more wish him well.

Count me among both of these groups. Although, when he was terminated, I wasn’t like, “OMG! What an injustice!”

I was more disappointed with the entire landscape of the team, and later resigned to it just being ‘one of those things’, and in the end, maybe it was best that both parties moved on. But we’ll never really know.

In any case, here goes my tribute to Jordan’s basketball career (to date).

Eddie Jordan was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers out of Rutgers with the 11th pick of the 2nd round (33rd overall), in the 1977 NBA Draft. Ernie Grunfeld was selected with the 11th overall pick out of Tennessee by the Milwaukee Bucks in that same draft.

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[photo source: flickr/dskciado]

This is Eduardo Alonso Nájera Pérez, a Mexican victim. Probably not of the swine flu, but definitely a victim of capitalist America’s NBA luxury tax, which is designed in a rather socialist manner to penalize those who spend more money.

Many have wondered where Denver would be if they still had Marcus Camby, who was sold to the Clippers for a 2nd round pick. But watching the energy, hustle, and scrapiness of the Nuggets, led by the Birdman Anderson, it’s easy to see how a big like Nájera might fit better than the frail Camby.

Nuggets coach George Karl hated to see the Big Mexican sign a 4-year $12 million contract with the Nets this past summer, but Kiki had an edict from cost-cutting owner Stan Kroenke (even though anyone might question giving that much to a 32-year old). Still, Kroenke and his wife, a Wal-Mart heir, are both on the Forbes billionaires list (Kroenke is ranked 205 and worth a meager $3 billion).

It’s clear that Denver misses a big man to compete with the Lakers. But I’m here to say that the playoffs as a whole misses the Mexican from Chihuahua, the 10th most marketable player in the NBA.

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Just over three minutes left in a close game, Wizards up by one point against an almost equally bad team, the thought crossed my mind….do I hope they lose?

I knew the Clippers and Kings, two of the other top three worst teams in the league, were playing each other last night. It would be “nice” to have better chances in the draft.

But just as quickly as the thought entered my mind, it left. All along, I’ve been against “tanking” or even hoping for more losses just for the possibility of maybe having a better shot at the top pick/Blake Griffin. It just doesn’t seem like good basketball karma, not like it matters with the Curse O’ Les Boulez anyway. But still, we’re talking principles…..principalities.

So eff the lottery it was, I was pulling for my Wizards to win, because that’s what fans do. And a win is what I thought we were getting when Juan Dixon squirmed for a layup with 47 seconds left, putting the Wiz up 96-90.

But nothing ever comes easy. Two straight Raptor threes later, the few of us on the Bullets Forever game thread were screaming for the ghosts of Anthony Parker, Michael Ruffin and Mo Peterson to be exercised.

So Juan Dixon, as the third option, hit an off-balanced fader in the lane with 19 seconds left….he probably traveled….Wiz up two. Game winner? Nope. Jose Calderon was allowed to saunter right down the lane for a lay-up…..splendid. At least the Wiz would get the last shot, one of the Dagger! variety.

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