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[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. 32, Washington Wizards at Miami Heat; contributor: Kyle Weidie from his standing desk (Why, yes, this is quite late ... thank you for understanding).]
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Smug LeBron. |
Here to provide the DC Council Opening Statements for Washington’s 20th game of the season against the Heat in Miami is TAI’s Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It). Usually there is a guest to these bits, but this Kyle character didn’t reach out to anyone in time. And otherwise, it’s hard to get people to care about/to be interested in/to spend their time on a franchise as bad as the Wizards. So here I am.
Jordan Crawford, Bradley Beal, Martell Webster, Chris Singleton, Emeka Okafor
LeBron James is in D.C. tonight to take on the Washington Wizards. He’s bringing some other guys with him, the Miami Heat, and they are favored by 13 points. The key for the Wizards is really if they choose to lose honorably or dishonorably. That’s what it boils down to (and containment, surely Randy Wittman is thinking, as he did versus the Knicks). Not saying the Wizards can’t win — there’s always an ‘any given night’ thing in the NBA – but it’s probably advisable that on this Friday night, Washington cleans the wound, bites down on a towel, and hopes the doctor extracts the bullet as soon as possible. For today’s 3-on-3 we have Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) of The Heat Index/ESPN.com, along with TAI’s Markus Allen (@mayminded) and John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend). Three questions, three answers starts now…
HABERSTROH: The Heat will have a much easier time piercing the paint than they did on Wednesday against Dwight Howard, that’s for sure. McGee might block shots, but he’s nowhere near the type of presence as Howard. There are two kinds of points in the paint: points scored in the halfcourt and points scored on the break. The Heat have struggled recently generating the former. Something tells me the Wizards might be waking up a sleeping giant.
ALLEN: Given their record, the Wizards are not that bad in points allowed in the paint, coming in at 40.2 (20th in the league). JaVale McGee had two games last year against the Heat in which he had four blocks in each, one of those performances coming in a close game that Washington lost 94-95. If JaVale stays out of foul trouble, the Wizards can definitely hold them to under 50 points in the paint; if he gets into early foul trouble, due to contact from LeBron or D-Wade driving, then Kevin Seraphin will certainly not be able to hold it down.
Links, commentary, randomness…
Notice how ever since that gig on Who’s The Boss? Alyssa Milano has been pretty much everywhere? Now, this former dream of teenaged boys’ affection hasn’t seemed to tap into a post-sitcom television movie career like Christina Applegate (via Kelly Bundy), but Milano looks like she’s barely aged since her role of Sa-man-THA! Micelli.
Well, not really… considering she was age 10-20 on Who’s The Boss?, but whatever. (And I’ll attribute the increased present-day Applegate popularity to her being blonde … as unfortunate as that may be, in that similar preference has splashed inconsequential news stories like Natalee Holloway across our television sets, but I do believe I’m digressing. Also, while I’m at it, I don’t know anything about the show Charmed (which Milano was on more recently) other than it would be on TNT sometimes when I got up for work in the morning because I’d left the channel on the late NBA game from the night before and I would hate it.)
In early mid-April (the 12th to be exact), when asked as part of an ESPN.com 5-on-5 roundtable which NBA star would have his legacy enhanced the most in the 2011 Playoffs, I wrote:
“The health of Andrew Bynum won’t affect Dirk Nowitzki’s hunger, but Nowitzki’s stomach did just growl. One could argue that Dirk’s legacy has the deepest hole from which to climb. Since blowing a 2-0 series lead on Miami in the 2006 Finals, the Mavericks have been bounced in the first round of the playoffs in three of the past four seasons. A championship isn’t wholly necessary to repair Dirk’s playoff legacy, but if Dallas fails to make the Finals, he may have to live with the label of a regular-season MVP who can’t come through in the postseason.”
Now, I’m not here to exactly toot my own horn as a prognosticator of all things basketball — seeing as I predicted last year’s Wizards to achieve 34 wins (only off by 11 wins), and the bastardly 2009-10 Wizards to achieve 55 wins (yes, I was off by a whole 29 wins here… like I said, “bastardly”) — however, in the same ESPN poll, in reponse to a query on the most surprising thing that would happen in the Western Conference playoffs, I wrote: Read more »
A Washington, D.C. pic, some words, and Wizards links in bullets…
[Calvert Street Bridge at dusk - NW Washington, D.C. - photo: K. Weidie]
Mike Prada breaks down a good argument on Bullets Forever about why he’d trade JaVale McGee for the No. 2 pick (Derrick Williams) straight up. I previously made a simple argument of why I wouldn’t do it, but certainly wouldn’t complain if it happened. However, from what I hear, such a deal was never really considered seriously, or even “on the table,” because when conversations headed in that direction, the Wizards were turned away at the door. Indications are that Minnesota has been fielding some very creative and interesting offers for the second pick — which make the rumor of the T-Wolves sending Johnny Flynn and the No. 2 to Toronto for DeMar DeRozan and the No. 5 laughable. Nonetheless, lotta days until draft time, folks, so plenty of time for more rumors to float, and plenty of time for David Kahn to play hardball.
{image via Internet/Aaron Josefczyk – Reuters}
The Miami Heat may very well win the 2011 NBA Finals, but regardless of triumph or defeat, LeBron will still be the villain. It’s OK.
Washington Wizards fans almost like to gloat that they were amongst the first to whom LeBron exposed himself to — the epitome of privilege that always asks for more and will resort to less-than-savory tactics to get what it wants. So what.
LeBron is a villain, and I’ve spent a lot of pixels communicating this. And I will continue to do so. LeBron is a fact of life.
Of course he’s making you love him as a basketball player, passing exuberantly, rebounding above all, defending with no restraint, astounding with power that compresses rim paint to the point of cracking. He’s no basketball dummy. The only thing that really dwarfs his instinct for the game is what he can do with that freak of a Karl Malone-sized body that he’s in.
Some sort of D.C. pick, a couple words, and several links…
[12th Street ramp, Francis Case Memorial Bridge, SW Washington, D.C.]
The big scuttlebutt today comes from the Twitter account @DraftExpress. Jonathan Givony reports:
Sources say Washington & Phoenix have been the most active teams trying to trade up for Derrick Williams. T’Wolves want a “veteran big man.”
Antawn Jamison doesn’t get Twitter. Neither does my 70-year old dad (okay, he’s 69, will be 70 next June).
He, my dad, was recently in town and Twitter came up in the dinner conversation. I tried to justify its relevancy by citing how it provides those in the media, bloggers, such as myself, the ability to extend personal branding (as HRO would call it), and even more so, how it’s great for late-breaking news, especially in the sports world. I trailed off and cut the list of merits short after seeing the look on my dad’s face, not mentioning how I’ve actually made friends with people via Twitter.
My pops, mind you, is not completely tech oblivious. He does have a ‘net book’. And I suppose Antawn is in the same boat.
Tom Sorenson of the Charlotte Observer has the first Antawn Jamison, ‘Here I Am’ article of the summer. Sorenson recently caught up with the Gentleman Jamison at his basketball camp in North Carolina. You should read the whole piece, but here are a couple select quotes: Read more »
I get it. You’re just about tired of hearing about LeBron James. Blah, blah, blah.
Nonetheless, you’re still reading about him and the whole ordeal still makes for fun conversational fodder. So deal with it. And besides, this post isn’t about free agency and LeBron’s “decision.”
So there’s a report out there today (via TMZ, of course … but I first saw it on Ball Don’t Lie) about how some dude filed a suit in Federal Court against LeBron and his mother, Gloria James, claiming that he’s the father of LeBron. The guy, Leicester Bryce Stovell, is trying to sue for millions.
As the story goes, according to Stovell’s suit, Gloria, from Akron, Ohio, was visiting a cousin who lived in D.C. in 1984. At the time she was 15-years old, but going to the club and telling dudes she was in her early 20s … at least according to Stovell, who was 29 at the time.
The club where they allegedly met was called “D.C. Space” — more on that in a second — and on the March night in question, Stovell took Gloria back to his home in Annandale, Virginia where the magic was supposed to have been made. So, LeBron wasn’t conceived, conceived within the boundaries of the District of Columbia, again, allegedly, but you get the point.
Across The ESPN TrueHoop Network