Best of Wizards/basketball-related links, in bullets. But first, John Wall’s glasses help him and DeMarcus Cousins see into the future…

John: “I see the future, and I’m going to have my own candy bar.”

DeMarcus: “I want to be a candy bar for Halloween in my future.”

John: “That guy in front of me has a sneeze in his future.”

DeMarcus: “My future is an All-Denim Party… even want the toilet paper to be made of denim.”

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Lockout thoughts, randomly, and links, etc…

Fix This Mess.
[Southeast-Southwest Freeway - 12th & K St. SE - Washington, D.C. - photo: K. Weidie]

Whomever put the debate over Basketball Related Income (“BRI”) at the forefront of the NBA Lockout argument between players and owners knew what they were doing, assuming they were working in favor of the owners. At least this is in terms of public perception, but does either side care about the public anyway? No, not really, it seems.

Fifty-fifty is what we’ve been taught is fair; “even-steven” is intrinsically connected to our humanity. Disregard concerns otherwise when it comes to the lockout, the focus has been how to split the BRI between owners and players. Under the previous Collective Bargaining Agreement (“CBA”), the players received 57-percent of all NBA BRI, and for the purposes of new CBA negotiations, players have indicated that they are willing to reduce their BRI to 53-percent and have stuck staunchly to that (although recent reports indicate the players might lower their demands to 52-percent).

But players make the league, don’t they? They deserve more than half the BRI share. Yes, but who cares? I know I certainly don’t. I like to see teams, run by owners, with the best ones able to succeed, even in the previous purportedly broken system, with excellent organization and a watchful eye toward spending. The San Antonio Spurs, ladies and gentlemen.

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Links, a D.C. picture, commentary, lockout, stuff, a poll…

[A blurry night vision in Washington - photo: K. Weidie]

So before I get to the links, and as I continue to contemplate how much I care about this lockout, officially losing the first two weeks of the regular season – obviously this is an unideal, frustrating situation, but I also could care less about getting wrapped up in the politics, economics, and interpretation (often misinterpretation, likely) of scatterbrained media reports — I wanted to throw out a poll to see where some of the readers of this site might stand. Vote below and drop comments if you feel like venting. Otherwise, thanks for visiting. Even with no games, there’s a ton of potential for content (just not a lot of free personal time for the regular job-working contributors to this site), so just bare with us as we try to make whatever it is that’s going on as fun as possible. Thank you. -Kyle

LINKS!

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Links, commentary, strange connections, and silly photos of Gilbert Arenas, randomness…

Bryon Russell will be forever cemented into Michael Jordan lore. You know exactly why. And evidently, Russell holds a solid spot in Washington Wizards/Gilbert Arenas lore as well.

Because of Jordan’s last shot as a Chicago Bull, a game six and championship winner that took place in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 14, 1998, which came courtesy of a Jordan push-off of Russell and subsequent burial of the Utah Jazz, Russell and Jordan will always be connected. The moment has been in/on video games, video game commercials, posters, artwork,  t-shirts, books, and captured via wide-ranging multimedia design. No one has been, and perhaps no one will ever be, more remembered for having a basketball shot hit on them. The rest of it travels down an unexpected road.

After the shot marinated in basketball history for over four years Russell teamed up with Jordan on the 2002-03 Washington Wizards, a team surrounded with strife and disaster that failed to even make the playoffs in Jordan’s final NBA season. Russell averaged 4.5 points and 3.0 rebounds over 19.8 minutes per game and appeared in 70 contests. Russell then joined the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers, a team that epically failed to be a team in the NBA Finals against the Detroit Pistons. No championship for Bryon. Russell played 16 total minutes during that playoff run, the swan songs for the careers of Karl Malone and Horace Grant, and the end of the Kobe/Shaq era; Gary Payton was also involved.

Russell next appeared in 70 games with the 2004-05 Denver Nuggets and in just one game for Denver the following season before retiring from the league. Then came September 2009. Jordan, in his Hall of Fame induction speech that was ‘so’ Jordan, made mention of Russell. Read more »

Links, commentary, fodder, beef…

Andray Blatche had himself a chat on ESPN.com Wednesday. Normally, would that even happen? Doubt it. The assumption is that this is more the doing of him deciding to re-acquire an agent this summer. Now that power-agent Andy Miller is on the scene — clients of his include: Trevor Booker, Kevin Garnett, Jared Jeffries, Kenyon Martin, Chauncey Billups, Brendan Haywood, Roger Mason Jr., Andre Miller, Michael Ruffin, Sebastian Telfair, Antonio McDyess, etc., etc. — Blatche is hitting the circuit of pumped positivity. And thus here we are.

Anyhow, nothing provocative or ground-breaking in his chat; it totally fits within the norms of prosaic NBA player media & PR fare. The highlights include: when asked about how his roll [sic in a very Ledell Eackles kind of way] has changed over his years with the team, he chats about, “listening to guys like Antawn, Brandon, Caron” … which actually got me very close to seeing if a “Brandon” ever played for the Wizards on Basketball-Reference.com before realizing that he was talking about Brendan Haywood.

Quick flashback: in January, Blatche said this:

“When I do lift, I’m the type of person, I don’t see results at all. I mean, I tried everything, man. I got a chef so I could start getting as healthy as I could eat. I don’t know what it is, man. I’m trying.”

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Commentary, links, a picture, a photoshop, etc…

[This was one of my favorite pictures that I took at Capital Punishment back in August;
James Harden drawing a late-game shooting foul against DeMarcus Cousins.]

> Of course…

Andray Blatche has a coloring and activity book, of course, images of which via Bullets Forever‘s Mike Prada — It’s for the kids and all. At the DC Sports Bog, Dan Steinberg has noticed that Blatche is très muscular in the renderings. Here’s an example:

> Using technology, DNA samples, sheep-cloning etiquette, and vodka, we were able to bring a page from Andray Blatche’s coloring book to real life…

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Links, commentary, a D.C. photo…

[Key Elementary School - NW Washington, DC - photo: K. Weidie]

Eventually, soon, I would like to make a more comprehensive post regarding Javaris Crittenton’s Tweets on this here site. There’s a problem with his Tweets… in that it’s Twitter. It would be very hard to gather context from each and every one of Crittenton’s Tweets, much less the small sample used for my piece on TrueHoop, or even from any number of people publishing thoughts and ideas on the social media tool.

To put it clearly: Nothing can be gathered, inferred, or deduced from Crittenton’s Tweets. They are simply an additional window into the life of a figure whom so many people are now trying to futilely gain information about. Yes, the Tweets came directly from his mind, but we don’t know what kind of filter he was putting his thoughts through… just like we don’t know what type of filter athletes, or anyone, puts themselves through during interviews and other media interactions.

There is, however, one misconception, or instance that needs more clarity: Crittenton’s six Tweets from the day of the murder in question, August 19.

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Commentary, links, randomness…

Unfortunately, good people, John Wall tragically lost his right arm in Tuesday’s earthquake. (#Moment of Silence)

Seems like the Jerry Stackhouse owned by @n1coolguy didn’t fare so well either.

 But hey, Stackhouse has long been a fixer-upper … See? Good as new.

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Links, commentary, stuff…

Andray Blatche. You might be aware of his various exploits that seem trapped in an devolving time continuum.

Blatche, inherently, is a sympathetic figure. He literally loafed into an NBA career, to the envy of millions, by likely being just smart of enough to realize that if he worked just a little bit to enhance his natural talents, he would get there. And he did.

He’s not a bad guy, nor is he misunderstood like a lot of athletes like to claim. It is, however, true to an extent in that lay people, the “commoners” to which LeBron referred in his infamous quote, don’t know the pressure of money, exposure, expectations, high critique, and high reward, which I am assuming is widely accepted in bounties of tangible goods and women. But to say that some of these pro athletes are misunderstood is to say that they, themselves, are complicated figures. Often, we know, that is not the case. Rather, it’s their situations within the business of the game they love (or “like”) to play which provides varying complex ways to digest someone who is simply human.

Blatche is a human after all. He means well, but the means by which he gets caught up in “the life,” as some like to call it (being a highly paid professional athlete, that is) doesn’t always bode well for him. Whose fault is it? Well, according to my own sliding scale of reason, the older Blatche gets, the more he is solely to blame for his situation(s).

My sarcasm and critique toward the guy, on the court and off, long ago, through conditioning I suppose, came to the conclusion that Blatche is and will continue to be a lost cause in terms of a basketball player. For obvious reasons, I teeter between internal struggles hoping that I’m proven wrong, versus the blind stare of franchise eyes continuing to stubbornly support and believe in disappointment, versus knowing that all humans love redemption stories from various levels and angles.

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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 any case, good for Alyssa Milano — for staying ‘relevant’ — like I said, she’s been everywhere, including the Washington Wizards website. And I got no complaints. You’re welcome.

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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.

Halberstam discusses many themes in a changing NBA from some 30-years ago that can apply to the league landscape today. But when it comes to drastic change, it involves media coverage operating in a world where players serve as their own branded media machines. Hence, much of the traditional media (and new media) is forced to practice a mechanical-like re-conveyance of what the players put out on the open market. Yes, very different indeed.

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Pictures, bulleted links, commentary & other stuff…

What are Flip Saunders and Andray Blatche looking at?

Part of me thinks they are looking at a tiny lamb heart, sitting in the palm of Saunders’ hand, barely (magically) holding onto life, while Flip is poking it with a ball-point pin. But I’m probably wrong. They are likely looking at this baggy-clothed Chris Webber from the 90s, perhaps modelling a new concept in comfort garments that eventually led to the invention of the Snuggie or the Slanket. Either way, looks dire.

[via Up North Trips, h/t Your Man Devine]

LINKS!

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Wizards links in bullets with general commentary on the side, and a picture…

[NYC subway transit, E line - photo: K. Weidie]

> Is the NBA destined for a lockout? Why yes, it was. But check out my pre-lockout contribution about the lockout on ESPN’s 5-on-5 anyway.
[ESPN.com]

> I know it’s very old now, but he’s what I wrote for the DCist about the draft and the kiss that saved it.
[DCist]

> If you want to feel somewhat encouraged that the NBA lockout won’t drag out too long, check out this brilliant post by TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott. Huge point No. 1 from Henry: Read more »

NOTE: The ESPN TrueHoop Network 2011 NBA Mock Draft starts today. Truth About It will be posting our consensus mocked pick of the sixth position around 1 pm, so check back for an update. Until then, a D.C. pic, commentary, and links…

[HD Cooke Elementary - NW Washington DC - Euclid St. & Mozart Pl. - photo: K. Weidie]

>With the caveat that cats seemingly wear random hats — for the style — and are not always interested in the teams on them, I bring you the video below of noteworthy fun images and interaction. Oh, and John Wall is wearing a Philadelphia Flyers cap, old style (Wall also has been seen wearing a retro Oakland Raiders hat, very hipsterish-lite of him/trendy)… good thing this wasn’t around when the Caps were losing to the Flyers in the first round of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs. The video below is from a local South Carolina television station and is regarding the tournament that Josh Howard and Trevor Booker hosted over the June 11 weekend in Mauldin, which Wall attended. Things to look out for: a Wall interview in Ray-Bans (again, trendy, he is); John Wall judging a “Dougie” dance contest amongst kids and then handing out $20 bills to the winners; and finally, taking the cake, goober newscasters discussing the “Dougie” — one anchorman chap saying that as a University of Kentucky grad, he thought it was called the “John Wall Dance.” Then, sports guy Todd Summers chirps in with “We don’t even know where the ‘Dougie’ came from, but certainly kids know what it is.” Finally, the initial guy, named Gordon Dill, finishes the stereotypical ideal of a non-white comedian doing an impression of a “white guy” by saying, “Named after ‘Doug’, probably.”

That it is Gordon and Todd, that it is.

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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.

LINKS.

> Check out this feature piece on Trevor Booker that I provided some quotes for.
[The Good Point]

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