Now, this dunk wasn’t on, on Australia’s Andrew Bogut, but we’ll include him for diplomatic reasons. Turkey’s Ersan Ilyasova getting smacked around by Los Angeles’ Nick Young is really the big winner here.

One of the first things that comes to mind when looking at a picture like this is that there’s no way he’s making it to the rim.

He did.

You’d think some big time NBA advertising partner would want to sponsor a secondary dunk contest. Wouldn’t that haul in some bank on television? TNT, are you there? I understand the desire to make the official dunk contest on NBA all-Star Saturday night an elite and exclusive event, but there are too many good dunkers in the NBA not to have more than four participants.

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[Ed. Note: Ryan Gracia is currently a junior at George Mason University studying journalism and sports communication and has followed the Washington Wizards for years. On Wednesday against Milwaukee, he tracked the progress of Wizards rookie Kevin Seraphin and reports below. -Kyle W.]

Seraphin Makes Good With Little Time

by Ryan Gracia

With JaVale McGee picking up two fouls less than six minutes into the game against the Milwaukee Bucks Wednesday night, Flip Saunders turned to his second first-round pick in the 2010 draft to answer the call. It’s been quite a journey for 17th pick Kevin Seraphin in his first season in the NBA, but he’s made the most of his opportunities on the court – for the most part – despite erratic playing time.

As of late, one-time backup center Hilton Armstrong has been given a seat deeper down in the depth chart in favor of the younger Wizard, as shown by the difference in minutes played between the first eight games and the last eight games for each player: Read more »

It’s hard to pin-point exactly where the Wizards lost road game number 20 to the Milwaukee Bucks. They came out with a very strong first quarter … that was the easy part. The Bucks hit a couple jumpers and the Wizards didn’t score until three minutes had gone by in the game, but once they got going, they really got going. When all was said and done, John Wall had seven assists to zero turnovers and the Wizards had a 27-19 lead.

The second quarter … not so good, but the Wizards held it down. They went into the half with a 49-47 lead, whittled into by the old bones of Earl Boykins and Corey Maggette — those two combined for 23 points in the first half. Add in what Keyon Dooling offered and you have 32 points from an unlikely Milwaukee trio.

The Wizards started and ended the third quarter poorly. Usually coaches have a saying along the lines of beginning and ending all quarters well — maybe even Flip Saunders has cited that crafty philosophy before (I’m sure of it) — but these young Wizards are not yet in the position to do much less than the opposite at crucial points of the game away from home. The Wizards were out-scored 28-17 in the third and scored 13 of those points in a four-minute span from around the nine minute mark to the four minute mark of the period. Otherwise, not much doing.

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[Editor's note: Stephen D. Riley covered the Wall-Jennings matchup on TAI from John's perspective, now here's Rashad Mobley with a look from Brandon's perspective in his series "From The Other Side." -Kyle]

By the time John Wall’s name is announced as the Wizards’ starting point guard on their home opening night against Philadelphia 76ers, he will have received more than enough advice.  His family is telling him how to manage his life, his friends are telling him how to spend his money and where to hang out, his teammates are saying get me the ball in my sweet spot, the coaches (especially Sam Cassell) are telling him how to be an effective point guard in the NBA.  Hell, I’m sure even his twitter following has chimed in with their clueless, but well-intentioned advice.

After my visit to the Milwaukee Bucks locker room before their preseason matchup with the Wizards, it looks like Wall will have two more people to take advice from:  Head Coach Scott Skiles and second year guard Brandon Jennings.

Skiles coached Jennings during his rookie year, so he knows first-hand about the ups and downs involved with a rookie running the show.  But prior to that, Skiles enjoyed a 10-year career in the NBA (including one year with the Bullets), where he averaged 11 points and 6.5 assists, and dished out 30 assists in one game (an NBA record).

Jennings, much like Wall will do this year, was given the responsiblity of running the Milwaukee Bucks in his first season.  He exceeded expectations in the regular season by averaging 15.5 points and 5.7 assists, and then in the playoffs he continued his solid play by raising his scoring average to 18.7 points (his assists dropped to 3.6, but Andrew Bogut was hurt, so he gets a pass).  Much like Skiles, Jennings also picked  up an NBA record along the way, by dropping 56 points on Golden State–the most ever by a Milwaukee Bucks rookie.

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[Editor's note: Stephen D. Riley has contributed to player previews on Truth About It.net and writes about sports for the The Afro. This is his first piece on TAI, where he'll be keeping tabs on John Wall during the season. -Kyle]

John Wall is a gamer. This much you should know already. He’s so much of a gamer that he basically attacked Brandon Jennings at every turn on Thursday in one of the more intriguing matchups of the evening. Actually, forget one of, it was the only intriguing matchup of the evening. Pretty impressive when you consider that both men only have a combined year and two weeks invested into the NBA.

Jennings splashed into the league last season with a 50-Burger against the Golden State Warriors in November, then proceeded to flash the Association with the type of speed and quickness unseen since the days of a young Allen Iverson. But the way Wall played Thursday night, he pretty much showed he could care less about any of that. He attacked Jennings from the tip, defending with vigor and making plays that wouldn’t keep the guys behind me at the Verizon Center from shutting up.

Late in the first quarter he caught an over-the-head pass from Gilbert Arenas, avoided a reach by Jennings and contorted his body while drawing the foul and finishing the layup. The fans stood up, I stood up, and Wall face-flexed to his bench. Splash plays for Wall, one. None for Jennings.

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The Wizards lost to the Milwaukee Bucks Thursday night and it was pretty ugly. I won’t even mention the final score, but you’ll probably figure it out with some math in a second.

The first half started with promise. The Wizards out-shot the Bucks 49.7-percent to 43.8-percent and outscored them 57-51. John Wall had eight assists and two turnovers; his team had a ratio of 11 to nine in that department. Meanwhile the Bucks were forced into 14 turnovers to just seven assists, four of those dimes coming from Brandon Jennings, the other side of the night’s glamour matchup versus Mr. Wall.

The Wizards didn’t look particularly great in the first half, but the outcome was far more preferred over the second where Flip Saunders’ team was outscored 45 to 31 en route to shooting just 36.1-percent. Thirteen second half turnovers to just eight assists pretty much tells the rest of the story.

So why the change in offensive efficiency? Some of it could have to do with Gilbert Arenas (who didn’t start because, as said by Saunders when asked, “Nick [Young] played really good last game.”) only playing three first quarter minutes before checking out with what appeared to be a real injury, to his groin. Yep, I know what you’re thinking … isn’t that ironic?

Otherwise, the answer seems pretty simple for the young basketball squad, at least according to Saunders.

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[Editor's note: While I was out in Las Vegas for the summer league, I caught up with David Thorpe to discuss Yi Jianlian, who Thorpe trained earlier this summer in Florida. Below is what I gathered from my initial discussion with him. Unfortunately, the second part of the discussion was nowhere to be found on my recorder, evidently replaced by around 42 minutes of summer league gym sounds instead. Oh well, I'll try to catch up with Coach Thorpe for a follow-up at some point, but I can't thank him enough for what he has already provided. -Kyle]

{image via bscup.tom.com}

His friends back in China call him “Lian,” says David Thorpe, NBA analyst for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. and executive director of the Pro Training Center in Clearwater, Florida. Thorpe has worked with countless NBA stars, college prospects and overseas basketball talents. And for five weeks earlier this summer, he worked with new Washington Wizard Yi Jianlian.

Back in February, when things were beginning to meltdown for Jianlian in New Jersey — his minutes per game stayed high at 30.8 over 13 games, but his averages dropped to 9.2 points on 34.1% shooting and 7.5 rebounds; this was down from 33.2 minutes, 15.4 points on 42.9% shooting and 6.7 rebounds per over 18 total games in December and January — the player’s group of advisers, including agency Lagardère and agent Dan Fegan, started talking with Thorpe.

“I think he was looking for more help in understanding the game,” Thorpe told me when I spoke with him during the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. “He’s almost been like a stray dog … no one’s really hugged him to say ‘you’re mine’,” he said, indicating that the instability of coaching and team changes has caused a lot of strife in Jianlian’s basketball career. He was drafted, relatively unwillingly on Yi’s part, by the Milwaukee Bucks with the sixth overall pick in 2007 and traded to the New Jersey Nets, along with Bobby Simmons, in exchange for Richard Jefferson after one season. After two uninspiring seasons in the New Jersey, Jianlian was traded to the Wizards in late June for essentially nothing (apologies to Quinton Ross).

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Note: I’ll be chatting/answering questions on ESPN’s Sunday Dime Live during tonight’s Wizards-Celtics game. Join me for the start at 8 pm eastern, keep scrolling for more on the Wiz.

The Wizards play the Celtics tonight … on ESPN. “Great.” Words like “bloodbath” have already been thrown around. The WaPost’s Michael Lee is baffled that the game continued to be on the national television schedule after the dismantling of the team, including Josh Howard’s knee injury. But Boston is a big ticket market, so probably still worth including on the NBA Sunday slate. The only other game that will be going on at the same time will be the Thunder and Kings, which starts at 9 pm eastern. I’m sure people would love to see Kevin Durant and Tyreke Evans, but again, it’s Boston.

So Wizards fans, I guess you have to choke down the embarrassment of the forthcoming unwanted national attention and how the pundits will likely be talking bad about the franchise you love. And if you’re a Wizards fan watching the game at this point, you do have a true love for the team.

I have two hopes: 1) that Hubie Brown is calling the game, and 2) a moral victory.

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The Milwaukee Bucks game seems like it was ages ago. And when deciding which aspect of the game to break down, I was conflicted at first. Should it be what happened after Gilbert Arenas went down at the 7:12 mark in the fourth quarter, specifically, the 9-0 run that occurred in the two minutes after that?

Naw, why focus on the positive? This team will only improve if they continue to recognize and remember what went wrong. And with the Wizards, there’s usually a lot to choose from. What obviously came to mind was the 32 points scored by Michael Redd, his first 30+ point effort since January 16, 2009.

If I posed to question to you, ‘Who was responsible for letting Redd have his way on the offensive end, including him getting to the free-throw line so much, where he went 15-15?,’ you would probably say, ‘Randy Foye.’ And I would say, ‘You are a correct, astute observer of the Wizards, sir.’

Everyone is certainly happy that Foye has recently arisen from the depths or irrelevancy … probably not enough for Ernie Grunfeld to retain him after the season … but there’s a lot of season left and victories in the small battles are worth feeling good about. Still, Foye is a poor perimeter defender, and the Wizards have a plethora of inefficient perimeter defenders.

So, despite all of these foregone conclusions, I decided, what the hell, let’s break-down how Redd was able to get each of his 32 points. Read more »

The Wizards beat the Bucks 109-97 on Wednesday night. Here’s some of what happened in 12 frames.

Pretty nice scene, huh? Well, not as nice … last night’s game was on CSN+ in D.C., not CSN HD. Heart-warming nonetheless. After the game I tweeted that beating the Bucks 109-97 was the first ‘feel good’ win for the Wizards in a long time. Mike Prada of Bullets Forever called it the best win of the year.

And the scene above captures it all. Gilbert Arenas goes down after an errant Bucks knee to his leg, not to mention losing a tooth, Earl Boykins comes in to save the day, and the two leave the court arm-and-arm and all smiles. Arenas started it with 13 points, three rebounds and seven assists, to only a single turnover, in the first quarter, and Boykins finished it with 12 of his 15 points in the final period.

It looked pretty bad when Gil went down. But after seeing him hold his thigh, and the replay, it was clear there wasn’t a reason to fear for his knee. Although, those thigh bruises do hurt. The Wizards have two days off, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Arenas sat out of Saturday’s game in Minnesota. It all depends on how deep the bruise is. He was noticeably limping right after it happened, and those things only stiffen and get worse.

So with that win, the Wizards, and their fans, will have a holiday that’s just a little bit better. But what would be this team’s ultimate Christmas (or holiday, or whatever you celebrate) wish?

Here’s what I wrote for ESPN’s Daily Dime: Read more »

I experienced a “first” on Wednesday night.

In the Wizards locker room before the game, I noticed a stack of duPont Registry magazines under one of the huge flat screen televisions. If you aren’t familiar with the duPont Registry, it’s a publication full of fancy/luxury cars, etc. that only really, really rich people can afford. One of my friends had a duPont Registry once, but it was just for lookin’, not for buyin’.

So … Wednesday night was the first time I was in the vicinity of the magazine while also being in a room full of dudes who could purchase something from it.

So I have that going for me.

After Wednesday’s win over Milwaukee, I was all ready to write about Earl Boykins, as was everyone else in the world (and I kinda did … below), but life/work got in the way of a more formal game write-up. It happens.

I’ll be going to/reporting from the Toronto game tonight, and … IT’S FRIDAY!

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Grunfeld, circa 2000 NBA Playoffs, East 1st Rd. Gm. 5 vs. Indiana

Look at this young gent. Suave, classy … proper descriptors of this Ernie Grunfeld that your grandma could easily roll into one by saying, “He looks like such a nice boy!”

Now the goings-ons ’round the Wizards web

Candid Gil

“…what has surprised me is how open [Gilbert Arenas] is. We’ve had a lot of talks about everything, including his relationships with all the coaches he had from junior high to high school to college to the NBA. I have a better understanding of where he’s coming from.”

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Most know about the time Ernie Grunfeld spent in the New York Knicks front office. And many probably have an idea that Madison Square Garden was Grunfeld’s home court for the final four seasons of his nine year NBA playing career. But did you know that Big Ern was on the floor the night Patrick Ewing made his NBA debut?

After playing his first two seasons in Milwaukee, and his next three with the Kansas City Kings, Grunfeld began his tenure in NYC in ’82-83 with the likes of Bill Cartwright, Bernard King (Grunfeld’s teammate at Tennessee), Paul Westphal, and one of my all-time favorite NBA names, Rory Sparrow. Grunfeld was 10th in minutes per game on a Hubie Brown led, 44-win Knicks team that made it to the Eastern Conference semifinals. But the Philadelphia 76ers, with Moses Malone, Julius Erving, and Mo Cheeks, swept the Knicks, advanced to beat Sidney Moncrief‘s Milwaukee Bucks in the conference finals, and swept the LA Lakers to win the ’83 NBA title.

Grunfeld and the 47-win Knicks fell short in the ’84 playoffs as well. This time going down in seven games to the Boston Celtics led by Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and the Chief Robert Parrish. Just as the 76ers did the previous season, the Celtics subsequently beat the Bucks in the East finals, and won the ’84 NBA championship, taking the Lakers in seven.

Tough times found the Knickerbockers in ’84-85. Cartwright missed the entire season and King only played 55 games. Not even Darrell Walker, in his second season and averaging a career-high 13.5 ppg, could help. A mere 24 wins and a frozen envelope later, Patrick Ewing magically landed in the Big Apple.

Fast forward to the night of October 26, 1985, the official arrival of the John Thompson-groomed Georgetown product in New York. I just happened to be watching NBA TV the other day and caught a replay of Ewing’s first game ever. The Knicks were up against the familiar 76ers, featuring Malone, Cheeks, a stout Charles Barkley, Dr. J, and one of my favorites, Sedale Threatt.

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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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