[Emery Rec Center - NW Washington DC - photo: K. Weidie]

I’ve previously used historical statistical analysis in an attempt to determine who were some of the best, and worst, shooters in Wizards/Bullets franchise history.

One post explained that Slick Leonard might have had to worst shooting season in franchise record books. As a member of the ‘61-62 Chicago Packers, Leonard threw up 1,128 shots, second most on the team after Walt Bellamy, but only made 37.5-percent of them. In a nine team league that season 30 players attempted 1,000 or more field-goals, and Slick was the worst of them all.

Others, such as Kevin Loughery and Mitch Richmond, have cemented themselves as some of the worst shooters beyond the window of just one season. Loughery, over 591 career games played with the team in Baltimore, made only 41.5-percent of his 9,209 FG attempts. Richmond, who adeptly bastardized any memories of trading Chris Webber into scorn from fandom toward his aching knees, made just 41.7-percent of the 2,356 shots he took as a Wizard. To note, Loughery and Richmond were two of 26 players in franchise history to play in 160 games or more with the team and average over 15 field-goals attempted per 36 minutes.

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A week from today the Washington Wizards will hold a press conference to unveil their new look, which includes a red, white and blue color scheme, a new logo, and new uniforms. Various sites could probably hold various polls until clicking fingers are tired, but I’m guessing that the vast majority would still agree that, while a color change to build more unification around red and the colors of the American flag is a good start, “Wizards” as a franchise nickname continues to be a horrible joke and in no way should be a representation of professional basketball in the capital of the United States.

The vast majority would then probably split between those who want the team to return to being called the “Bullets,” and those who understand that reverting back is not going to happen, and that the franchise is better off moving on with a completely new name. Also in lieu of official polling, I’ll speculate that the team name, and thus its colors, have been the biggest hot-button issue surrounding Ted Leonsis since his ownership group took control of the franchise last June.

Thus, the results of next Tuesday’s unveiling will likely come under a particular amount of scrutiny. Does a color change need to happen? Yes/Sure, why not?

Does a color change, new uniforms, and especially a new logo, likely come at a great cost to the franchise? Re-branding efforts, even if it doesn’t mean a name change, are usually very expensive. So, yes.

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[Shaw Rec. Center - Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

In mid-September, ESPN.com contributor Tom Haberstroh made an attempt to determine the five worst players in the franchise history of each NBA team [ESPN Insider]. The requirements, along with the implementation of John Hollinger’s PER, were:

“… a player needed to have played at least 10 minutes per contest over the course of at least 100 career games with the franchise. Furthermore, we’ve added the “Bruce Bowen Corollary” to exempt players who started for championship teams.”

And the list of distinguished gentlemen for the Bullets/Wizards franchise:

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[a basketball hoop somewhere in Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

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Excuse the comparison to the men’s game and think of the following more as context to what the Washington Mystics have accomplished this season. Through their run, a prevailing storyline has been about someone who hasn’t played at all, all-star Alana Beard. No one expected Washington to do anything after Beard had season-ending surgery on an injured left ankle tendon in April. Instead, the Mystics finished as the first overall seed in the East.

Unfortunately for the growing Mystics fan base, their team lost its opening playoff game against the Atlanta Dream in D.C. on Wednesday night. They’ve long moved past the ‘what if we had Alana’ stage, but for context, perspective, and for the hell of it, let’s find the NBA equivalent of Beard’s statistical production for a better idea of her impact, or lack thereof.

I chose three advanced stat categories to put in the Basketball-Reference.com historical NBA database (and please excuse the refresher course via the Basketball-Reference glossary): Read more »

December 7, 1999: Ten years ago today, as Y2K hung over the world, the Washington Wizards lost their 20th game of the season to the Los Angeles Lakers, dropping their record to 5-15. In fact, the game was probably going in L.A. about the time I published this post. Let’s check out the Washington Post game story by Steve Wyche, courtesy of Dan Steinberg:

The Washington Wizards’ entire front court scored 16 fewer points than Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal, and as a result, Washington fell, 91-80, tonight before 15,571 at Staples Center.

O’Neal scored a game-high 30 points and grabbed 16 of his team’s 44 rebounds as the Lakers won their seventh straight game. The Wizards lost their fifth straight, an unflattering mark seeing as they have a seven-game losing streak already to their credit this season.

Washington forward Juwan Howard scored just six points on 3-of-17 shooting. Forward Michael Smith added two points and center Ike Austin had six. Combined they were 7 of 30 from the field, and none of the three attempted a free throw.

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In the dog days of August, not much happens NBA-wise (aside from the schedule being released). So, in the spirit of George Santayana’s famous quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” in the next several days, I’ll be providing some Wizards highlights and lowlights (mostly the latter) from each month in the past year.

First up: August 2008.

The only Wizards player who has an August birthday is Andray Blatche. He will turn 23 on August 22nd, and will be entering his 5th year in the league.

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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).

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The 2009 NBA Draft is on June 25th, an important day in so many ways. For one, it’s my birthday….the onset of my last year in my 20s…..but it’s also the day that the Wizards will be selecting Blake Griffin with the #1 overall draft pick (hopefully).

And while Griffin might not be a franchise changer like Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Shaq O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, he certainly isn’t a Kwame Brown or Michael Olowokandi.

Griffin won’t magically propel the Wizards to the cream of the crop, but he can certainly be a key cog on a potential contender while keeping the ‘Zards poised for the future.

June 25th is a pretty big date…potentially (Dikembe Mutombo will also turn 43 in beyond-human years on 6/25)….but May 19th is much more important. That’s when the order of the NBA is decided via a lottery.

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