Posts tagged ‘polls’

Robert Griffin III is awesome. No getting around that. All of the draft picks that the Redskins traded for him were worth it, and more. Redskins fans are very lucky to even have the a talent like RGIII on their team for years to come. An NBA superstar can make a franchise, but a potentially all-time great NFL quarterback is like nothing else (without getting too far ahead of ourselves).

That said, the Wizards could really, really use an NBA superstar. Kevin Durant is pridefully from the DMV area and just thinking about him in ‘new’ Wizards red (or even sporting the uniform of a more properly-named pro basketball team from the nation’s capital) brings a warm and fuzzy feeling. And even though the quarterback usually gets the girl, if done smartly (note: the Redskins under Dan Snyder have generally been very, very stupid), an NFL team can be built to win and compete for the Super Bowl, with a less-than thrilling QB.

But a guy like Durant, the NBA’s youngest-ever scoring champ and quite possibly one of the top three scorers in the game of basketball over the last two decades (or ever), could be even more of a game-changer for a team like the Wizards than RGIII has been for the Redskins.

So, I posed the question to D.C. sports fans on Twitter (last night before the Redskins beat the Giants and again earlier this morning)… Read more »

Well, the season is here. No big, blow ‘em out preview from the TAI crew. We’re just here to offer continued coverage of the hometown pro basketball team as we usually do, and more. The site is entering its sixth season, by the way. So leggo…

On October 9, www.Bovada.lv released estimated win totals for every NBA team, or their over/under. The Washington Wizards stood at 31.5. About a week ago, TAI threw up a poll of various over unders, including:

• O/U on John Wall PPG, 68% took the over on 17 points;
• O/U on John Wall APG, 56% took the over on 8.5 assists;
• O/U on Nene PPG, 63% took the over on 14 points;
• O/U on Nene RPG, 53% took the over on 7.5 rebounds;
• O/U on Jordan Crawford PPG, 56% took the over on 12.5 points; and
• O/U on Bradley Beal PPG, 72% took the over on 12.5.

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Forgive D.C. sports fans for seeming gloomy – for feeling like there’s a dark cloud hanging over their heads.

Ok, maybe that’s just Hurricane Sandy. But after a sunny September that featured Robert Griffin III’s debut and some incredibly exciting baseball, October’s been much more depressing for local fans; a stomach-punch Nationals loss, the Capitals locked out, and several big injuries to the area’s best young players.

Will the Wizards give us a reason to smile? When the NBA season wrapped up about six months ago, TAI did its first Wizards Optimism Index – a survey of where the team stood, having just ended the 2011-2012 season on a six-game winning streak.

We weighed in using five factors, weighted to reflect their relative importance to the  state of the franchise. Read more »

Fodder, links, bullets, commentary, rumors, etc., and a D.C. picture…

Cloudy skies of NBA Draft prognosticators.
[Francis Playground Court - NW D.C. - N St. & 23rd - photo: K. Weidie]

NBA.com’s David Aldridge:

“Wiz want one of the international bigs, and don’t really care which one.”

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Case closed, people like polls. And various polls about the same subject can all tell a different story. However, not necessarily in the case of the Washington Wizards’ new look, about which we are still discussing with expansive pixels. All signs point to success for the Monumental Sports & Entertainment posse, with much kudos to adidas (thank the basketball gods it wasn’t Reebok, which used to do the NBA jerseys until Reebok was purchased by adidas in 2006). Perusing some comment sections, the general thought is, we love the new look, but…

The color-replacement Wizards logo is bad. Even though the team still owns the intellectual property rights to that trade mark, they should really put it out of commission (as in, don’t throw it on gear and blast it for sale all over the website). But we get it, the team is seeing if anybody bites on sales. I have a feeling that soon the only people wearing the color-replacement wizard with moon logo will be sad little kids with unknowing mothers and those in other counties adding them to their 2004 Carolina Panther SuperBowl Champion and 2000 Indiana Pacers NBA Finals Champion t-shirt collections.

Road jersey sales could be down… depending on availability. There’s something about the road jersey that’s so drastically opposite from how great the home white jersey looks. Some have said a version with more blue would look better, but Ted loves red. The color placement in the top stripes makes organizational sense, but perhaps players will ultimately look like they’re wearing a red strappy onesie jumper set for the summer when actually on the court. Because that’s another thing people have said, ‘Let’s see how look in them while playing.’ Indeed. Then again, maybe everyone will just get used to them and forget about minor critiques. I’m sure some marketing research has told Monumental Sports this.

Others have wanted more stars, a scoop neck instead of a v-neck, and so on.

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Entitlement. It’s a word Flip Saunders has used before when referring to his “starters”, i.e., JaVale McGee and especially Andray Blatche (I’m assuming).

“Do some of our starters — and I don’t know that — do they feel right now that they’re entitled as far as to play 30 or 35 [minutes] no matter how they’re playing?,” said Saunders after his team embarrassingly lost to the Indiana Pacers at home in their first contest after the All-Star break. His inference was on minutes instead of starting versus coming off the bench, but does it make a difference?

Evidently not, as Saunders seemingly still hasn’t found the answer he’s been looking for from his team. And as McGee and Blatche are still trotted out on the floor night in and night out, pretty much no matter what they or the team do. Including the Indiana game, Washington has lost six in a row since the festivities in Los Angeles (seven overall); the only games in which the Wiz Kids were competitive? The matches against Dallas and Miami when Blatche didn’t play, supposedly due to a hip injury. (And no, trying to mount a furious comeback against a mediocre Golden State team at home doesn’t fully count as competitive.)

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The faces on the cardboard classics below say: “Hey man, we’re trying over here.”

I’m not sure I believe them all. Or maybe one is trying more than the others … at least as much as a frozen facial expression can indicate. But who’s trying the most? Or which player’s face from the past provides the most hope in the present for the future? Study carefully and vote in the poll below.

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Back on November 24 of last year, my Truth About It colleague Kyle Weidie posed a question to site readers:  “Who Will Give The Washington Wizards Their First Road Win?” At the time, the Wizards were 0-6 away from home, but their slow start could easily be attributed to youth, a tough road schedule and the fact that Gilbert Arenas still wasn’t traded.

Two months and an Arenas trade later, the road loss count has ballooned from six to 20, and the cause cannot be easily explained away.  Depending on who you ask and when, blame can be placed on anyone from Ernie Grunfeld to Josh Howard’s knee.  Still, the fact remains that last night’s second half collapse in Milwaukee left the Wizards with an 0-20 road record to start the season — just nine away from the record held by the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks of 29 consecutive away-from-home losses to start a season.

The Wizards’ next 10 road games look like this: Read more »

We may never know who Kirk Hinrich really is … at least personality-wise. Maybe that can mostly be summed up with three concepts: Basketball, Iowa, Coach’s Son. His game is beyond vanilla, but it isn’t flashy either. He is Kirk Hinrich … under the radar, yet completely noticeable.

Kirk is even more noticeable now that he plays with glasses. They now encapsulate his ‘flair’ … as much as a pair of Oakley spectacles can I suppose. But who is he? (In those glasses.)

On a recent ESPN Daily Dime chat session, friend of the blog and a proprietor of HoopSpeak, Beckley Mason, likened Hinrich’s glasses look to that of a character in the movie, Team America: World Police.

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So Gilbert Arenas is evidently wearing a pair of custom Under Armour shoes now, as seen above (via Sole Collector – click for more pictures). Well, at least he wore a pair Saturday versus Cleveland (and only in the second half, I’ve been told). For his season debut in New York he wore a pair of Jordans.

The model, Under Armour’s Micro G Supreme, will supposedly be sported by Arenas-only for the next couple of months — and as you can see, the released pictures show the shoes in Wizards colors and with Arenas’ No. 9 on the heel. Also note that Arenas is evidently not getting paid a dime by Under Armour just yet (via CNBC’s Darren Rovell on Twitter).

For Arenas, it doesn’t hurt for him to lend his name/number to a company willing to support him; and for Under Armour, it’s certainly a low-risk investment that could increase their basketball market penetration.

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