To lighten up the mood surrounding Tuesday night’s first Wizards home preseason contest , (aka Emo Gil Niner’s “sacrifice gesture”) here is a footage of the Jumbo-Tron montage reminding fans that the team is “back.”
Also, new PA announcer Ralph Wesley made his Wizards debut along with Nick Young’s fresh pregame handshake that Yi Jianlian hysterically enjoyed, but Kirk Hinrich is not down with yet.
Coach Flip Saunders and John Wall discussed several topics in their post game interview. Saunders addressed his impressions of the victory, Wall’s play and Arenas being a very coachable player. Wall spoke about his first game in front of the home crowd, picking up two quick fouls, his adjustment to the NBA game and how he is handling being selected as a team captain at only 20-years old.
As described in a previous post, the Wizards held tryouts for the position of in-game public address announcer at the Verizon Center on Monday night. Prior, 220 applicants where whittled down to 50 invitees … around 31 showed up. That was narrowed done to 16 hopefuls who were further narrowed down to five. More due diligence was performed, but by the night’s end, the team still had not decided who would serve as pre-game hype man for Gilbert Arenas, John Wall, Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee & Co.
Shortly before 1 pm on Tuesday afternoon it was announced that Ralph Wesley will be the voice of Wizards games — Wesley was my personal favorite after the round of 16 (and the round of five). There were a lot of great voices, but the best, most unique one prevailed. Below you’ll find a recap of the night in photos, followed by video of Wesley’s winning performance at the bottom. Enjoy.
Senior Director of Game Operations Danny Zollars (splendid name BTW) calls out the audition numbers of the 16 who’ve made it to the next round.
