flickr/The CJM

On draft night, there were many frustrated rumblings on Bullets Forever over Ernie Grunfeld failing to land (or go after) Vince Carter. Not only that, but Carter was allowed to go to the reigning Eastern Conference champion Orlando Magic.

With Hedo Turkoglu opting out, unlikely to return to Orlando, who knows if the Magic will be better off with Carter … many assume yes. I’ll be curious to see if Stan Van Gundy uses Carter similarly within the offense as he did Turkoglu, creating for others off the high pick and roll.

And if Rasheed Wallace goes to Orlando (which probably means that baby ‘Sheed is backing off demands of $8 million a year), they could be very scary. Tumultuous with Wallace the home-wrecker, buy scary nonetheless.

But in terms of the Wizards, should Grunfeld have gone after Carter?
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Like user ooba on Bullets Forever, I attended the Flip Saunders meet-n-greet with season ticket holders at the Verizon Center on Wednesday night. I didn’t intend on going (nor did I really know about it), but my boy Donte invited me that day, so big thanks to him.

Luckily, I had the room bugged beforehand so I could get some prime quotes from Flip … well, if ‘bugged’ means a small recorder I happened to have with me.

It’s kinda funny, I didn’t mean to be the sneaky blogger recording people’s conversations, or a coach talking to a practice court filled with 200-250 people (not sure if I’m a good crowd estimator or not), but like ooba, I just want to relay interesting team news, notes, and Et ceteras to those who weren’t able to attend.

Of course, one must wonder if Saunders was more candid speaking in front of fans, working under the assumption that no one was ‘covering’ the event, than he would have been with members of the main-stream-media.

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Wizards player evaluations for ‘08-09 continue, up third is Etan Thomas. My thoughts are below, you can check on the full report on Bullets Forever.

[Previously: Oleksiy Pecherov | Juan Dixon]

What can I say about Etan Thomas’ season? Well, at least he has intelligence and social involvement to fall back upon.

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The friendly bloggers (and their fans) at the Cleveland sports-based Waiting For Next Year have taken upon the task of creating a Mark Price-themed t-shirt (h/t Sporting News).

Price, the current Atlanta Hawks shooting coach, may still be right for Cleveland Cavaliers fans, but that’s far from the case for Wizards/Bullets fans.

A reminder of how the Cavs fleeced former Bullets GM, John Nash (from this May ’08 post):

Ya’ll heard Gilbert Arenas came back?
Naw really….no April Fools.

Well, in case you missed it last Saturday, I outsourced some screen shots and they just arrived from Bangalore. Enjoy.

He hugged out all the troubles of the world today with ‘Sheed.

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Q1

Butler hits a tough falling shot to begin….Steve Buckhantz and Phil Chenier relate that Tapscott wants to get the star forwards (Butler/Jamison) off first…..but why?

Seems like those two should be able to get going at any time…it’s the scoring from the rest of the team which has been the concern.

Caron Butler is trying to do too much…..make, miss, gets caught in the air and has to pass to Blatche with one second on the shot clock — bad decision.

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In anticipation of tonight’s match-up between the Wizards and Pistons, the third on the season, Jessie from the Pistons Nation agreed to answer a couple questions I had about his team. Read on….

1) The Pistons have gone 9-9 since Iverson has taken the court…..meanwhile, Mr. Big Shot and the Nuggets are 16-4….care to offer any hindsight on the trade?

• Did you like it in the first place?
• Would you do it differently?
• Prior to trading Chauncey, did you seriously think that Detroit had championship material?

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Hey…..did you guys know that the Wizards beat the Pistons [game blog on Bullets Forever]? In the midst of yesterday’s trade frenzy, I was unable to get down any thoughts on the game.

Once again, the Wiz had to claw their way back. In the first meeting with Detroit, they had to fight back just to be down 10, 31-21, at the end of the first quarter (the Wiz had been down 17 at the 3:30 mark). So, after putting themselves in a 29-14 hole after one quarter on Tuesday, you’ll have to excuse me if I wasn’t exactly confident in the ability to get a win.

But the team kept fighting, and that’s the main reason why people are saying that the Wizards are a much better team than their 4-15 record.

The Washington Post’s Ivan Carter especially noted Darius Songaila’s bucket to put the Wiz up 6 with 2:08 in the 4th as the turning point. I guess timeouts work because it wasn’t 20 seconds prior that the Pistons got three chances at the hoop, converting on the third, capping a quick 8-2 run in 2:15 to bring the Pistons within two points. But Tapscott halted play, Wes Unseld Jr. drew it up, and D-Song came to the rescue.

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Walter Herrmann on Fire – flickr/Vedia

Flickr tells me that the above picture is none other than Walter Herrmann….and I have to believe it. Something tells me that old school Walter Herrmann would totally have a hair-doo like Guile from Street Fighter only to go with the ‘Fabio’ look we’re graced with today.

So a guy with a pony-tail goes off on the Wizards and everyone becomes a drama queen. I mean just look at the picture….the guy is about to dunk with a ball on f-ing fire! It’s no wonder that Herrmann was hitting trey balls and finger rolls on the Wiz. For all we know, he could be the Argentinian Chuck Norris.

Plus, the dude has been through a TON in his life that not many can imagine. In July 2003, Herrmann lost his mother, younger sister, and girlfriend all in the same car crash. Exactly a year later, he had one of the best games of his career, 38 points and 11 rebounds, in leading Argentina in the South American Championships. After the game, he found out that his father had died of a heart-attack.

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Detroit Skyline – flickr/Joseph.S

If the Wizards would’ve shot better that 37% against New Jersey, they would have won, right? Yea…..who knows. When it comes to winning and basketball, no two areas are preached more about than defense and rebounding, no matter what pulpit the message is coming from. So against the Pistons, for game blog purposes, I’m going to ignore the offense and concentrate on defense and rebounding. Not all boards are attainable, and you can play great defense and not stop a bulk of an opponent’s shots from going in. That being said, I’m going to attempt to selectively focus on the particularly great or horrendous occurrences in those areas.

Q1

10:48: Ron Thompson mentioned that transition D would be key in the pregame show…here, Billups brings it down the middle in off a Wizards turnover (Etan had great position in the lane, just lost the ball). Amir Johnson comes to screen Antonio Daniels just inside the three point line. Jamison is laying back a little to protect the basket, but there’s just too much space, AJ needs to be closer to help on Chauncey. Billups takes one dribble off the screen and gets an easy jumper on the left elbow. Johnson’s screen was semi-illegal….but this is the NBA. 4-0 Detroit.

10:23: Next time down, Amir Johnson gets called for an illegal screen…..laid his butt into DeShawn.

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