“Hopefully I can get back to my old self of when I was in Seattle when I made the All-Star team, when I was playing the three position…”

-Rashard Lewis

“We’re going to try to use him a little bit how he was used in Seattle, move him around, let him play a couple different positions, run plays for him where he doesn’t become such a one-dimensional type player.”

-said Flip Saunders, who went on to express that Lewis could play the three or four positions, throwing out several obvious lineup combinations.

Let’s get a couple facts about Lewis out of the way. He was drafted out of high school and this is his 13th year in the league — lot of tread on those tires, 847 games worth, plus 64 playoff games. He also has experienced bouts of knee tendinitis at various points in his career.

Looking at PER (Player Efficiency Rating by ESPN’s John Hollinger — league average is 15), Lewis’ best career seasons came in Seattle in 2005-06 (20.0) and 2006-07 (20.7). He made the All-Star team in 2004-05 with a PER of 19.9.

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{via Sports Illustrated Vault}

An unfortunate part about being a Wizards/Bullets blogger and only 29 years old (and only having moved to DC in 1990), is that timing has deprived my memory and knowledgeable grasp of franchise history. But we all depend on people before us to tell the stories we don’t know. The more accounts there are, the better depiction we get of what actually transpired. This is what’s so great about team blogs, or “sites” maintained by sources which not apart of main stream media. They provide a more in depth view from wider angles, making the lore that much better for the future.

For my last birthday, a friend gave me ‘The Great Book of Washington, D.C. Sports Lists‘, written by Andy Pollin and Leonard Shapiro and published in 2008. These two guys have an insanely close relationship with sports in the city I love, and they turned to even more brilliant minds for assistance when composing their lists. While the book doesn’t exactly satisfy my desire for Bullets history tid-bits (to be expected in a Redskins town), it comes highly recommended for its Washington sporting facts, which are considered mostly minutia by ‘official’ historical accounts, but extremely savory to serious fans.

In reading, which I still continue to do, some lists twice, I came across some eyebrow raising commentary regarding the relationship between Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I previously had little knowledge of Hayes outside of him being a great player, and a member of the ’78-79 championship team. I simply haven’t taken the time to dive into research about him as I’ve done for more contemporary figures during my fandom period (such as Kevin Duckworth, Robert Pack, Larry Stewart, Scott Skiles, and Haywoode Workman).

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