The Wizards aren’t putting Josh Howard’s face next to that on a banner anytime soon … unless they want to ad a fourth ‘C’ for cap space. Like Caron Butler, Howard was once an All-Star. And like the one they call Tuff Juice, the one they call J-Ho has recently fallen far from basketball skill grace.
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.
Mike Miller has a monkey … or at least he used to.
Back when he was with the Orlando Magic, Miller had a Java Macaque, which is one of those tiny lil’ monkeys that’s almost like having a kid. Miller would change its diapers, attempt to wean it off the bottle and onto people food, etc.. The monkey, Sonny, had his own mini-playground and would sleep in the bed with Miller every night. The story on the Orlando Magic website even says that Java Macaques can grow to have the intelligence level of a six year old human baby … strange.
But alas, don’t expect to see ‘Sonny’ at Ben’s Chili Bowl or sitting on Abe Lincoln’s lap any time soon. True Hoop’s Henry Abbott, who wrote about Miller’s monkey long ago for HOOP magazine, reported on TH in December of 2007 that Miller had to let Sonny go because he was trying to raise two real babies, his sons Mason and Mavrick.
With Washington sending Darius Songaila, Etan Thomas, Oleksiy Pecherov and the 5th overall pick to Minnesota in exchange for Mike Miller and Randy Foye being reported by Chad Ford of ESPN, and both Wizards beat reporters, Mike Jones of the Washington Times and Michael Lee of the Washington Post, it’s time to get some initial thoughts blogged out.
If I know Ernie Grunfeld, he’s not done. Hell, he better not be done.
The drama is kind of exciting, knowing the President of Basketball Ops I’ve come to trust probably has more tricks up his sleeve. Judging by the roster after the trade, we might be calling Gruns “Mr. Wizard” if he pulls off something else nice to make the team complete (more on ‘complete’ in a second).
On another note, Thursday just lost a ton of luster … hey, at least the 25th is my birthday. Read more »
The internets are ablaze with one specific Wizards trade rumor today.
That trade: JaVale McGee and the #5 pick go to the Oklahoma City Thunder for the #3 pick. The Wizards would then select heartthrob Ricky Rubio and if for some reason he’s not available, the Wiz would “settle” for Hasheem Thabeet.
Why not trade Andray Blatche instead? (Unsilent Majority’s claims that ‘Dray runs the fast break like a drunk point guard notwithstanding.)
Many of us in Wizards Nation have tossed around the notion that some other unsuspecting GM would be glad to take a chance on Blatche … in a Kwame Brown for Caron Butler type of way.If Grunfeld is dangling McGee instead of Blatche, either other GMs would rather stay away or Gruns and Flip think that Andray (with his four years of “experience”) is more suited for the ‘win now’ plans.
“Great” the Wiz get unlucky on draft night and are looking to trade two prospects for one.
Would Thabeet even be an upgrade over JaVale McGee? Doubt it.My reasoning:Read more »
