It began with Chris Miller of Comcast SportsNet Washington innocuously asking Wizards rookie Shelvin Mack what he likes to do with his teammates to relax. It ended up with team’s young superstar, John Wall, informing the media how Superman cheates at video games.

Mack boasted that he was the best gamer on the team, which Wall was later asked about, and he vehemently disagreed with the accuracy of Mack’s claims.

Wall then revealed that sometime during the lockout, he lost to Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic (for now) in ‘Call of Duty’ because Howard hired professionals. Yes, D12 brought in ringers to teach Wall a lesson, evidently resulting in repeated beat-downs.

[Note to all school kids out there reading this, especially my nephew Jacob McGinnis, becoming a video game pro is not a suggested career path ,and a NBA star employing you for this skill is highly unlikely.]

“My team got whooped in Call of Duty to Dwight’s team, but he cheated. He went and got these two guys that play Call of Duty all day long…like they don’t have a job. They got 30 kills every time. They just sit at home and play all day. They beat us bad…..they ranked in the nation. He (Howard) went and snuck, got those two on his team…Ringers got us. Every time you turned the game back on, we’re getting killed again.”

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Operation Sports (a leading news and content provider focused on the sports video game industry) is pretty well connected. Today, 2K Games (makers of not only the No. 1 selling NBA video game two years in a row, but also the No. 1 rated NBA video game 10 years in a row) sent Operation Sports the overall ratings for every player in each team’s starting five for NBA 2K11, which will be released on October 5. Let’s see where some of the Wiz kids stand.

The NBA 2K11 Wizards Starting Lineup:

John Wall — 81 OVR (overall rating)
Gilbert Arenas — 83 OVR
Josh Howard — 71 OVR
Andray Blatche — 72 OVR
JaVale McGee — 59 OVR

As a point of reference, here are the current Wizards starter ratings from NBA 2K10:

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Remember NBA JAM? I do. The arcade version, which I didn’t play much, and the Sega Genesis version, which I played a TON, came out sometime in late 1993. Often times I “gamed” and never looked back, whatever that means … probably ignoring homework and listening to the Wu’s 36 Chambers. Of course, I did kinda like Arch Rivals better. In that game you got to punch players and steal the ball while they were dribbling or shooting … although NBA JAM did allow for some rough play, pushing, et cetera.

NBA JAM featured 2-on-2 basketball and the real draw … actual NBA players (unlike Arch Rivals, which featured generic players named Mohawk, Moose and Reggie). Unfortunately with NBA JAM, Washington Bullets fans were left with Tom Gugliotta, who was the best choice, and Harvey Grant, who had been traded to Portland for Kevin Duckworth by the time the game came out. Later versions featured Googs and Calbert Cheaney.

Flash forward to 2010 where EA Sports is coming out with an updated version of NBA JAM for Nintendo Wii. I might be kinda excited if I still played video games, but I retired those for blogging long ago. But that didn’t keep me from voting. On what you say? Well, EA Sports is allowing fans to vote for which players they would like to see in the game from each NBA team.

For the Wizards, your options are: Randy Foye, Nick Young, Josh Howard, Mike Miller, Al Thornton and Andray Blatche. Pick three, which is already more choices than Gilbert gave Javaris.

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