Jan Vesely lets the jumpers fly at Wizards summer mini-camp day one (with a cameo from Bradley Beal).

“I’m not thinking about to show anything, I’m just happy to play and I will try to do my best on the court and try to get the wins.”

Those were Jan Vesely’s words on Monday afternoon when asked what he wanted to show the team about his game this summer. The quote was so him. Vesely plays  just to play, not for display.

The Vesely we saw flashes of last year is that instinctual, always-around-the-basketball guy. He doesn’t have to show the game, he knows it. Still, people expect to see something new, even if Jan claims he isn’t thinking about showing anything.

Two words: Jump. Shot.

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Some people, ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz for instance, have argued that the NBA should kill the draft. The system is broken, teams are tanking, lottery teams stay lottery teams… The fix: End the NBA draft and have all rookies enter the league as free agents. Why? Well, the NBA is a “business,” free market this-and-that, yada-yada-yada…

However, in constant attempts to analyze the NBA as a business — “It’s a business,” often being a canned talking point of players and team personnel alike when unable to explain the real reasons behind a maneuver — people forget that one of the first principles of business is that the customer comes first (or that the customer is always right). Whatever the case, will somebody please think of the children?

Yes, free agency rumors and the current mass, social media dissemination of them can be fun for fans, but only media members (and maybe a few teams attempting to cloud their intentions), really benefit from the noise.

The NBA draft is for the customer. Well, it’s for the players, too. And, it also benefits the league’s marketing of itself and its individuals. So, there’s no need to muddy ceremonial pomp and circumstance with dollars and cents. Because if there are league-wide issues with the way the business of basketball functions, there are other ways to resolve them aside from eliminating one of the NBA’s most-covered events.

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[You know what they say about little chairs? Little capacity.]

We just couldn’t let JaVale McGee get away from D.C. without giving him his propers… whatever “propers” means. And actually, “Can’t Say I Do,” the movie (let’s call it a mini-docu-drama, I think), doesn’t give much proper respect to young JaVale. Rather, it aims to convey the story of why he is no longer a Washington Wizard… because he couldn’t say “I do” to willingly understanding the game of basketball like coaches, teammates and fans expected.

All that talent in the world with only JaVale to hold himself back. No need to provide advanced statistics, describe skills and faults, or wax poetic on memories of McGee, because it’s as simple as that. He’s gone and I could [not] care less. It took about three years, eight months and 19 days, but the 18th pick in the 2008 NBA Draft (McGee), along with the 17th pick in 2007 (Nick Young), and a guy whom the Wizards essentially got for free from the New York Knicks last summer (Ronny Turiaf), was finally traded so that Washington could get some competent help at the center position (Nene). Kind of sucks that it took so long, but I’m sure the Wizards will figure it out sooner or later.

[Background: On Leap Day 2012, the Wizards faced the Orlando Magic at home, and JaVale McGee came off the bench for the first time all season. The previous night, in Milwaukee, Randy Wittman benched McGee for the entire second half (with good reason), and after the Wizards lost that game, the coach said, "I’m done with young guys. If they don’t want to play the right way, young guys aren’t going to play. It does us no good." After the Orlando game, which Washington also lost, Wittman said he spoke with McGee (and Nick Young, to an extent), about why they were benched. After that, I asked McGee if he understood the message his coach was trying to send. He could not say that he did, but seemed confident that he would figure it out sooner or later. And now we have a movie to watch...]

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Someone had to be the first to throw a flagrant elbow after the Ron Artest-James Harden incident. And if Vegas had set odds, Charlotte’s Tyrus Thomas, a guy who recently got in a physical confrontation with his coach, might have been one of the favorites. Last night in Washington, he delivered.

No, it wasn’t a violent, or even wholly, apparently intentional blow. If you were following Twitter at the time, you might have even seen comment that Thomas delivered a phantom elbow to the chops of Washington’s James Singleton, that he didn’t really connect. And, perhaps, that the referees had found their first post-Artest victim of hyper-senstitive, swift reaction (although Artest — Metta World Peace – has yet to receive game suspension punishment from the league himself). Let’s watch…

Hard to concretely tell from that video. And personally, I didn’t see the play unfold while attending the game at the Verizon Center. But the refs immediately hit Thomas with a flagrant-2 technical foul and stopped the game for a more in-depth video review. Not long after they were done watching, Thomas was ejected from the game. A muted elbow swing or not, the referees obviously saw enough to make an educated decision. What they heard, however, likely played an even larger role in the punishment than the visuals.

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Is change in the air? Certainly not if you ask Washington Wizards fans this morning, a majority of whom are entrenched in disenchantment with the reported return of team president Ernie Grunfeld. The only true change fans might be used to at this point is a high-rate of roster turnover — after this season, the longest tenured Wizard, John Wall, will have been with the team for only the last 148 games– as well as the inescapable, save for one time, disappointment in NBA Draft Lottery position.

But we’re talking about change on the court, specifically the emergence of a basketball product that’s at least competitive — with a 101-73 win over the Charlotte Bobcats on Monday night, the Wizards have now won four in a row for the first time since December 2007. Of course, we should also be mindful of the fact that the Wizards will, at best, finish with one of the nine worst season winning percentages in 51 seasons of franchise history. Also, 22.2-percent of Washington’s 18 victories this season have come against a Bobcats franchise that has now lost 21 games in a row and is flirting with the worst winning percentage in NBA history if they don’t win one of their final two contests.

Ask some of the Wizards players about the reason for basketball product differences between early in the season and now, and you’ll get veiled explanations about new personnel and guys coming together as a team. Does it boil down to the fact that I like, and strive, to beat like a dead horse: that Nick Young, JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche (hopefully) are gone? It feels all too easy, almost disingenuous, to use the mentally inept as scapegoats. Yet, here we are, with a different basketball team, one that actually might find success given the right additions this offseason.

Maybe veteran Mo Evans said it best when asked about how late season success this year, as opposed to similar circumstances over the past several seasons of futility, should be evaluated with any grain of credibility.

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With about seven minutes left in the third quarter of Wednesday night’s Wizards-Pacers game, Jan Vesely, with hyperactivity as he is wont to do, got his hand on a deflection that sparked a Washington fast break. However, as the Wizards are wont to do, the transition opportunity was mismanaged. John Wall recovered Vesely’s steal and passed the ball ahead to Jordan Crawford (Wall probably should have forced the defense to commit with a dribble). Unfortunately, Paul George, the only Pacer back, was in the right position to defend against just about anything Crawford would try to do. And what he tried to do, from my seat above section 104 at the Verizon Center, was make a lob pass (perhaps even one off the backboard) to either Wall or the trailing Vesely. George consumed whatever it was with his 6-foot-8 frame and took the ball for Indiana the other way, where eventually Danny Granger hit a jumper. The official score-keeper credited Crawford with a shot attempt; because I guess if you are going to credit George with a block instead of a steal, someone’s got to attempt a shot. Crawford didn’t quite agree. “Naw, I was passing it,” he said, “You know I shoot a lot, so they added to the field goals.”

Let’s watch the play, Jordan Crawford’s post-game response, and where, exactly, he got his Galaxy Foamposite Nike shoes.

In going down 102-95 to an Orlando Magic team that appears to be suffering from mental fatigue due to uncertain cohesiveness, at least the Washington Wizards looked better at losing than they have in the past. Similar to the second half of the Milwaukee game, Randy Wittman opted to keep Nick Young and JaVale McGee benched in favor of a starting lineup of John Wall, Jordan Crawford, Chris Singleton, Trevor Booker and Kevin Seraphin. And while this unit struggled out of the gate, they did their jobs and stayed mostly within themselves.

Certainly there were mistakes. Furthermore, missed shots. All to be expected from young team making an earnest attempt while lacking size against a specimen like Dwight Howard and shot-makers who can be trusted to not disrupt the offense. Crawford caught fire with 14 points in the third quarter to go with four assists, giving him a hand in most of the Wizards’ 29 points scored in the period to Orlando’s 25. Once trailing by 17 points in the first half, Washington was down just 71-70 heading into the final 12 minutes. Unfortunately Crawford got cold in the fourth and went 0-for-6 from the field.

But John Wall picked up the slack. He scored 10 straight points for Washington after a timeout at the 10:27 mark of the last quarter when the Wizards were down 79-71. Wall capped his efforts with an assist to Mo Evans for a 3-pointer; it was a 13-4 run that tied the game at 83 with 6:56 left. But back-to-back threes by Orlando’s Jameer Nelson and Ryan Anderson after a Magic timeout at the 6:34 mark helped bury Washington. A long Nelson offensive rebound resulting in a Hedo Turkoglu 3-pointer that put the Magic up 100-91 with 1:32 left served as the dagger. But the point is that the Wizards fought, as a team, and with strong contributions from Booker, Singleton and a handful of others in addition to Wall and Crawford.

The Wizards SAID WHAT?

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Remember the NBA lockout that commenced in mid-Summer 2011 and extended into fall, making all league fans anxious over whether they’d be able to see professional basketball? Seems like a long time ago now that we are at the end of February 2012 and at the halfway point of the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season. And for the Washington Wizards, whatever has become of this year and whatever is left almost can’t end soon enough, so the franchise can move forward into the next stage of rebuilding and beyond, whatever that entails.

Wizards players certainly remember life during the lockout, and it wasn’t fun. Now, how much non-fun compared to playing on a 7-26 team? Who knows. It’s easy to imagine that they’d all rather be playing the sport they love, and making money doing so. Earlier this season, before the Wizards faced a Jeremy Lin-less New York Knicks team in what would be their seventh straight loss to open the schedule, I spoke with several Wizards players — Roger Mason Jr., Nick Young, Ronny Turiaf, Rashard Lewis, Andray Blatche, Jordan Crawford, John Wall, Kevin Seraphin and Trevor Booker — about the toughest aspects of the 2011 lockout offseason, and about portions of the time off that weren’t all that bad. Watch…

This post is certainly a couple days late and definitely several dollars short amidst the pixels urgently begging for your attention as soon as it happens. But words last forever and video preserves them further. This is what Randy Wittman, Erik Spoelstra, Shane Battier, Chris Bosh, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Mo Evans and Nick Young said after they played on Friday, Feb. 10, 2012 in a 106-89 Miami Heat win over the Washington Wizards.

Who says….?

x “My challenge is always finding a way to be aggressive.”
x “Every team plays hard against us, they bring their ‘A’ game against us. We understand that.”
x “We’re always a day late and a dollar short.”
x “I think that’s what the fans came to see. They love to see their favorite players do amazing things, and they got a chance to see that on both sides … Hopefully everyone that came to the game, paid their hard-earned dollars for their ticket, and got their money worth tonight.”
x “I’m the best 3-point shooter in the world.”

[answers below video]

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Jan Vesely didn’t score the 100th point on Sunday, Washington ended up with just 98 in their win against the Pistons (77 points), but he did end up with the play of the night. We talked about people getting down on Vesely in a recent post, and it’s those people who need to keep their eyes on sequences like in the video above. Again, Vesely is already the best Wizards big man at defending the high pick-and-roll, even more evident in him getting the steal from Detroit’s Will Bynum. But the scene of Vesely’s ability to run the floor with Wall, them sharing with each other until Jan ends up with the dunk, is a sign of things to come from the Czech rookie. No, he’s not a dazzling stud of a 6th overall pick, but he could develop into a defensive player as solid as Joakim Noah, but perhaps more athletic. Now wouldn’t that be nice to have at that draft position?

Wizards win their second road game in Detroit 98-77 and improve to 6-22 on the season. Head over to the Daily Dime Live on ESPN.com to read my rapid reaction for the game.