Posts tagged ‘yi jianlian’

Truth About It.net will turn a whole five years old at the end of this October.

Hard to believe/interesting. Nonetheless, over the life of the site from the 2007-08 season to 2011-12, we’ve seen/lived/suffered through 131 wins, 263 losses, four coaches, two owners, one GM/team president, one Phil Chenier mustache removal, and 56 total players (amazingly, 48 players over the last three seasons).

You may have heard of ESPN’s #NBArank project, now in year two. Now hear of #WizardsRank, where we rank each of those 56 players during Truth About It.net’s five-year run.

TAI anonymously polled 27 members of the Wizards pixel establishment — from mainstream media to new media, TAI staffers included, to a few pixel consumers (readers of the site) — and got 17 responses.

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[Yi Jianlian vs. Nene at the London Olympics, original image via AP]

D.I.Y. stands for “Do-It-Yourself,” and it’s all the rage amongst the hipster kids aiming to minimize reliance on others to get things done (trust funds be damned). D.I.Y. can involve noble satisfaction. Have a leaky sink? Fix it yourself. There, satisfied. In a sense, this entire self-published blog website started as a D.I.Y. But D.I.Y. doesn’t work so well on the basketball court, as Wizards fans are all too aware.

Nene is not a D.I.Y.-er, and for this, John Wall’s point guard ability will blossom. For that matter, the entire Wizards team could flourish when they relent to the reliance on others. Might you be listening, Jordan Crawford?

Nene and the Brazilian team moved to 3-1 in Group B play after deconstructing China on Saturday and will finish the preliminary round with a game against Spain today. With the 98-59 victory (Brazil doubled China’s score by halftime, 42-21), Nene didn’t even have to play in the final two quarters, resting whatever might ail him (such as his ongoing plantar fasciitis). A highly effective 11 minutes off the bench in the first half was all Brazil needed; Nene contributed six points, five rebounds, two assists, and a steal in this time span. Brazil’s entire team put on an impressive display of unselfish basketball, even with the knowledge that China, now 0-4 in group play, has little in terms of talent. Nene’s contributions to the Brazilian team could have implications on how the Wizards will run their offense next season, as they would like to incorporate the same unselfishness cultivated by Nene on the international stage.

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[The Bullets-Wizards have had 15 different 7-footers suit up over the years. Only one appears in this photo. Via SI Vault and B-R.]

Roy Hibbert is a very, very tall man. Seven feet-and-two-inches tall, in fact.

And over on Grantland, there is a really, really good article about Hibbert’s development. How D.C.’s own Big Roy went from Georgetown scrub to NBA All-Star in eight years.

Go read it.

Author Jordan Conn captures the routine — from Hibbert’s pre-game stretching to his mixed martial arts practice — that transformed a 7-foot-2 non-athlete into one of basketball’s best players. But in the sea of detail, there was one data point that jumped out to me. (Bolding is mine.)

Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control, Sports Illustrated estimated that there are fewer than 70 7-footers between the ages of 20 and 40 in the United States. Seventy 7-footers; 30 starting NBA centers.

If you’re Nate Robinson’s height, you need to be an exceptional athlete to make the league. If you’re Hibbert’s, you just have to be pretty good.

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While some Wizards are attempting to eat spoonfuls of cinnamon… While some NBA players, including John Wall, are avoiding bullets at a place called the Juliet Supper Club in New York City… While Ted Leonsis welcomes the “buzz and interest” created by a show making fun of the Wizards team name (but don’t ask him about changing it, he’ll get annoyed)… While Jan Vesley returns to the Czech Republic to contemplate his basketball life… While real estate sites are getting in on the lockout action by posting about NBA player and owner housing…

While NBA players seem rather frustrated about the Lockout, but doing alright nonetheless, the rest of us have done… Not much, aside from being working-stiffs, or in school, or entrenched in unemployment, or perhaps involved in a myriad of issues more concerning than the NBA Lockout. Some days for some of us are good, some days for some not so much. Maybe all is not that bad… unless you’re a Redskins fan in a rainy and foggy District of Columbia the Monday after the football kicker couldn’t pull it out against the rival Dallas Cowboys in overtime.

Perspective. No one on either side, players or owners, seems to have it. Fans, especially those who will inevitably come back to the NBA game anyway, are left with a feeling of helplessness. We are often only left, in the midst of this NBA Lockout, with social media and online pictures. Could you imagine if this happened in 1998? The game and its players would’ve disappeared from our visual pixels exponentially.

I can’t even begin to try to name all the states in which John Wall has played exhibtion basketball this summer – Maryland, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Nevada, Washington, California, New York, Kentucky, and the District of Columbia (there were events in Minnesota and Connecticut where he didn’t show up). I’m likely missing several. He’s been playing basketball overseas as well. Trips to Paris, France.

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Links, a D.C. picture, commentary, lockout, stuff, a poll…

[A blurry night vision in Washington - photo: K. Weidie]

So before I get to the links, and as I continue to contemplate how much I care about this lockout, officially losing the first two weeks of the regular season – obviously this is an unideal, frustrating situation, but I also could care less about getting wrapped up in the politics, economics, and interpretation (often misinterpretation, likely) of scatterbrained media reports — I wanted to throw out a poll to see where some of the readers of this site might stand. Vote below and drop comments if you feel like venting. Otherwise, thanks for visiting. Even with no games, there’s a ton of potential for content (just not a lot of free personal time for the regular job-working contributors to this site), so just bare with us as we try to make whatever it is that’s going on as fun as possible. Thank you. -Kyle

A D.C. pic, commentary, links, video, pictures, etc…

[Mt. Pleasant Day 2011 - Washington, D.C. - photo: K. Weidie]

Do we even know this John Wall kid?

Watching him play at exhibition games this summer, he doesn’t seem like the guy I saw make his pro debut at the 2010 Las Vegas Summer League, much less the player who dazzled us all during an injury-affected, frustration-filled rookie season.

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While a lockout fills pro basketball headlines in America, United States counterpart China has recently made a recovery from potential basketball disgrace. By winning the 2011 FIBA Asia tournament, reclaiming the title from Iran (winners of FIBA Asia in 2007 and 2009), their men’s national team has secured a spot in the 2012 Olympic games. Much of the thanks is due to the massive nation’s current basketball cover boy, and likely former Washington Wizard, Yi Jianlian.

In a country where the government hopes to manufacture basketball success by building a court in every village, making the cut to play in London was pretty important. The problem is the next step, competing with the best in the world; China has played men’s basketball in the past seven Olympics but has never finished better than eighth. And while he is now their star, Yi has done little to cure anxiousness for success.

Guan Weijia on SheridanHoops.com highlights the issue many Chinese have with Yi: “Fans are dissatisfied with his performance in the NBA, believing he is wasting his talent and playing too soft. Yi has many nicknames, none of which are complimentary.”

The Chinese national team was already smarting from the retirement of Yao Ming in July. In August they came up short at the Stankovic Cup, winning one game and losing seven at the China-hosted event. They lost three games to Russia, one to New Zealand, one to Australia, and won just one of three games against Angola. Worth noting, however, that the minutes of Yi were limited during the Stankovic. Bob Donewald, American coach of the Chinese national team, indicated that he wanted to bring him along gradually. Still, the masses were less than satisfied.

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Links, commentary, shared items, celebrations…

  [photos via urbanpartylife.com]

After recently contemplating life, today, August 22, is Andray Blatche’s birthday. He is 25-years old, which is an entire quarter of a century of life experience. Along with Blatche, the likes of former Washington Bullets Terry Catledge and Michael Curry, former Maryland Terp Obinna Ekezie, along with, naturally, SNL’s Kristen Wig, Wu-Tang’s the GZA, singer Tori Amos, football’s Bill Parcells, and John Lee Hooker of blues legend also all celebrate birthdays today.

The celebratory festivities took place this past weekend at Dream Nightclub in Miami Beach… AND DRAY GOT A WIZARDS BIRTHDAY CAKE! (Old man Wizards logo, but new colors!)

According to Basketball-Reference.com, 48 NBA players have seen over 8,600 minutes in over 380 games, scoring over 3,800 total points and snagging over 2,000 total rebounds, in their NBA careers before the age of 25.  Of those 48 players, Blatche ranks 41st in PER. Well, here’s to the future… Read more »

Links, commentary, stuff…

Andray Blatche. You might be aware of his various exploits that seem trapped in an devolving time continuum.

Blatche, inherently, is a sympathetic figure. He literally loafed into an NBA career, to the envy of millions, by likely being just smart of enough to realize that if he worked just a little bit to enhance his natural talents, he would get there. And he did.

He’s not a bad guy, nor is he misunderstood like a lot of athletes like to claim. It is, however, true to an extent in that lay people, the “commoners” to which LeBron referred in his infamous quote, don’t know the pressure of money, exposure, expectations, high critique, and high reward, which I am assuming is widely accepted in bounties of tangible goods and women. But to say that some of these pro athletes are misunderstood is to say that they, themselves, are complicated figures. Often, we know, that is not the case. Rather, it’s their situations within the business of the game they love (or “like”) to play which provides varying complex ways to digest someone who is simply human.

Blatche is a human after all. He means well, but the means by which he gets caught up in “the life,” as some like to call it (being a highly paid professional athlete, that is) doesn’t always bode well for him. Whose fault is it? Well, according to my own sliding scale of reason, the older Blatche gets, the more he is solely to blame for his situation(s).

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Links, commentary, randomness…

Notice how ever since that gig on Who’s The Boss? Alyssa Milano has been pretty much everywhere? Now, this former dream of teenaged boys’ affection hasn’t seemed to tap into a post-sitcom television movie career like Christina Applegate (via Kelly Bundy), but Milano looks like she’s barely aged since her role of Sa-man-THA! Micelli.

Well, not really… considering she was age 10-20 on Who’s The Boss?, but whatever. (And I’ll attribute the increased present-day Applegate popularity to her being blonde … as unfortunate as that may be, in that similar preference has splashed inconsequential news stories like Natalee Holloway across our television sets, but I do believe I’m digressing. Also, while I’m at it, I don’t know anything about the show Charmed (which Milano was on more recently) other than it would be on TNT sometimes when I got up for work in the morning because I’d left the channel on the late NBA game from the night before and I would hate it.)

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