ALL BALL NERVE CENTER — For a certain group of people — actually, I believe it’s the people squarely in my age bracket — the movie Teen Wolf holds a special place in our hearts. There have since been sequels and even a recent reboot on MTV, but none of these captured the lo-fi charm and fun of the original Teen Wolf, which, oddly enough, revolved around basketball. People have even spent large amounts of time breaking down the stats from the basketball scenes.
On a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, comedian Jack Black debuted what he called the “sizzle reel” for Adult Wolf, a fake movie that deals with Teen Wolf’s issues as he matures into manhood. And this reboot features Wizards G John Wall doing his best to keep Black and Kyle Gass from winning a two-on-two basketball tournament. -
If you haven’t been paying attention to the Wizards — what with their 8-30 record entering Monday night — they haven’t had the best of seasons so far. Point guard phenom John Wallmissed 32 of those games recovering from knee surgery, big man Nene has been in and out of the lineup with ailments and, with all that in mind, Washington not surprisingly started the season 0-12. (The team Washington beat for its first win? Portland.)
One of the few bright spots for the Wizards has been Crawford, who is the team’s leading scorer. It hasn’t been all awful for Washington lately — entering Monday night’s game, the Wizards were 3-2 in the five games since Wall’s return and notched a win at the always-tough Pepsi Center in Denver.
Portland has seen better days. The Blazers were in the midst of a five-game swoon entering Monday. Nicolas Batum recorded his first career triple-double, but that was of little consolation in a nail-biting loss to the Wizards. How did Portland lose this one? Blazers fans, pick the moment. Was it Damian Lillard‘s dunk over Nene that pulled the score to 91-90 with 2:21 left? Was it Wes Matthews‘ game-tying 3-pointer with 7.9 seconds left that tied it at 95? Or was it Crawford’s game-winner that crushed any hopes of victory? We’ll get into all of this soon.
For those that are new around these parts, the Horry scale examines a game-winning buzzer-beater (GWBB) in the categories of difficulty, game situation (was the team tied or behind at the time?), importance (playoff game or garden-variety Kings-Pistons game?) and celebration (is it over the top or too chill? Just the right panache or needs more sauce?). Then we give it an overall grade on a scale of 1-5 Robert Horrys, the patron saint of last-second daggers.
How does Crawford’s shot Monday night stack up? Let’s take a look.(more…)
Washington sports could use an uplifting story. With their football savior set to recover from tearing his knee, the Wizards gladly welcome their franchise savior John Wall into the fold.
Not so fast Wizards stakeholders. It generally takes time to get back into the swing of things. The Magic’s Ish Smith served as a reinforcer of this cliche/truism: a
a
In fairness, this play was more Smith being spectacular than Wall being rusty. But the night wasn’t done before Wall provided superb get-back of his own: a
a
The Wizards won their second game in a row by double-digits with Wall back in uniform. A trend may be forming here. District residents can only hope.
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The Washington Wizards are the only winless team in the NBA this season. But if you think that’s affecting the morale of dunking behemoth JaVale McGee, you have another thing coming:
While many NBA fans remember Pam McGee from her appearance at the 2011 Sprite Dunk Contest, a few others know her from her playing days at University of Southern California, U.S. Olympic team and the WNBA.
But their relationship extends outside mere appearances with each other and even a mother-son relationship. Pam is, in fact, JaVale’s financial manager.
Ahhh. One of the joys of coming into adulthood is having full dictatorial reign over your own finances, and in JaVale’s case, his millions. So it should come as no surprise that he sometimes bristles at his mother’s direction.
Like any business relationship, heads often collide. Pamela is working on recognizing when to be a mom and when to be a financial manager.
The latest squabble arose when JaVale, who already owned a Mercedes, wanted to purchase an SUV. JaVale had to ask his financial manager for permission to release the funds to his discretionary account, a process he is required to follow for all his major purchases.
Pamela assessed his assets and denied the SUV transaction.
“I have to keep telling him, ‘You can’t buy the same stuff that LeBron James buys. LeBron is on his third deal,’” Pamela said.
She also likes to remind JaVale that his grandmother scrubbed toilets for $1.25 an hour when she was growing up.
“Don’t think you just got here. There were sacrifices made for you,” she tells him.
While the “momager” effect isn’t new by any means, to see a relationship of this magnitude in the NBA is rather refreshing. From scheduling abortion (she was two days away) to traveling across the world toting a growing boy and managing her own career, Pam McGee provides a dose of “sticktoitness” (just coined that term) that is relatable across the spectrum.
And if she was this proud of JaVale for his dunk contest showcase, I’d pay good money to see her reaction to this:
Let’s preface this by starting with what the Wizards did NOT do today — namely change their name. Longtime Washington owner Abe Pollin — who died in November of 2009 — decided to change the nickname from the Bullets to the Wizards in 1997 for all the right reasons, but they botched the actual “name” part of choosing a new name. The D.C. populace has never rallied around the name “Wizards” and never will. New owner Ted Leonsis has been pretty up front behind the decision-making process behind today’s change, but this was a missed opportunity for a complete re-brand.
As for the new logo? Um, not very original. Basically, they opened up the old logo in Photoshop and switched colors. Sure it’s an upgrade. But after the complete identity overhaul that Leonsis brought to the NHL’s Washington Capitals, this seems a little tame.
They did unveil two new secondary marks, both of which are significantly better than the old DC logo. My hunch is that the primary logo, the finger roll Wizard, will quietly be phased out (in fact, it’s not even present on the new uniforms). But still, every time I see that logo I think of this. Update: Interesting that even Wizards.com is using the new secondary DC logo instead of the re-colored primary logo.
But those are quibbles compared to what the Wiz had been sporting. The turquoisey blue color was just a bad look from the start, and let’s all agree that these uniforms never happened.
Final Grade
3.5 Sagers. Not crazy about keeping the same primary logo with just new colors, but the uniforms themselves are a huge upgrade. Overall, a thumbs up.
Last night, the Washington Wizards – owners of NBA’s worse road record – visited Disney World. The outcome of the game didn’t come as any surprise (Magic won handily) but this sight might.
Either a foul was called, causing play to stop while J.J. Redick got his freebie in or Redick delivered a Tim Hardaway-like crossover and finished with a left hand flush over the interested Wizards’ D.
The body language of the three Wizards – John Wall (l), Kirk Hinrich (c), Andray Blatche (r) – says more than I can. Well actually, Hinrich could give us a little more on the apathy end.
However, he did manage to exact some get-back on the former Blue Devil later in the game.
(For sake of time, forward to the 1:50 mark.)
J.J., hardwood. Hardwood, meet J.J. And that smothered laughter you hear… is not from Stephen Curry.
Catch up on every single game-winning buzzer beater during the season and see how it rates on the Horry Scale.
