There was a lot of celebrating going on in the Washington, D.C. area last night.
The party that everyone noticed took place at Verizon Center where The Washington Wizards officially welcomed John Wall as the new face of their franchise. The Kentucky guard was considered by everyone in the NBA the no-brainer first pick, the closest thing there was to a sure-fire star in this year’s draft.
Almost as important, the Wizards made several other moves to acquire players, notably the Bulls Kurt Hinrich, who should help them improve after their woebegone 2009-2010 season that was ‘highlighted,’ by their star player being hauled into court for gun possession and was suspended by the league in part for bringing the guns into the locker room, in part for acting like an idiot.
Wall comes across as a nice kid who has overcome a tough childhood to become a future NBA star. One thing he needs to do though is drop the campaign he unofficially began last night to wear number 11 for The Wizards. That number was retired by the franchise years ago because it was worn by Elvin Hayes, who played a major role in the team’s only NBA title in 1978 and was a key player during a five year stretch when the Washington Bullets reached three NBA Finals. Hayes was a truly great player. You don’t go pulling numbers from the rafters (figuratively) for anyone, much less for a 20-year-old rookie, no matter how heralded he may be.
If Hayes makes some kind of money deal with Wall to use the number it will be smarmy and gross. If he graciously says, ‘go ahead and wear it,’ it will be less so but still wrong. Wall should establish his own identity and find a different number. It isn’t as if he’s worn number 11 for 15 years someplace and is attached to it that way. He wore it for one year at Kentucky and (I assume) for a couple years in high school. Move on.
Speaking of moving on: While they were delighted in downtown D.C. to welcome Wall, they were just about as happy down Route 1 in College Park to wave bye-bye to Debbie Yow, who is leaving Maryland after 16 years as athletic director to take the same job at North Carolina State. To quote one Maryland person: “What are THEY thinking.”
Yow was perfectly competent at some aspects of her job. She balanced an un-balanced budget (largely through cutbacks but nevertheless she did it); she hired some solid non-revenue coaches and she kept the trains running on time for the most part in College Park. But she didn’t make a whole lot of friends among those she worked with. People came and went in the athletic department the way pitching coaches came and went when George Steinbrenner was still running the Yankees.
She always had a bad relationship with the most important person at Maryland, basketball coach Gary Williams, and her relationship with football coach Ralph Friedgen went straight downhill just as soon as Friedgen stopped winning on a regular basis. She went from taking bows for hiring Friedgen—whose hiring she had little to do with—to acting as if she’d never heard of him and putting a ‘coach in waiting,’ in place which, even though she insisted Friedgen had ‘signed off on,’ clearly didn’t make the coach happy.
Her downfall—and believe me she’s getting out of town ahead of the posse here with a new president taking over the school on September 1—came when she thought she saw an opening to get rid of Williams in 2009 and the notion blew up in her face. The basketball program was struggling and Williams made the mistake of taking a frustrated public swipe at Yow when asked about some recruiting efforts that hadn’t panned out. Yow saw an opening and tried to pounce only to find that most Maryland people remembered what Williams had done to rebuild a fallen program into a national champion and also believed he could still coach.
Williams’ players rallied behind him to make the NCAA Tournament in 2009 and then had a very good year in 2010. Yow was forced to retreat. She even went so far as to “nominate,” Williams for the basketball Hall of Fame last month, an absolute grandstand play if there’s ever been one. Debbie Yow nominating Gary Williams for the Hall of Fame is the equivalent of Tiger Woods nominating me for The Pulitzer Prize. No one bought that act—especially Williams, who was as close to speechless as he ever gets when the subject came up.
There was also the botched attempt to get rid of Friedgen last fall. After failing to raise the money from boosters to buy Friedgen out, Yow let it leak that perhaps the money could come from state funds—an idea quickly shot down by Governor Martin O’Malley. So, she looked bad again and looked even worse because she had committed $1 million to James Franklin as the coach-in-waiting when no one on earth could see any reason to anoint Franklin.
I wrote a column on the football coaching situation last fall, saying that Yow had botched it with the Franklin deal and by not standing behind Friedgen, a Maryland grad who revived the program when he arrived before falling on some hard times. Yow’s response to the column was revealing.
She sent an angry e-mail not just to Matt Vita, the sports editor of The Post, but to Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the ex-sports editor who is now the Metro editor and to Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor. She allegedly copied me but somehow the note didn’t show up in my e-mail cue until six hours later—AFTER I’d been forwarded the note and had responded to her. Just an electronic foul-up no doubt.
Yow claimed I had my “facts,” wrong in the column—basically claiming that Friedgen was all for the coach-in-waiting concept and then singing Franklin’s praises in a way that implied that Friedgen would never have gotten a player to sign with Maryland again if Franklin hadn’t returned to the school. I wrote her back to say (A) Don’t expect an answer from Brauchli anytime soon because he probably doesn’t know Maryland HAS a football team; (B) what was she expecting Garcia-Ruiz to do, scold me for being a bad boy? And (C) I’d be more than happy to thrash out our disagreements on the issue but I felt pretty confident what I’d written was accurate. I also wasn’t the only person by any stretch to write or say what I wrote.
I never heard back. From that point on Yow, who used to love to stop me at Maryland games to point out to me that Gary had switched to a zone defense (wow, really Debbie, I never would have noticed) made a point of looking the other way whenever I saw her. Which was actually fine with me. I figured someone else could let me know if Gary switched to a zone.
What was most interesting was her behavior the night of The Children’s Charities Foundation banquet in December. I was seated at a table with the coaches who would be playing in the BB+T Classic the next day, including Gary and Villanova’s Jay Wright. Yow was at the next table. At no point during the evening did she acknowledge the presence of her basketball coach or say hello to him. Within seconds of his getting up to leave—I mean SECONDS—she raced back to our table to lavish a warm welcome on Wright. It was stunning.
Yow won’t be missed by many in College Park. She’ll have a certain honeymoon period at State because her sister Kay, who died in 2009 of cancer, was a beloved coach there for 34 years. My guess is that honeymoon won’t last terribly long.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Showing posts with label John Wall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Wall. Show all posts
Friday, June 25, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Eric Prisbell’s story on John Wall – he did his job, and did it very well
There’s a fascinating story in Sunday’s Washington Post on John Wall, the Kentucky freshman guard who will be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft tomorrow night. Eric Prisbell, who does an excellent job covering college hoops for The Post, spent a week in Raleigh interviewing Wall, his mom, his old coaches and some of his friends. Since Wall is about to become the face of The Washington Wizards it was a natural story to do.
The story Eric wrote paints a shattering picture of Wall’s early life: his father was in jail almost from the time he was born until he died of cancer just prior to John’s ninth birthday. The only time John Wall saw his father outside of jail was the last month of his life when he was released from prison because his cancer was terminal.
After his father’s death, Wall became—by his own description—a very angry kid, constantly in trouble, thrown off basketball teams in spite of his talent, often benched, moving from school to school while his mother, raising three kids as a single parent worked multiple jobs.
Then came the intervention of a high school coach, an understanding of his own potential and, now, superstardom. It is a well-reported, well-written story. In return for a job well done, Prisbell is being criticized by a number of people for the story. Here’s why: During his research, Prisbell learned that John Wall Sr. had been to jail more than once and not just on the armed robbery charge that his son knew about. He had been convicted prior to his son’s birth of second degree murder for shooting a woman in the head. (Click here for Eric Prisbell's column)
John Wall Jr. was apparently unaware of this. His mother had never told him. He had never asked for more details about his dad’s incarceration—certainly understandable, especially given how young he was at the time. Prisbell and his editors had a choice to make: leave the detail about his dad committing murder out of the story completely or tell Wall about it before writing the story. Simply writing it without telling him wasn’t an option. Imagine how Wall might have felt picking up the newspaper or, worse, having someone say to him, “hey I read in The Washington Post your dad committed murder.”
I know there will be some people who see the notion of telling someone their father committed murder as cruel and un-necessary. But Wall’s father and his relationship with him and the way he behaved after his death were all a crucial part of the story. Leaving out the fact that he had been convicted of murder would be hiding a crucial—and once you know something and don’t reveal it you are hiding it—fact. What’s more, it was going to come out at some point. Prisbell may have been the first person to check the legal records, he would not have been the last. As Wall’s star continues to rise, there will be other long pieces written about him and his past and his father’s past will be part of those stories.
John Wall was going to find out about his father whether Prisbell told him or not. What’s more he did it as delicately as possible and, if you read the story, the revelation is near the bottom of a very long piece and is dealt with in about three paragraphs. It’s not as if there was a blaring headline that said, “No. 1 Pick’s Dad a Murderer.” If you think some outlets on the internet or among newspaper wouldn’t have handled it that way, think again.
Prisbell is uncomfortable being part of the story, which is understandable. There are also some dopes out there who are somehow connecting the reporting he did here to the reporting he and Steve Yanda did 16 months ago on the Maryland basketball program. Then, with all sorts of (accurate) rumors floating that Athletic Director Debbie Yow was trying to find a way to ease Gary Williams out of his job after 20 years, Prisbell and Yanda did a three part series on Maryland basketball. The single most important thing that they reported in detail was this: Gary Williams had steadfastly refused to get down in the mud with coaches in the slimy world of AAU basketball and that had cost him some superstar players. He had also refused to be blackmailed into giving one star player’s “trainer,” a job and had decided, after wrestling with it for a long time, not to recruit a star player who had a criminal record.
Although Gary got bent out of shape about the series and Maryland fans tried to make Prisbell and Yanda into the bad guys in the scenario, the fact is that the series HELPED Maryland by giving a clear picture of why the program had slid from its peak in 2001 and 2002 when it reached back-to-back Final Fours. Some fool called a local radio show yesterday claiming The Post had to run a ‘correction,’ after the series ran which was simply wrong. Prisbell is a very good reporter who I’ve been fortunate to work with for nine years now. He was dealing with a very tough story once he found out about Wall’s dad and he handled it as well as it could be handled. The notion that he could have just walked away from what he found is ludicrous.
I’ve become part of the story myself on more than one occasion. The two that were most significant were entirely different. One was on a series I wrote along with another Post reporter, Gene Meyer, while I was covering cops and courts. It involved a group of police officers in Prince George’s County who had set-up black teen-agers in the 1960s to be killed. They became known as, “The Death Squad,” and when Gene and I got a number of people—including one of the cops involved—on the record we had to go to the other cops involved, one of whom had risen to No. 2 in the police department, to hear their side of the story.
Since I had been the initiator of the story—having stumbled into the phrase, ‘Death Squad,’ while working on another story—the cops involved HATED me for asking the questions we were asking. One threatened to kill me—on tape—in the middle of an interview. Was I shaken up? No, not a bit. And if you believe that you believe in The Easter Bunny too.
The other time was quite different: When ‘A Season on the Brink,’ came out Bob Knight insisted I had promised him I’d leave his profanity out of the book. At first I thought he was joking when he said it because who in the world didn’t know Knight used profanity? But he was serious and I had to spend a lot of time explaining that I had told Knight that writing a book about him without profanity would be like writing a book about him without the word basketball. I loved the way the book sold; I hated having my integrity questioned knowing that some people would automatically believe Knight.
No one should question Eric Prisbell on this story. He did his job. And he did it very well.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
The story Eric wrote paints a shattering picture of Wall’s early life: his father was in jail almost from the time he was born until he died of cancer just prior to John’s ninth birthday. The only time John Wall saw his father outside of jail was the last month of his life when he was released from prison because his cancer was terminal.
After his father’s death, Wall became—by his own description—a very angry kid, constantly in trouble, thrown off basketball teams in spite of his talent, often benched, moving from school to school while his mother, raising three kids as a single parent worked multiple jobs.
Then came the intervention of a high school coach, an understanding of his own potential and, now, superstardom. It is a well-reported, well-written story. In return for a job well done, Prisbell is being criticized by a number of people for the story. Here’s why: During his research, Prisbell learned that John Wall Sr. had been to jail more than once and not just on the armed robbery charge that his son knew about. He had been convicted prior to his son’s birth of second degree murder for shooting a woman in the head. (Click here for Eric Prisbell's column)
John Wall Jr. was apparently unaware of this. His mother had never told him. He had never asked for more details about his dad’s incarceration—certainly understandable, especially given how young he was at the time. Prisbell and his editors had a choice to make: leave the detail about his dad committing murder out of the story completely or tell Wall about it before writing the story. Simply writing it without telling him wasn’t an option. Imagine how Wall might have felt picking up the newspaper or, worse, having someone say to him, “hey I read in The Washington Post your dad committed murder.”
I know there will be some people who see the notion of telling someone their father committed murder as cruel and un-necessary. But Wall’s father and his relationship with him and the way he behaved after his death were all a crucial part of the story. Leaving out the fact that he had been convicted of murder would be hiding a crucial—and once you know something and don’t reveal it you are hiding it—fact. What’s more, it was going to come out at some point. Prisbell may have been the first person to check the legal records, he would not have been the last. As Wall’s star continues to rise, there will be other long pieces written about him and his past and his father’s past will be part of those stories.
John Wall was going to find out about his father whether Prisbell told him or not. What’s more he did it as delicately as possible and, if you read the story, the revelation is near the bottom of a very long piece and is dealt with in about three paragraphs. It’s not as if there was a blaring headline that said, “No. 1 Pick’s Dad a Murderer.” If you think some outlets on the internet or among newspaper wouldn’t have handled it that way, think again.
Prisbell is uncomfortable being part of the story, which is understandable. There are also some dopes out there who are somehow connecting the reporting he did here to the reporting he and Steve Yanda did 16 months ago on the Maryland basketball program. Then, with all sorts of (accurate) rumors floating that Athletic Director Debbie Yow was trying to find a way to ease Gary Williams out of his job after 20 years, Prisbell and Yanda did a three part series on Maryland basketball. The single most important thing that they reported in detail was this: Gary Williams had steadfastly refused to get down in the mud with coaches in the slimy world of AAU basketball and that had cost him some superstar players. He had also refused to be blackmailed into giving one star player’s “trainer,” a job and had decided, after wrestling with it for a long time, not to recruit a star player who had a criminal record.
Although Gary got bent out of shape about the series and Maryland fans tried to make Prisbell and Yanda into the bad guys in the scenario, the fact is that the series HELPED Maryland by giving a clear picture of why the program had slid from its peak in 2001 and 2002 when it reached back-to-back Final Fours. Some fool called a local radio show yesterday claiming The Post had to run a ‘correction,’ after the series ran which was simply wrong. Prisbell is a very good reporter who I’ve been fortunate to work with for nine years now. He was dealing with a very tough story once he found out about Wall’s dad and he handled it as well as it could be handled. The notion that he could have just walked away from what he found is ludicrous.
I’ve become part of the story myself on more than one occasion. The two that were most significant were entirely different. One was on a series I wrote along with another Post reporter, Gene Meyer, while I was covering cops and courts. It involved a group of police officers in Prince George’s County who had set-up black teen-agers in the 1960s to be killed. They became known as, “The Death Squad,” and when Gene and I got a number of people—including one of the cops involved—on the record we had to go to the other cops involved, one of whom had risen to No. 2 in the police department, to hear their side of the story.
Since I had been the initiator of the story—having stumbled into the phrase, ‘Death Squad,’ while working on another story—the cops involved HATED me for asking the questions we were asking. One threatened to kill me—on tape—in the middle of an interview. Was I shaken up? No, not a bit. And if you believe that you believe in The Easter Bunny too.
The other time was quite different: When ‘A Season on the Brink,’ came out Bob Knight insisted I had promised him I’d leave his profanity out of the book. At first I thought he was joking when he said it because who in the world didn’t know Knight used profanity? But he was serious and I had to spend a lot of time explaining that I had told Knight that writing a book about him without profanity would be like writing a book about him without the word basketball. I loved the way the book sold; I hated having my integrity questioned knowing that some people would automatically believe Knight.
No one should question Eric Prisbell on this story. He did his job. And he did it very well.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Wall and Arenas together? Wizards have options; Kobe great, but not in same sentence with Jordan
Let’s give the NBA this much: The league has a certain flair for the dramatic. I mean seriously, did anyone think the New Jersey Nets and their new Russian multi-billionaire owner were going to get the first pick in the draft lottery last night?
Did anyone really think the league was going to turn away Irene Pollin, the widow of long-time Washington Bullets/Wizards Abe Pollin as she stood there wearing her husband’s 1978 NBA championship ring and give the top pick to the towering, scowling Mikhail Prokhorov? No way. Maybe if Prokhorov had sent one of the Russian tennis players/super models to represent him he might have had a shot.
No, I’m not one of those conspiracy nut jobs who thinks the first lottery in 1985 was fixed so that the Knicks would get Patrick Ewing. (It was awfully convenient for the league though wasn’t it?). And no, I don’t think David Stern ordered that the ping-pong balls bounce the Wizards way on Tuesday night. I just knew the Nets and Prokhorov weren’t getting the pick. Maybe it was just the odds—which were three-to-one against the Nets in spite of their 12-70 record. Forget about checking the ping pong balls, re-check the system.
All that said, what exactly did the Wizards win? According to ESPN, they won John Wall—no ifs, ands or buts. Within seconds of the Wizards being awarded the top pick, ESPN was on a satellite hook-up with Wall asking him what he was going to do next season to fit in with Washington.
Does ESPN now do the actual drafting for teams? Has the network informed Ted Leonsis, the new owner and Ernie Grunfeld, the current general manager, that the team is taking Wall? The interview with Wall was conducted from his home in California—at least that’s what I thought Mark Jones said—so I guess he’s taking a break from his post-graduate studies at Kentucky (if you listen to John Calipari talk Wall must be on the verge of getting his Masters and his PhD).
Here’s my question: Do the Wizards really want to draft Wall—ESPN’s expertise notwithstanding? Gilbert Arenas is still on the roster and he’s still owed $80 million by the team. IF the Wizards can convince someone to take Arenas, his contract, his guns and his baggage, then I would absolutely take Wall, who has unlimited potential at what I still think is the most important position in the game—even at the NBA level.
But Wall and Arenas together? Is the NBA going to pass a rule allowing teams to use two basketballs? There are some people who think Arenas can play the two-guard spot fulltime because he shoots the ball well enough to play there. Really? Have you been around the guy the last few years? Do you think he’s going to move without the basketball and hope the guy with the ball (Wall) decides to find him? I don’t think so. And who is he going to guard?
Time will tell of course. The Wizards have options now, thanks to Mrs. Pollin and the anti-Prokhorov karma that went on last night. Maybe they can trade down, get a starter from someone AND a high pick. They gutted their roster after the whole Arenas guns debacle this past season so there shouldn’t be anyone on the team who is untouchable. Leonsis has to decide whether he wants to keep Grunfeld around and then let him go to work. If he’s going to fire Grunfeld he needs to do it NOW, not after the draft. This is a critical time for a long woebegone franchise and, now that they have won the lottery, they can’t afford to go down the Kwame Brown road they went down nine years ago.
On the subject of the playoffs: You have to be impressed with the Celtics and, to be honest, unimpressed with the Magic. Orlando handled the end-game last night like a team that had never been in a close game. There were too many mistakes to count, topped by J.J. Redick’s mind-block with the basketball on the last possession. I can hear the, ‘not very smart for a Duke guy,’ jokes coming out of Chapel Hill and College Park right now.
Those jokes would be accurate.
The only thing that would come close to a LeBron-Kobe Finals for the league would be Celtics-Lakers, maybe the only NBA matchup left in which the TEAMS are as significant to the plot as the superstars. The Celtics don’t have a superstar, just four very good players, which may be why they’ve become so tough to beat. That and the fact that they’re all smart enough to know that this is probably the last roundup, that they aren’t likely to be this healthy this late in the season again anytime soon.
The Lakers of course, have Kobe Bryant and I keep hearing people ask if he belongs in the same sentence as Michael Jordan if the Lakers win and he gets a fifth championship ring. The answer is simple: NO. Bryant’s a great player, certainly a better, tougher and more clutch player right now than LeBron James, but let’s not get carried away. I will say this one more time: There was ONE Jordan. All these comparisons get out of hand. I still remember years ago hearing a TV announcer who will go un-named (but you can look at him live) compare North Carolina freshman guard Jeff Lebo to Jerry West. Seriously.
Let’s get over that. Championship rings ARE important in terms of measuring a superstar but they aren’t the be all and end all. If they were, Robert Horry and Steve Kerr would be Hall-of-Famers. So, if Kobe does win a fifth ring, more power to him and let’s move him up another notch in the category of special players.
But in the same sentence with Jordan? No.
Here’s the list of players who can be put in the same sentence with Jordan, regardless of position: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson. I’m not saying any are better, I’m just saying you can put them in the same breath with Jordan and maybe—MAYBE—make the argument they were as valuable or more valuable at the peak of their skills.
And, in case you’re interested, there’s NO ONE in this year’s draft who is going to end up in that sentence. That doesn’t mean there aren’t very good players but those guys are once-in-a-generation, not once a year.
*******
One thing about yesterday’s blog: I didn’t want to imply there is NO good sports talk anywhere in the country. Someone mentioned Ralph Barbieri and Tom Tolbert in San Francisco—yup, good radio guys and good interviewers. My pal Mike Gastineau in Seattle is also very good and, yes, his colleague Mitch Levy who is on mornings on KJR is a very good interviewer. Mitch just happens to have an ego that makes mine look non-existent and doesn’t know the difference between funny and insulting. Tony Kornheiser is obviously unique and also my friend as everyone knows. And Mark Patrick in Indianapolis, whose son happens to be new Nationals relief pitcher Drew Storen, also does very good and very smart work. Chris Myers does a long-form interview show on Fox sports radio that’s also an excellent listen. There are others I know I’m leaving out but those guys come to mind quickly.
--------------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:
Did anyone really think the league was going to turn away Irene Pollin, the widow of long-time Washington Bullets/Wizards Abe Pollin as she stood there wearing her husband’s 1978 NBA championship ring and give the top pick to the towering, scowling Mikhail Prokhorov? No way. Maybe if Prokhorov had sent one of the Russian tennis players/super models to represent him he might have had a shot.
No, I’m not one of those conspiracy nut jobs who thinks the first lottery in 1985 was fixed so that the Knicks would get Patrick Ewing. (It was awfully convenient for the league though wasn’t it?). And no, I don’t think David Stern ordered that the ping-pong balls bounce the Wizards way on Tuesday night. I just knew the Nets and Prokhorov weren’t getting the pick. Maybe it was just the odds—which were three-to-one against the Nets in spite of their 12-70 record. Forget about checking the ping pong balls, re-check the system.
All that said, what exactly did the Wizards win? According to ESPN, they won John Wall—no ifs, ands or buts. Within seconds of the Wizards being awarded the top pick, ESPN was on a satellite hook-up with Wall asking him what he was going to do next season to fit in with Washington.
Does ESPN now do the actual drafting for teams? Has the network informed Ted Leonsis, the new owner and Ernie Grunfeld, the current general manager, that the team is taking Wall? The interview with Wall was conducted from his home in California—at least that’s what I thought Mark Jones said—so I guess he’s taking a break from his post-graduate studies at Kentucky (if you listen to John Calipari talk Wall must be on the verge of getting his Masters and his PhD).
Here’s my question: Do the Wizards really want to draft Wall—ESPN’s expertise notwithstanding? Gilbert Arenas is still on the roster and he’s still owed $80 million by the team. IF the Wizards can convince someone to take Arenas, his contract, his guns and his baggage, then I would absolutely take Wall, who has unlimited potential at what I still think is the most important position in the game—even at the NBA level.
But Wall and Arenas together? Is the NBA going to pass a rule allowing teams to use two basketballs? There are some people who think Arenas can play the two-guard spot fulltime because he shoots the ball well enough to play there. Really? Have you been around the guy the last few years? Do you think he’s going to move without the basketball and hope the guy with the ball (Wall) decides to find him? I don’t think so. And who is he going to guard?
Time will tell of course. The Wizards have options now, thanks to Mrs. Pollin and the anti-Prokhorov karma that went on last night. Maybe they can trade down, get a starter from someone AND a high pick. They gutted their roster after the whole Arenas guns debacle this past season so there shouldn’t be anyone on the team who is untouchable. Leonsis has to decide whether he wants to keep Grunfeld around and then let him go to work. If he’s going to fire Grunfeld he needs to do it NOW, not after the draft. This is a critical time for a long woebegone franchise and, now that they have won the lottery, they can’t afford to go down the Kwame Brown road they went down nine years ago.
On the subject of the playoffs: You have to be impressed with the Celtics and, to be honest, unimpressed with the Magic. Orlando handled the end-game last night like a team that had never been in a close game. There were too many mistakes to count, topped by J.J. Redick’s mind-block with the basketball on the last possession. I can hear the, ‘not very smart for a Duke guy,’ jokes coming out of Chapel Hill and College Park right now.
Those jokes would be accurate.
The only thing that would come close to a LeBron-Kobe Finals for the league would be Celtics-Lakers, maybe the only NBA matchup left in which the TEAMS are as significant to the plot as the superstars. The Celtics don’t have a superstar, just four very good players, which may be why they’ve become so tough to beat. That and the fact that they’re all smart enough to know that this is probably the last roundup, that they aren’t likely to be this healthy this late in the season again anytime soon.
The Lakers of course, have Kobe Bryant and I keep hearing people ask if he belongs in the same sentence as Michael Jordan if the Lakers win and he gets a fifth championship ring. The answer is simple: NO. Bryant’s a great player, certainly a better, tougher and more clutch player right now than LeBron James, but let’s not get carried away. I will say this one more time: There was ONE Jordan. All these comparisons get out of hand. I still remember years ago hearing a TV announcer who will go un-named (but you can look at him live) compare North Carolina freshman guard Jeff Lebo to Jerry West. Seriously.
Let’s get over that. Championship rings ARE important in terms of measuring a superstar but they aren’t the be all and end all. If they were, Robert Horry and Steve Kerr would be Hall-of-Famers. So, if Kobe does win a fifth ring, more power to him and let’s move him up another notch in the category of special players.
But in the same sentence with Jordan? No.
Here’s the list of players who can be put in the same sentence with Jordan, regardless of position: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson. I’m not saying any are better, I’m just saying you can put them in the same breath with Jordan and maybe—MAYBE—make the argument they were as valuable or more valuable at the peak of their skills.
And, in case you’re interested, there’s NO ONE in this year’s draft who is going to end up in that sentence. That doesn’t mean there aren’t very good players but those guys are once-in-a-generation, not once a year.
*******
One thing about yesterday’s blog: I didn’t want to imply there is NO good sports talk anywhere in the country. Someone mentioned Ralph Barbieri and Tom Tolbert in San Francisco—yup, good radio guys and good interviewers. My pal Mike Gastineau in Seattle is also very good and, yes, his colleague Mitch Levy who is on mornings on KJR is a very good interviewer. Mitch just happens to have an ego that makes mine look non-existent and doesn’t know the difference between funny and insulting. Tony Kornheiser is obviously unique and also my friend as everyone knows. And Mark Patrick in Indianapolis, whose son happens to be new Nationals relief pitcher Drew Storen, also does very good and very smart work. Chris Myers does a long-form interview show on Fox sports radio that’s also an excellent listen. There are others I know I’m leaving out but those guys come to mind quickly.
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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:
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