King James Fires Up the Waaambulance
The Cavaliers are one of the best teams in the NBA. The Wizards are one of the worst. But yesterday, the good guys won thanks in part to a late-game travel on LeBron James. What I hadn’t seen was his post-game whining:
“I took a ‘crab’ dribble, which is a hesitation dribble and then two steps,” James said. James believes he perfectly executed a jump stop on the play, but was still called for traveling. “It’s a play you don’t see much in the NBA,” he said. “You have your trademark plays, and that’s one of mine.”
It’s hard to see on the original, but the replay clearly shows that LeBron’s “crab” involves a traveling violation, whether or not that’s what he meant to do:
Kyle Gustafson notes “The Wizards are now 7-25 for the season, but 1-1 in 2009. We can build on this!” Yes we can.
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Eddie Jordan Fired
Link here. Ed Tapscott, an assistant coach, will take over in the interim. I’ve never been a fan of Jordan as a coach — his player rotations didn’t make sense to me, and he didn’t seem to understand how important Brendan Haywood was to the team’s success. That said, their troubles this year don’t have a great deal to do with any problems with Jordan. Rather, their stinky performance just tends to illustrate the point that Haywood was a more important part of the team than many people realized.
Under a new coach, I think we can expect this team to be just as bad. What’s worse, the Wizards will probably be bad for a long time. They made some weird contract decisions aimed at locking into place a roster that was decidedly mediocre — limping into the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference.
The New C-Webb
Bill Simmons nails this:
4. Gilbert Arenas will become the new C-Webb.
Not in a basketball sense, but in a “My God, why did we commit such a staggering amount of money to a guy who clearly has knee issues and might have already peaked as a player when nobody else could have come within $30 million of our offer?” sense. The Chris Webber contract murdered the Kings; Gilbert’s contract could murder the Wizards. And by the way, C-Webb was better than Gilbert — a healthy, happy C-Webb made you a title contender, whereas a healthy, happy Gilbert makes you a 5-seed in Round 1 at best. Big difference.
(When I asked for a one-sentence defense of Gilbert’s $113 million contract from my buddy House, a lifelong D.C. fan, here’s what he sent back: “I would prefer not to, as I think it is a franchise-crippler and thus indefensible.” Well said. When do you think sports franchises will break out of the “We need him to put butts in seats!” mindset and realize winners are the only things that put butts in seats? 2015? 2020? 2030? Hey, that reminds me …)
Exactly. Agent Zero made what’s got to have been one of the most rapid ascensions from underrated to overrated — from a guy nobody had heard of but who was actually good enough to be the best player on a so-so basketball team, to a guy who was on the cover of video games even though he was only good enough to be the star of a so-so basketball team. Now he’s hurt (again) and we’re getting our asses kicked by the Nets at home.
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