The Washington Wizards will be represented during the NBA All-Star Weekend Saturday night after all. While JaVale McGee won't be participating in the Slam Dunk Contest, John Wall will once again compete in the Skills Challenge, the Wizards and the league announced.

Wall will be competing against defending champion Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs and Deron Williams of the New Jersey Nets.

Wall competed in the event last year, finishing fourth with a time of 39.3 seconds. Only Chris Paul, who is not in this year's event, was worse. Curry eventually defeated Westbrook in the finals to take home the crown.

"I got the same routine. All it is, is you gotta get the basketballs through the little [nets] when you make the passes. That's the toughest part, making the passes. Everything else is pretty easy," he told the team's website.

Man, I don't even know. Here we were, figuring that John Wall would be among the first players selected in first annual Rising Stars Challenge draft. First, Jeremy Lin got added to the game, so whatever. Then, five players went off the board, including Wall's teammate DeMarcus Cousins, and Wall wasn't one of them. Then, five more players went off the board, including superstars like Paul George, Derrick Williams and MarShon Brooks, and Wall still wasn't one of them.

Finally, Wall was picked by Team Barkley at 12th, one spot behind Kemba Walker, currently toiling away on a 3-26 team. If you try to make any sense of what just happened, you're going to come up with nothing, so it's not really worth trying.

It's times like these where it's worth remembering two things.

• It's an exhibition.
• Perception isn't necessarily reality, unless Wall really views something like this as some sort of referendum on the organization, which would be kind of absurd.

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We all know that JaVale McGee was the real winner of the 2011 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, but as it turns out, he will not be defending his crown*. ESPN's Marc Stein reports that McGee will not be one of the four members selected to participate in the competition.

Just going up at ESPN online: Dunk contest field is Budinger, Paul George, Shumpert and Derrick Williams. And, yes, Jeremy Lin involved, too

— Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) February 16, 2012

That's a pretty lame field, honestly. I'm excited for George, but otherwise, none of the other guys really do much for me. In fact, according to CBS Sports' Dunk-O-Meter, none of those players is even in the top 40 in the league in dunks this season. Shumpert, honestly, feels like a way to get Lin involved more than anything.

Oh well. If Flip Saunders were still the coach, I'm sure he'd be happy to see McGee not participating.

The rosters for the 2012 NBA Rising Stars Challenge (formerly the Rookie/Sophomore Game) are out, and as expected, John Wall was one of the nine sophomores selected to be in the first annual draft between Shaq and Charles Barkley. Here's the full list.

Rookies: Kyrie Irving, Ricky Rubio, Marshon Brooks, Brandon Knight, Kawhi Leonard, Markieff Morris, Tristan Thompson, Kemba Walker, Derrick Williams.

Sophomores: Blake Griffin, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Landry Fields, Paul George, Gordon Hayward, Greg Monroe, Tiago Splitter, Evan Turner.

Notice anything about those lists? Other than Wall, where are all the other Wizards? With the release of Hamady Ndiaye, exactly 50 percent of this roster (seven out of 14) are first- or second-year players. And yet, none of those six players were deemed good enough to be one of the top nine players in their class. It's not like these are spectacular classes either -- how good are Thompson, Morris and Splitter anyway?

That's not an especially good sign.

The Washington Wizards announced that they have waived center Hamady Ndiaye. Before you freak out, let me explain why they did this.

1. Ndiaye is the only player on the roster with a non-guaranteed contract.
2. All non-guaranteed contracts become guaranteed contracts if the player remains on the roster after Friday.
3. The Wizards had 15 players on the roster, including Ndiaye, which is the maximum number of players one can have on a roster.
4. Sending Ndiaye down to the NBA Developmental League again wouldn't have done anything because he still would have counted on the roster.
5. Having 15 players on the roster means the Wizards would not have had the flexibility to call up anyone from the D-League if a rash of injuries struck.
6. Having 15 players on the roster means the Wizards couldn't take back multiple players in a trade for one player.
7. Having 15 players on the roster means the Wizards had to pay all 15 players.

I missed the press conference with Ernie Grunfeld and Randy Wittman just now in the wake of Flip Saunders' firing, but here are some notes I took while listening to the CSN Washington feed.

(Also see: Saunders' classy exit interview with Michael Lee of the Washington Post).

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A day many expected would arrive has indeed arrive. The Washington Wizards, off to a 2-15 start, have fired coach Flip Saunders, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.

After a 2-15 start to the season, the Washington Wizards have fired Flip Saunders as coach, a league source tells Y! Sports.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) January 24, 2012

Saunders departs after posting a 51-130 record in two-plus years as the Wizards' coach. He was brought in to lead a team built around Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison to contention, and instead stuck around for almost two calendar years once it was broken up. Saunders had one year and $4 million left on his deal after this year.

To be honest, as nice a man as Saunders is and as earnestly as he tried, it just wasn't working. This was the right move to make, so long as it's the first of many to turn this program around.

More to come as it happens.

UPDATE: Ken Berger reports that Randy Wittman will take over. Michael Lee confirms.

UPDATE: This explains Nick Young's benching.

Source says something happened between Nick Young and Flip Saunders at halftime of #Wizards #Sixers last night.

— Craig Stouffer (@CraigStouffer) January 24, 2012

UPDATE: Andray Blatche was just on 106.7 The Fan and said, among other things, that he wasn't aware of any altercation between Saunders and Young.

UPDATE: This from Ken Berger should all be blockquoted:

Tempers flared during the first half of that game, as players were "upset about being subbed out" when the Wizards were down by as many as 30 points, a person with knowledge of the situation told CBSSports.com.

"At that point," the person said, "no one had the right to complain about anything."

Berger also said that more changes are expected.

UPDATE: It's now official. Here's Ernie Grunfeld in the press release.

“We felt the team had become unresponsive and we will look to Randy to provide a different voice and a change in philosophy moving forward,” said Grunfeld. “We have been transparent in how we would evaluate our team this season and we were disappointed in the lack of development of our players at this point in our rebuilding plan.”

It looks like Flip Saunders is not on the chopping block, at least not yet. Michael Lee has the report:

Despite the Wizards being off to a franchise-worst 0-8 start, the organization does not have any intention of firing Coach Flip Saunders at this time, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

The logic, according to the report, is that Ted Leonsis is not inclined to immediately shift into "Plan B" of the rebuilding project just eight games into the season. As you probably saw by now, Leonsis had this to say on the blog today:

There is a lot of noise right now – and lots of angst – I have found the best thing to do in times of stress and turmoil is to do research; be analytical; NOT emotional; and try to find ways to improve.

Of course, one could very easily argue that changing coaches is not changing the rebuilding plan, and in fact often enhances it. Nevertheless, it appears the Wizards are staying the course for now.