Wiz bites

by Mike Prada on Jun 15, 2007 2:06 PM EDT

Some quick news hits on a Friday afternoon...

Neglected to mention this yesterday, but longtime assistant coach Tom Young is retiring at the age of 74. Young has been the old sage on Jordan's staff ever since Jordan got here, and it'll be interesting to see how that role is filled going forward. An experienced lead assistant is a very underrated commodity. Gregg Popovich has P.J. Carlisemo, Avery Johnson had Del Harris, Mike D'Antoni had Marc Ivaroni, and so on. Maybe the Wizards will bring in a defensive-minded coach to replace Young.
Jake mentioned yesterday that Gil updated his blog, but didn't mention arguably the biggest news of all. Gil's writing a book! Okay, maybe it's not the most important news, but I can't wait to see what's in there.
Speaking of Jake, he's going to be spending some time writing for Gilbertology in the future. Congrats to him! I got the same offer that he did, and I'm still mulling it over, but no matter what happens, having Jake write for Gilbertology is a great opportunity for everyone. It's great for Jake because he can increase his online profile, it's great for Gilbertology because they're getting a great writer, and it's great for us because Jake gets to plug our community to more potential members. It's a win-win-win situation, you could say.
We all thought the Gilbert opting out story was dead, but not according to the Times' Tom Knott, who wrote a scathing column criticizing Gil's motives. Quite simply, it's a really pointless column. Normally, I'd devote a whole post to point out it's idiocy (like with Adrian Wojnarowski, an otherwise good writer), but Bethlehem Shoals already did so at the Fanhouse.
The team worked out Aaron Gray and a host of other second-round-at-best guys today. I nearly went with Comcast, but it fell through at the last minute. Hopefully, I'll be going to some of these in the future. Judging from these workouts, I have no idea where the team is going. They've worked out so many guys, I can't even tell.