There's a reason for the title, I'll explain at the end. -Jake
Alright whippersnappers, it's been a crazy day so let's try and recap the action today shall we?
- The big blog news today comes from Jamie Mottram who announced that he'll be leaving FanHouse to head up the blogging department for Yahoo(!) Sports. If his new venture is as good as his other blogging endeavors (which I'm sure it will be) then it will definitely be something worth checking out as it starts up.
- As for Wizards news, the big story comes from a Gilbert Arenas interview with USA Today. In the interview Arenas says that "When we were healthy, we were the best team (last season)" a claim that The Basketball Jones and Jeff Clark (who's subbing in at TrueHoop) both called into question.
The other part of the interview that raised some eyebrows was this quote:
No matter if Etan is the starter or the backup, he's going to give you the same kind of energy and the same kind of play," Arenas explained. "Brendan will give you three-four (strong) games (off the bench) because he's mad, then he's going to tank it.
That brought about a whole entry from Agent Steinz about whether or not he should've stated the obvious. Maybe it's just the optimist in me, but maybe this isn't as bad as it looks. I've always thought that Haywood and Arenas had a good relationship, so I doubt that he said it out of anger towards him. Maybe it's just a well-accepted fact that even Brendan acknowledges or maybe Gilbert's just trying to step up his leadership. Or maybe Gilbert's just running his mouth again, I don't know. - An interesting wrinkle has developed in Kirilenko's trade demands. He now says that he'd rather play in Europe than suit up with the Jazz. But why play in Europe when you can play in D.C. for the LLE? Am I right? Am I right?
- Did you know Jared Jeffries was a SLAM High School All-American? Tough Juice and Mister 50 also received those honors in 2000.
- Speaking of SLAM, they have their first power rankings out. Washington is #14 with a projected record of 43-39.
- Speaking of rankings, Marc Stein pegged the Wizards for having the 7th best off-season in the East. Since there's 15 teams in the East, being 7th means they had a slightly better than average off-season, putting them behind Chicago and ahead of such teams as Toronto, Miami, Cleveland, and Charlotte.
- This is completely unrelated, but awesome.
- Finally, yesterday was a bit of historic day here at BF. Bullets Fever, the predecessor to Bullets Forever turned one yesterday. All kudos belong to the master on completing the unthinkable: An entire year of blogging about the Wizards and subsequently turning it into the new coffee. In case you're still wondering about the title, that was the title of Bullets Fever's second post that featured this fabulous picture of Big Oily!