Top Stories of the Week: Wizards start key homestand, Kelly Oubre’s sleeve, and Emma Meesseman’s Belgian award nominations

We’re just a little over one week from Christmas Day when the Wizards face off against the Celtics! But until then, the good guys have a few games to play ... including a big match against LeBron James and the Cavaliers!

Wizards’ Results

The Wizards’ last five game road trip ended with a whimper against the Jeremy Lin-less Brooklyn Nets, 103-98 last Tuesday. But fortunately, they get to head back to D.C. for a four game home stand.

Things started on the right foot with a hard fought 93-87 win over the Grizzlies last Wednesday in John Wall’s return from injury and a 100-91 revenge win over the Clippers on Friday.

Washington is now 16-13 and fifth in the Eastern Conference, where they’re tied with the Pistons and Pacers.

John Wall is back!

The Wizards franchise player is finally back after missing nine games because of his knee. Here are some of the stories surround his return specifically:

• Tim Cato of SB Nation NBA writes that the Wizards survived his absence, ultimately going 4-5 while he was away. The piece was written before the Nets loss.
• Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington writes that Scott Brooks won’t allow Wall to dunk during practice. Oddly enough, Brooks told Russell Westbrook the same thing during his OKC Thunder days.
• And Chris Lingbach of CBS Sports writes about Brooks being happy that Wall’s back. Hey, we all are too!

Wall pays school tuition for family in need

Many families go through tough times for various reasons. Sometimes it is for health reasons, and some other times it is for finances. For one family of two DeMatha High School students, both of these things seemed to happen at once. The mother of the students was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time while the father recently lost his job.

Ultimately, that can be a stressful time for everyone in the family. And that’s when Wall stepped in, helping out by paying the students’ tuition and giving some grocery gift cards. You can watch the video above from WRC-TV in Washington or click here.

Since the topic of school tuition was involved here, DeMatha High School is a private school for boys in Hyattsville for those of you who aren’t from Washington. Though it is well known for its football and basketball teams over the years, it is still a respected school academically.

Wall won the NBA Community Assist Award in the 2015-16 season, and this is just another sign of him not slowing down in that respect.

Kelly Oubre: Supreme Fashion Connoisseur

During the Nets game, Oubre wore a Supreme shooting sleeve on his leg for a half before being told to take it off. It still caught the attention of a lot of other folks, including us!

Here are some other links on it:

• SLAM Online caught up with Oubre after the game asking him how he pulled it off.
• And GQ’s Jake Woolf also has more.
• Apparently, Oubre may have started a Supreme fashion trend on the court. Cavs guard J.R. Smith rocked the black sleeve last Thursday when Cleveland hosted the Lakers.

Emma Meesseman was nominated for Belgian athlete of the year

So, let’s head to the other side of the pond, where we get to the Mystics player who’s been most active during the NBA season. And ... I’m not so happy about it.

On Saturday, the Belgian media held Het Sportgala 2017 (Dutch), or Le Gala du Sport 2017 (French) in Brussels. Emma Meesseman was one of the leading candidates to win the Sportswoman of the Year Award. After all, she was the centerpiece behind the women’s national basketball team behind the bronze medal EuroBasket Women 2017 run.

She wrote her Instagram post above in Dutch, so here it is in English:

Het Sportgala 2017/Le Gala du Sport 2017 is today! I’m honored to be on the same list with heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam and gymnast Nina Derwael, two top athletes that can both win it together! #Fan But what’s more fun and exciting is this question: Will we [The Belgian women’s national basketball team] be the sports team of the year? My answer: YES!

Classy post, but who won?

Thiam won the Sportswoman of the Year award after winning the heptathlon in the track and field world championship this year in London, after winning Gold in the Olympics last year. She deserved to win the award and won it comfortably, according to the returns that you can see from Sporza (link in Dutch). Meesseman was third, behind Derwael, who won a gold medal on the uneven bars in this year’s European gymnastics championships.

Since we’re here in D.C. and not Brussels, our opinion’s clear. Emma should win EVERYTHING. But I can understand why she didn’t win this award. Thiam and Derwael won gold medals at the continental level — Meesseman won bronze, and she wasn’t the WNBA MVP.

I actually take issue with the other award that she wanted more: the Belgian Sports Team of the Year. The Belgian women’s basketball team placed second in a close race against the men’s 2017 Davis Cup tennis team, who made the finals just this past November. In fact, the tennis team won this award two of the last three years.

Belgium is well known for tennis, field hockey, and men’s soccer. To be fair, both the men’s field hockey team (Red Lions in all languages) and the men’s soccer team (De Rode Duivels/Les Diables Rouges/The Red Devils) placed third and fourth respectively, behind the Belgian Cats.

But for the basketball team, their run came out of nowhere in the eyes of the public. And that still wasn’t enough for them to win against the tennis team, which made the Davis Cup Finals in two of the last three years. I feel that Meesseman and the Belgian Cats were simply robbed.

And more links!

• We’ve posted plenty of links in the Dutch language for the Mystics because of Meesseman. But do they exist for the Wizards? Yes, but those Dutch language links come from ... the Dutch, as in the media from the Netherlands, the country most of us associate the Dutch language with anyway. But more importantly, we also took a quick look at Wizards stories from Poland, France, and the Czech Republic, which all have players from those countries!
• Mike Scott has been playing some very good ball lately. Candace Buckner of The Washington Post wrote a column on him here and I also have some video highlights of his Meessemanesque performance on Friday.
• Kenny Chapman of Wiz of Awes explores some what if situations, specifically how things could have been if they had a draft pick this season.
• And Elena Delle Donne is a finalist for Team USA for the World Cup. She’ll start practicing in February. All of this is to be expected of course.

Alright, that’s all I have from the past week. If you have another link you’d like to share, feel free to do so in the comments or as a FanPost.

BEAT THE CAVS! Oh wait, there’s a GameThread for that later tonight.