Top Stories of the Week: Catching up with the Wizards in late August as Mystics fever hits

Let’s check in on how things are going as we head into the latter half of August.

Mystics Fever

The Mystics are in the WNBA semifinals for the second year in the row. That’s the first time it’s ever happened. Washington plays the Atlanta Dream this afternoon at 3 p.m. ET.

For the rest of the week or until the Mystics bring home the WNBA championship, the site will be very Mystics heavy. We make no apologies about it. The Mystics have really come together this season and really have a great shot to win it all this season.

Just a few links on some Mystics honors:

• The AP named Elena Delle Donne to the All-WNBA First Team and Ariel Atkins was named to their All-Rookie Team. These aren’t the official WNBA honors, but I don’t see any reason why EDD will end up on the official All-WNBA Second Team when that comes out.
• As for official honors, Delle Donne was the Eastern Conference Player of the Month for August.

Wizards links

August is a “dead month” in the NBA. Summer League is over, and we’re still a month away from training camp. However, we do have some cool stories to check out.

• Bruno Manrique of Clutch Points transcribed a section of Bill Simmons’ recent podcast with Celtics guard Jayson Tatum, who considers Bradley Beal a mentor.
• Ben Mehic wrote about Dwight Howard’s leaping ability adding something new to the Wizards this season.
• Speaking about Dwight Howard, he could be one of the beneficiaries of recent NBA rule changes regarding offensive rebounds. Specifically, the shot clock resets to 14 second after an offensive rebound instead of the usual 24. The expectation is that the pace of play and the number of shots will increase, in particular toward the end of games which are quite notorious for little ball movement. Tyler Bynum of NBC Sports Washington has more.
• Alonzo Gee is back in the Wizards organization when he was one of several players drafted by the Capital City Go-Go earlier last week. We even have G-League trade news!
• We’ll talk about some Wizards, present and past over the next few days and weeks as we count down to training camp.
• And John Wall’s NBA Live rating for this year’s upcoming game is a 90. It dropped slightly from last year’s game, but it’s still really good.

Alright, that’s all I have for the week. Enjoy the rest of your weekends!