If Gilbert Had A 40, He'd Be Pouring Some Out

With Darius Songaila suspended for tonight's Game 6 and, thusly, not allowed in the Verizon Center, Gilbert Arenas repped his fallen comrade. (And did so while wearing a white suit, I might add.)

If Only There Were A Lithuanian Rapper Who Could Record A LeBron Diss

The NBA announced today that Bullets reserve Darius Songaila will be suspended for tonight's Game 6 for having the audacity to touch the face of LeBron James. Needless to say, this is a ridiculous suspension that will only advance the theory that David Stern controls the playoffs. Watch it, and try not to listen to Marv Albert who was uncharacteristically off on Wednesday night.

Let's let Bullets coach Eddie Jordan interpret the encounter:

"I stand my ground. I thought [Songaila] got tangled up with LeBron, and LeBron tried to get untangled. And in his method of trying to get untangled, Darius' arm just flew at his chin. And LeBron's a terrific actor. We've seen some of his commercials."

First of all, great quote underscored with excellent subtle digs. How very Phil Jackson of him. But Jordan's right. Darius and LeBron got tangled and each acted a little chippy. Then, LeBron's MJ-inferiority complex kicked in and he got all defensive and tried to disentangle his arm by ripping it from Songaila's. As this happens, Songaila moves his hand in the direction LeBron is swinging it, mainly to prove that when it comes to chippiness, nobody beats the Lithuanians. Songaila's wrist then makes contact with LeBron's mouth; LeBron spends the next five minutes adjusting his jaw as if he had been hit by a left from Sonny Liston and Songaila gets a technical foul.
Now, the contact probably didn't even warrant a technical. HOWEVA, at least the assessment of the tech can be defended. In the heat of the moment, you could easily interpret that Songaila maliciously punched LeBron. Had the refs ejected Songaila, it would have been the wrong decision, but you could see where they'd be coming from. But for Stu Jackson to sit down, review the tape at his own leisure and then decide that Songaila should be suspended is completely ridiculous. There's no way a rational person could look at that replay and think that Songaila's intent was any more malevolent than LeBron's. Yet for this, Songaila gets sent off for a game.
Songaila's a Wake Forest guy, so of course I'm completely in the tank for him. But, knowing his game also means I know his style.
There are two incontrovertible facts about Songaila:
1) In his eyes, he's never, ever committed a foul.
2) He loves to throw 'bows.
Thusly, I can say with little doubt that Songaila was trying to connect with LeBron's face on that play. But the thing is, LeBron was trying to do the same to Songaila.
I don't know if the NBA is trying to get LeBron James into the second round. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But decisions like this make that question completely valid. David Stern always like to complain that people focus too much on NBA conspiracies when they should be enjoying the game. Yet, by making absurd decisions like suspending Songaila, the NBA completely opens the door to such criticism. So, no complaints David Stern. As Eddie Murphy said in Delirious, "you brought that shit upon yo'self."

This Series Can't End Tonight; It's Just Too Ridiculous

* For the past four weeks, DeShawn Stevenson has been straddling the delicate line between maniacal super-genius and complete moron. His choice of jerseys last night nudges him to the latter side.


Yeah, that's a Michael Vick jersey. And, no, that picture isn't old. It's a screenshot from video taken last night of the Bullets arriving in Cleveland (courtesy of Dan Steinberg at the DC Sports Bog). I only mention it because sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? Sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about DeShawn here - DeShawn from Fresno. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's DeShawn. DeShawn, from Fresno. And even if he's a stupid man - and DeShawn was most certainly that. Quite possibly the stupidest in all of Washington DC, which would place him high in the runnin' for stupidest worldwide. Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here. But... aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough.

* The Bullets/Cavs tip-off time tonight has been listed as TBA since the playoffs began. Last night, it was announced that the game would begin a 6:00 p.m.. As in, three hours from now. As in, when most people in D.C. are stuck in rush hour traffic. As in, when a bunch of people are getting off work. As in, the game will be over when it's still light out. Who the hell is making these decisions in the league office?
First, the NBA schedules both Games 1 and 2 during the Caps games and now this. (I know, I know... It's not the NBA's job to worry about what teams in other sports are doing. But aren't these games for the fans? They're the ones who watch TV so David Stern and his owner-pals can collect the huge rights fees. They're the ones who spend insane amounts of money on tickets, concession and merchandise at the games. And how does the NBA pay them back? By putting two games on against something else many basketball fans wanted to watch, and then dumping off tonight's contest two hours before primetime. It's a wonder anyone cares about pro basketball.

Jay-Z's DeShawn Stevenson Diss Track

LeBron James got the best of DeShawn Stevenson in their Game 4 clash today, but at least Stevenson will be able to comfort himself this off-season with the knowledge that he was the subject of a Jay-Z diss track. You can listen to said track here. The song is fairly tame, by "diss rap" standards, but still contains some tight flows by Jay. (Lyrics definitely NSFW.)
Near the end, he raps, "I don't even know y'all names/I'm too big for ya, the rap LeBron James." Jigga then makes a chess analogy by calling LeBron "the king" and DeShawn "the pawn". Well, he doesn't actually say DeShawn is the pawn, it's implied. Jay-Z never actually says Stevenson's name, keeping with the "you're not big enough to name-drop". (That logic sort of hits a dead-end when you consider that DeShawn is apparently big enough to drop two verses on though.) The rest is all fairly standard battle rap stuff: I'm going to sleep with your girl, you don't make as much money as I do, I make a better duck a l'Orange. You know the deal. It's definitely worth a listen though.

Jay-Z Has Too Much Time On His Hands

So, here's the story that's been floating around DC tonight : Last night at Love (the DC nightclub where Gilbert Arenas had his famous 25th birthday party), LeBron James was hosting a party where the DJ played a new Jay-Z diss track about Wizards G DeShawn Stevenson. DeShawn and LeBron have been talking shit to each other for the past few weeks; somehow Soulja Boy got involved - it's all very complicated. Anyway, the word is that after Jigga played the two verse DeShawn-rip, Cavs G Damon Jones (he of the 'always wearing sunglasses indoors' style) then got on the mic and started talking more trash about the Wizards. Caron Butler was in the club and stormed out, and now all the Wizards are boycotting Love and owner Marc Barnes's other spot, Park. Again, I don't know whether all this is true, it's just the good word as related to me from a reliable source. This series really needs to go seven games now, just on the off-chance that 2Pac might get in on all this.

Update: Michael Lee has the comprehensive rundown on his Wizards Insider blog at washingtonpost.com and makes a salient point: Jay-Z is part-owner of the Nets, meaning an NBA owner just recorded some rap verses dissing a player on another team. This would be like Jerry Jones battle rapping Eli Manning over the beat to 'Hit 'Em Up'. Unmentioned, but perhaps just as interesting, is that said diss track was written on behalf of an NBA player on another team; one that has been (and will be) rumored to be joining Jigga in Brooklyn when the Nets move there. This hasn't happened since Abe Pollin re-worked the lyrics to 'Moon River' in an effort to persuade Juwan Howard to stay in the District.
Also, Lee writes that after hearing the song, Caron Butler paged Stevenson (below) to tell him about it. Rap beefs, pagers; it's all so 1994. I love it.

Goodbye, Gilbert (?)

Is this the last time we'll ever see Gilbert Arenas in a Washington Bullets Wizards jersey? Ernie Grunfeld is no fool, and only a fool would give a balky-kneed Gil a max contract this offseason. If this is it: We'll miss you, Agent Zero, you crazy bastard. You were always fun to watch, but only relatively so because, hey, it's the NBA.


Update: Or not.

It Could Be Worse, We Could Have Grown Up In Philadelphia

After the Caps crushing Game 7 loss, my buddy Jaf summed up our sports fandom in one terse text message:

It's Tuesday, and we've already had great reminders this week in all four sports of what it's like to be a Washington fan.

He is referencing the following incidents:
Redskins - Offer the Bengals up to two first-round picks for disgruntled WR Chad Johnson; are turned down.
Bullets - After talking shit all week to LeBron, promptly get beat down by LeBron in Games 1 and 2 of their first round playoff matchup.
Capitals - Have their thrilling late-season run end on a putback in overtime of Game 7 of their first round playoff series against the Flyers.
Nationals - Own the worst record in baseball and are playing to thousands of empty seats at their new downtown stadium.
Well, at least we've got DC United and the Mystics!

Even With Courtside Seats, NBA Games Are Still Pretty Boring

About a month ago, a group of my friends took advantage of the day off for Martin Luther King's birthday and decided to catch the Mavs/Bullets matinee at the Verizon Center. My buddy Russ took some pictures that I meant to post the day of the game, but something happened that afternoon with the Redskins coaching search and I became blinded with rage and never ended up posting the entry and pictures. So, here it is.
Before we get to those, the backstory: I've had some pretty good seats at sporting events before: 50-yard line 12 rows up for the lone playoff game at FedEx Field, similar seats at the pivotal Wake Forest/Maryland football game in College Park back in '06, a few rows behind a basket at various NCAA first round games, a front-row, birdseye view of Josh Howard calling a crippling timeout at Cole Field House during MD's undefeated home season in their National Championship year and nice vantage points during countless golf tournaments. Based on seating location alone, though, the tickets we had for that afternoon were definitely the best seats I've ever sat in at a major sporting event.
It had been about three years since I'd been to a Bullets game; maybe even more. The decent tickets are too damn expensive and the cheap ones are so high up in the air you feel like you're violating D.C.'s building-height restriction law just by sitting there. They're not so terrible if you're parallel to the sidelines, but are absolutely brutal if you get stuck behind the basket. It's disorienting and confusing and almost impossible to tell players apart. I sat there for the ACC Tournament in '05 after buying a cheap ticket from a guy on the street and it was tough for me to identify the players on Wake Forest. Plus those steps are dangerous if you've been imbibing. But I digress.
My friends and I decided to get cheap tickets to the game and sit in the bleeders, figuring it would be a good thing to do on a day off . We got the tickets - $12 a piece - and waited. Then on the Friday morning before the game, my dad calls me up and tells me he got two tickets for the upcoming game and asks whether I want them. After enjoying the irony involved in my dad offering me tickets for the first pro basketball game I've purchased tickets to in the past five years, I said yes, figuring his tickets were going to be a lot better than mine. (Not that that's saying much, as few tickets would have been as crappy as the ones we purchased.). I didn't realize just how good my dad's tickets were until I picked them though.
Section 100. Row AA. In other words, Giddy Up.
The seats were directly at halfcourt. We were sitting on the player's side, behind the single-row media table where the TV announcers, backup official, scoreboard operator, PA announcer, replay technican and random bald man whose job I could not ascertain.
Below are some pictures Russ and I took during the game. I'll avoid the standard cliches about how fast the game is up close and how tall DaSagna Diop looks when you're standing two feet from him and how weird Dirk Nowitzki really looks but, rest assured, all those things are true.
Thanks for the tickets, Dad.

These intros where you turn down the lights, pump in the loud, bass-thumping music and announce the players like they're the Beatles on Ed Sullivan have gotten very stale. I understand that they do it for the crowd (mainly the kids), but most of the players, coaches and fans seem bored by the whole thing. These teams are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Somebody on the payroll has to have an idea about how to change up this passe tradition.

I thought that discovering Eddie Jones still plays in the NBA would be my biggest shock of the day. But then I saw Juwan Howard sitting at the end of the Mavs bench and a $9.50 beer in a span of 45-seconds and all was forgotten about the former Temple star.

You always see players making their way down press row before the game, sometimes stopping to put powder on their hands or give dap to the play-by-play announcer. On the Bullets though, each of the starting five begins at the start of their bench and goes down the list, giving dap to everyone sitting between Phil Chenier and the PA guy. It seems like a solid routine. Antonio Daniels even went back for some missed-dap and had to wait for Bullets PBP guy Dave Johnson to finish his sentence before Johnson gave the dap that he had missed the first time around. It appeared Daniels wasn't going to go on the floor Dapless from Dave.

Tip-off. It's amazing how bad the refs are at throwing the ball straight in the air. This is why I'm a reluctant fan of the alternate possession rule in college. Giving refs less responsibility is a good thing. You know, because they all suck.

Avery Johnson is loud. Really, really loud. That, combined with his distinct, preacher-like voice, makes hearing him yell, "DIOP.... DIOP!!! POST!" all the more entertaining.

The new HD scoreboard is large. On nights that the Verizon Center is empty, they should charge people $5 to come in and watch TV. I'd definitely go down there to watch The Departed American Idol. (Am I finally using the strikethrough correctly, Jaf?)

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had worse seats than we did. Granted, my approval rating is higher than his.

The bottle of "Rosin Material" gets a prominent spot on the scorer's table.

That's the best picture I could take of the courtside DVR system. From what I could gather, there is a guy who operates the DVR during the game, looking for timing errors, whether a shot was a three-pointer or not, etc. I wanted to steal it. Russ talked me out of it. FYI, the previous two pictures were the only two I took during the game. Clearly, you can tell how interested I was in the basketball.

Two close-ups of Josh Howard's new tattoo honoring his late college coach Skip Prosser.

A pre-injury Caron Butler looking pensive. He's probably thinking about how great Project Runway would look on that huge screen. Oh wait, that was just me.

Me walking to get some more beers. I'm including this for three reasons: 1) To show our proximity to the court. 2) To demonstrate my disdain for the art of ironing. 3) To point out how much of a doofus the Mavs radio announcer looks like.

I know what you're thinking and, no. The girls behind us weren't very cute.

Caron Butler's Second Chance

Today's Washington Post included a fantastic A1 story by Michael Lee about Washington Bullets Wizards All-Star Caron Butler. As has been well-chronicled, Butler spent nine months in prison during his teenage years, devoted himself to basketball upon his release and has been an active member of the community in both his hometown of Racine, WI and in the D.C. area. Lee writes of Butler's troubled teenage years and details how a pragmatic police detective gave Butler the benefit of the doubt in a case following his arrest. Had the cop not believed in Butler's intention to staying out of the drug game, it's unlikely he'd be in the NBA today. A great story. Read the whole thing.

Snap Judgments: Championship Game Edition

* LaDanian Tomlinson: If he's not seriously injured, LDT should be ripped for manning up and playing today. Clearly, I don't know the situation. But from the looks of it - LDT standing on the sidelines during the biggest game of his career - Tomlinson had given up and decided not to play through pain. If he was close to 100%, as he said, then play.
Unless it comes out this week that he had a partial tear of an ACL or MCL or some other knee-referencing acronym, Danie should be skewered in every form of media for his lack of passion, fortitude and balls. Get out there, man. Jack Youngblood played one of these title games with a broken freakin' leg.
The funniest part of the LDT saga was having to listen to Phil Simms repeatedly say that losing Tomlinson (the league's MVP just one year ago) wasn't "that big a deal for San Diego" because they have that big back Michael Turner. Simms was all over Turner's jock today for some reason. But, yes Phil. The Chargers surely didn't need the best goalline runner of all-time in the game where they were thrice in the Red Zone. Idiot.

* Tom Brady: Just because he's the best, doesn't mean it's sacareligious to say that he played very, very poorly today. I mean, I'm sure Moses had an off-day every once in a while when one of His sermons wasn't clicking. But at least Moses' errors were acknowledged by the church elders and he didn't have Phizekial Simms bailing him out.

* Brett Favre: Wasn't it a little strange that the one man the cold affected the most was the man who was thought to have the biggest advantage playing in the snow? Favre played miserably in Green Bay. He was back to his old self, slinging the ball downfield without regard for routes, coverages, wind patterns and situation and single-handedly gave the Giants the game. Favre looked miserable in the cold. He was constantly messing around with a heating bag, his nose looked like Ted Kennedy's after a particularly lengthy session at the bar and, most importantly, he was constantly doing something on the sidelines or on the field with the intention of getting warm. He'd go get the tea, then go sit in the chair, then mess with the pad, etc. He was freaked out!
Of course, we wouldn't have heard peep about this had the Packers scored quickly in overtime. As it is, with Favre's crippling pick (that the Wolfman imagines was very fun to throw) we still might not even hear the "Favre Blew It" storyline this week.

* Sitting courtside: Just got back from the Bullets/Mavs game, where my buddy Russ and I sat courtside. It was pretty awesome. Once he uploads the pics to his computer, I'll post some of them here.

Agent Zero? More Like Agent... Zero. Dammit.

Tony Kornheiser's famed Curse of Les Boulez has struck again, as Gilbert Arenas is lost for the season after a torn meniscus. For those high-and-mighty types who don't believe in curses and jinxes, consider; in a six-day span, the Bullets have:

1) Gone to overtime (and subsequently lost) after their own player essentially fed the ball to an opponent for a game-tying, buzzer-beating three.

2) Saw their All-Star forward make a hustle play, only to break his hand:


3) Has their star player go down for the season after getting his knee knocked on a routine layup:

What, He Couldn't Get Jay-Z?

When my cousin Peter turned 25, we drank for seven hours at various D.C. watering holes and eventually ended up getting turned away at a 24-hour Denny's in College Park. On Antzo's 25th, he made everyone take a disgusting shot at midnight and then proceeded to hit on every Greek girl in a three-zip code vicinity. This past August, when I turned 25, my parents took me out to a nice dinner and then I met up with a small group of friends and got hammered off Crowne and car bombs and ended up paying a bouncer to keep out uninvited guests.
Gilbert Arenas turns 25 tomorrow and will have a similar get-together, except his friends will include Busta Rhymes, The Game, T.I., Lil' Wayne and a bevy of hoochies that would make a rap video blush. Oh, and he's also sent out "Arenas Express" cards as invitations (what, Evite wasn't cool enough?). And Puffy's hosting. And the dress-code is "super duper fly." (At mine, I only required duper fly; hence the difference between me and a millionaire.) And Caron Butler says it'll be the second-best D.C. social event of the year behind, of course, Howard Homecoming. And the party has it's own website.
As Bullets play-by-play man Dave Johnson told Dan Steinberg, "my last party didn't even have a site." (It was Steinberg's awesome DC Sports Bog that alerted me to this monumental event.)
There's a chance Gil might be the coolest cat around these parts these days; from his vocab-lesson-jumpshots to his argyle sweaters (watch the video, it's great) to his hyperbaric sleeping bag to his perfect 32-foot game-winners (see below), Arenas has turned from underrated eccentric to MVP-like eccentric in a matter of months. Seriously, watch the shot. How bad-ass does he look, turning away after shooting and not even watching the ball go in. There have only been two people who ever could pull that off; Michael Jordan and Will Smith in that episode of Fresh Prince where he racked up about 70 points on an eight-foot hoop, which makes Carlton get all jealous.
Anyway, watch the shot.

Happy Birthday, Gilbert. Here's hoping T.I. doesn't shoot you.