Wizards bosses claimed that the early-season replacement of Eddie Jordan with Ed Tapscott came because the franchise management believe the playoffs could still be reached. At 4-23, Washington is now five games behind Charlotte for 14th place in the East. I think we can rule out the playoffs at this point.
Nevertheless, Tapscott is riding his veterans. JaVale McGee and Javaris Crittenton earned DNP-CDs for the Christmas game in Cleveland. Youthful Dominic McGuire didn't get some time to flourish or wilt until not-youthful DeShawn Stevenson requestedto be benched. There's no hope for this season, and the team hasn't yet given the kids a chance to show they can be successful next season. Lose-lose, mates.
As such, this rumor from the Washington Post's Ivan Carter makes a load of sense.
They are only whispers but I'm hearing chatter that Gilbert Arenas and the team is seriously pondering whether to bring him back at all this season.
Last night, it appeared Memphis would send Javaris Crittenton to Washington for the right to undo 2007's Juan Carlos Navarro trade, in which the Wizards claimed a conditional first round pick from the Grizz. But the Hornets got involved in the swap, which resulted in some meaningful player movement: along with the aforementioned move, the Wiz took Mike James back in exchange for Antonio Daniels, who heads to NOLA. The Washington Post's Ivan Carter is among those reporting that the deal is official.
NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.
1. The Sporting Blog. The way in which the NBA has dealt with mental illness is a sharp contrast from similar situations in the NFL.
2. Basketball Prospectus. Kevin Pelton's Pacific projections have the Warriors going ... 48-34. Andris Biedrins, people!
3. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As we all feared, Ramon Sessions is locked in a battle for the Bucks back-up point guard spot with ... Tyronn Lue. The starter? Luke Ridnour. What a world.
4. Memphis Commercial-Appeal. Marc Iavaroni indicates Javaris Crittenton isn't an integral part of the Grizzlies' plans.
A lot of rookies are handled with kid gloves. They're coddled, to a certain degree,and heavily invested in and supported. Javaris Crittenton didn't have quite so soft of a rookie season. He was drafted nineteenth by the Lakers, who already had Jordan Farmar and Vlad Radmanovic, not to mention Kobe Bryant, and who added Derek Fisher. Then, in the midst of an exciting season on a premier playoff-caliber team, he was traded in his first season to the Memphis Grizzlies as part of the swindle that brought Pau Gasol to Staples Center. Crittenton, however, had tremendous athletic talent, and really started to make an impact as the year wen ton in Memphis. As this season, started, though, he found himself on the block again, the subject of constant rumors, including the now failed Zach Randolph rumor.
I caught up with Crittenton last week and talked to him about dealing with the harsh realities of the NBA that many rookies are shielded from, working with Mark Price, and keeping focused amidst distraction.
MM: What's the biggest thing you learned last year?
JC: The biggest thing I learned last year is this is a business. You've got to be professional. You've got to come to work prepared. So in the offseason I spent time working on things I needed to improve on last year.
This is not a division. It is a gauntlet. A spiked, imperial gauntlet inhabited by minotaurs, pterodactyls, stone giants, warrior pygmy tribes, and other things that go bump in the night. There is no sense of "If we can just make it to .500" in this division. .500 means nothing. .500 is for the Central division.
The Southwest Division hosts two former MVPs, the MVP runner-up from last season, the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, the reigning Coach of the Year, a bazillion All-Stars, elite shooters, elite defenders, elite scorers, and Ron freaking Artest. Yeesh.
There are not headlines here. There are omens, prophecies, and obituaries.
For the first time in Memphis Grizzlies history – and I'm the only beat writer the team has worked with – a fiery, healthy, competitive spirit is evident AND we're talking about practice.
Tillery tells of O.J. Mayo getting furious at a pick-up loss and getting into it with Darko. (!) Also, Mike Conley's two pips, Javaris Crittenton and Kyle Lowry, have gone hard after each other and Rudy Gay is popping off at teammates. As Tillery repeats, this is good news.
Memphis has a severe talent deficiency, at least until Conley and Mayo develop and one of the bigs (Darrell Arthur, Darko, Marc Gasol, Hamed Haddadi) joins Hakim Warrick among the living. But energy and spirit can make up for a lot in the long march of the NBA season. Last year, the team's only fire seemed to come from Mike Miller and Lowry (and occasionally Warrick). Pau Gasol resembled a dead man walking. The veterans Memphis added in the Gay-Love swap aren't exactly your everyday leaders (Antoine Walker, Marko Jaric).
So the kids propelling the team's effort will have to be the way it's done. Who knows how many wins it could possibly mean -- that's not the important part. Again, this team needs development. That work is only buoyed if the game is exciting and fun, something the cats can't get enough of. Having spirit means you're in more games, and that means the good feelings bubble up. (Sacramento was in a similar situation last year: the loud effort provided by guys like Mikki Moore and Francisco Garcia helped keep the most important players driving and playing hard ... at least from my vantage point.)
Marc Gasol hasn't been dominant in Beijing, but it's pretty clear the Grizzlies may have gotten themselves a valuable asset in Pau Gasol's little brother. The younger Gasol is bigger, meatier, and shows a very un-Pau-like penchant for diving after loose balls and playing physical basketball, while displaying a very Pau-like touch offensively. So much so that the Memphis Commercial Appeal points out that he's getting praise from all sorts of members of Team USA.
The most interesting may have come from Kobe Bryant, though. In the article, Kobe drops this delicious little insight into the mind of a superstar with the authority to have impact on personnel decisions:
"In hindsight, we probably didn't have to give him up to get Pau," Bryant said. "We should have kept Marc, too."
Okay, Kobes. Didn't realize you had so much experience in negotiating trades. I kid, I kid. Kobe's obviously just trying to complement the guy. But if we were to take a closer look at it, there are two ways you can take the statement from Mamba. It's either A. an admission that the Lakers may not have ripped off the Grizzlies quite as bad as initially thought (a paradigm that's becoming more and more popular with each Grizzlies move), or B. the exact opposite, an even further condemnation of how little the Grizzlies' front office are to be thought of. As in, they probably didn't have to give up Marc to get Pau, since the Grizzlies will let pretty much anything go.
The Rotation is a weekly study on the NBA by one of our All-Star voices. In rotation this week is Brett Edwards.
The NBA has seen an unprecedented amount of player movement this season, including three deals which can only be described as flat out blockbusters. But as the choke-time Mavericks and suddenly atrocious Suns are learning, bringing in new, big name talent doesn't necessarily make your team better. It just makes it different, and different isn't likely to get you to the Finals. Now that the hype has blown over, it's clear that the Lakers have built themselves for a title, while the Suns and Mavericks are worse off than before they started. But why?
The trading-for-a-superstar craze began of course with the Celtics. Boston's off-season acquisitions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett -- along with the team running out to a fast start and the league's best record -- "proved" a couple of things to general managers everywhere. One, teams that aren't going anywhere are willing to move their superstars, for the price of young unproven talent and/or some players with expiring contracts. This creates immediate flexibility for future moves under the salary cap, and/or buys the GM years of job security while waiting for the young players to come into their own. And two, guess what? When you have a team stocked with All-Stars, there's a good chance that you can compete for a title.
It would be very easy to assume that Jerry West had his grubby little old man hands all over trade that sent Pau Gasol to the Lakers for what some important NBA people, like Gregg Popovich, are calling "beyond comprehension." He is, after all, the strongest possible link that you could find between the Lakers and Grizzlies. But in reality, West's hands are probably as far from grubby as they get and he had absolutely nothing to do with the deal, if you're willing to believe him.
Mitch Kupchak's acquisition of 7-footer Pau Gasol from the Grizzlies for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton and two first-round draft picks -- a trade West said he was not involved in, contradicting the rumors and conspiracy theories that have buzzed around the Internet -- was a good one, he believes.
West also added that it was a "... terrific deal for the Lakers ..." and a "... steal for the present ..." Well, I think everyone has heard more staunch denials (at least act like it was good for both sides, Jerry), but West, in my book, has enough cred to trust his word. On the other hand, it's pretty freaking ludicrous to try and ignore the fact that West has worked with and molded two organizations, Los Angeles and Memphis, over the recent years, and those two teams just happened to be involved in a blockbuster deal that got them both exactly what they wanted. Then again, when has force feeding Chris Wallace a fifth of Grey Goose over the course of eighteen holes and having him sign "your scorecard" at the end of the round* actually count as being "involved" in anything? Seriously though, even if West called Wallace up and told him to take the Lakers' deal ... who cares? Since when has being in the business world not been about who you know?
Initial reactions to Friday's Lakers/Grizzlies trade have cast the deal as a net-positive for both teams. In Pau Gasol, the Lakers have acquired a big man that makes them a legitimate championship contender without giving up any of their most important rotation players. On the other side, the Grizzlies picked up serious cap relief next offseason, a promising guard in Javaris Crittenton, and two first-round picks.
The unfortunate thing, though, is that Memphis's haul only looks impressive because of the NBA's trade restrictions. Essentially, the league's insistence on having trade contracts match has forced the Grizzlies to trade their best bargaining chip for an uncertain future almost entirely dependent on luck.
The majority of articles on the Grizzlies' end of the deal have focused on the $15 million they'll have to work with on the open market this summer. That money would presumably be used to sign a top flight free agent such as Luol Deng, Shawn Marion, or Gilbert Arenas. The problem with that line of thinking is that players of that quality rarely jump ship. When they do, they usually go for well-above their actual worth. Deng, for instance, is a fine player, but the Grizzlies would probably have to pay him near-max money to pry him away from Chicago.
The best the Grizzlies can realistically hope for is someone of the Josh Smith/Ben Gordon class -- excellent players, sure, but not exactly the kinds of guys that turn doormats into legitimate playoff teams. Cap space is often talked about as if it represented future production, but the fact of the matter is that the best free agents rarely change teams -- if they even go on the open market at all.
Wizards bosses claimed that the early-season replacement of Eddie Jordan with Ed Tapscott came because the franchise management believe the playoffs could still be reached. At 4-23, Washington is now five games behind Charlotte for 14th place in the East. I think we can rule out the playoffs at this point.
Last night, it appeared Memphis would send 
A lot of rookies are handled with kid gloves. They're coddled, to a certain degree,and heavily invested in and supported. 
Via 
Marc Gasol
It would be very easy to assume that Jerry West had his grubby little old man hands all over trade that sent Pau Gasol to the Lakers for what some important NBA people, like 
