Washington
Philip Maymin
Basketball News Services
Not only is Brendan "The Hulk" Haywood the leading Wizard by a statistical measure, he is also their most eligible bachelor.
Haywood leads the Wizards in a per-minute plus-minus statistic calculated on 82games.com, and not only by a little. With Haywood on the court, the Wizards tend to outscore the opposition by more than 25 points on a per-48-minute basis. When he is off the floor, the opposition tends to outscore the Wizards by nearly 4 points on a per-48-minute basis.
Haywood is a true hulk. His 8.5 points and 6.0 rebounds per game so far this season may not look like much but he changed the game when he's in it. He's run into quick foul trouble, averaging 5 so far, and we all know from the Chicago melee that he can be very aggressive. What we perhaps didn't know was that he is also very effective.
The ladies seem to have taken notice. After the Wizards held their first Singles Night, they ran a dating game at a nearby restaurant. Haywood couldn't see the contestants and doesn't remember the exact question and answer that led him to finally choose Lesley Pinkston of St. Louis, but as the Hulk toldThe Washington Post, "She was cute, and I was relieved."
NEXT GAME
The Wizards (3-2) got a day's rest before heading west to Cleveland (2-3) to visit LeBron James and the Cavaliers tomorrow. Tip-off is slated for 1:00 p.m. Eastern the afternoon of Saturday, November 13th. The game will be broadcast on WB50 and NBA League Pass. Tickets are still available for this game at Gund Arena.
TEAM NOTES
Wizards Magazine, the team's weekly, in-depth television magazine show that covers Washington Wizards players on and off the court, returns for another season in 2004-05. Episodes air on WJLA ABC-7 on Sundays at noon, on Comcast Sports Net on Mondays at 9 pm, and on News Channel 8 on Sundays at 12:30 am.
The Wizards are proud to announce the new community initiative “Community Threes†sponsored by CareFirst BlueCross.
INJURY UPDATE
Jared Jeffries(nose) is questionable for Saturday's game at Cleveland;Kwame Brown(rehabbing toe) is expected to return sometime in December;Etan Thomas(abdomen) might be out as late as late November;Steve Blake(ankle) has a similar timeline for return.
Michael Lee ofThe Washington Post writes: If the Washington Wizards have been consistent with anything five games into the season, it's that they don't play their best basketball until the game is half over.The Wizards are averaging 102.2 points per game -- fifth-best in the league -- but more of those points have come in the second half (56.8), a trend that is both encouraging and troubling.
Rick Morrissey ofThe Chicago Tribunewrites: If the league were all about the games, Washington center Brendan Haywood wouldn't have been part of promotion Wednesday patterned after "The Dating Game."A contestant won a date with Haywood, who, apropos of nothing, was punched in the groin by Curry during an exhibition game brawl. The promotion was part of a "Singles Night" at the MCI Center in which 300 unattached men and women mingled in Section 203. Because this is the NBA, 10 paternity suits were immediately filed. You might remember the Wizards. They're the team that hired Michael Jordan to be their basketball operations director a few years ago, then stood back and waited for his competitive itch to arrive. Those dark times are chronicled in "When Nothing Else Matters," a grim book about the sad end to Jordan's career. Several things stand out in the book. One, Jordan was bitter that young players such as Tracy McGrady were being hyped without having won an NBA title. Two, if Jordan doesn't have a gambling problem, then nobody has a gambling problem. And three, for all the darkness at the end, stadiums were packed wherever Jordan played.
Ted Bertrand ofThe Bowdoin Orientwrites: After two good offseasons, the Washington Wizards seem ready to compete for a playoff spot in the weak Eastern Conference.Last offseason they landed the dynamic point guard Gilbert Arenas as a free agent, giving their team a much needed star. This offseason the Wizards finally rid themselves of two perennial disappointments with large contracts in Christian Laettner and Jerry Stackhouse. They added the powerful Antawn Jamison in a trade from the mercurial Dallas Mavericks and the starting lineup actually looks pretty good.
Jon Siegel ofThe Washington Times writes: It was the lottery that changed Ernie Grunfeld's life. And this lottery had nothing to do with the NBA Draft. Four decades ago, the Washington Wizards' president of basketball operations and his family received permission to leave communist Romania and escape from behind the Iron Curtain.Grunfeld's father, Alex, was a Holocaust survivor who labored in a Nazi work camp. His mother, Livia, spent World War II avoiding capture by the Nazis by carrying false papers and hiding out in basements in Hungary.