Summers a Piston + “the Blond”

Detroit drafted former-Georgetown Hoya DaJuan Summers in the second round of the NBA Draft. He was the 35th pick overall.

I thought Summers should have stayed at Georgetown. If he improved on his poor junior-year showing, he would be in a much stronger position a year from now.

But Summers’ being picked for the NBA makes a lot more sense than Spaniard Ricky Rubio being picked fifth (by the Minnesota Timberwolves–after the Wizards traded away the pick).

If you were tuned into every moment of Olympic basketball last summer, you will remember Rubio as Spain’s short guard who attempted a lot of nifty passes.

I will be a monkey’s uncle if either Summers or Rubio ever makes much of an impact. But DaJuan could school Rubio up and down the court any day of the week.

The whole Rubio rage is just weird. Someone spiked the Kool-Aid in Minnesota. The Wizards got the better end of the deal.

Wizards 107, Pistons 94!

As perhaps you recall, we have been down this road before. (But someone turned Chauncy Billups into Allen Iverson.)

This time, the Wizards actually beat the mighty Pistons!

Gilbert Arenas and ascot

The Wizards were down by 17 in the second quarter. They rallied. They fought. They overtook the Pistons in the third and never looked back.

The starters were good. The bench was good.

It was great.

Firing on All Pistons

On Friday a friend of mine left me a little note. It was very direct. “Wizards suck.”

She was not taunting me. It was her bitter lament. She is ten times the Wizards fan I am.

(I am STILL getting over the name change. Thanks to my dear aunt taking my brother and me to the Capital Center, I fell in love with the team of Elvin “The Big E” Hayes and Wes Unseld. When I was seven, I learned to yell, “EEEEEEE!” and then yell, “Awwww” if he missed. Meanwhile, I never associated Gandalf with basketball.)

Anyway, the Wizards were 0-1 on Friday, when I received the note. Being a Christian and a priest, I wrote back: “Keep hope alive.”

The Wizards are 0-2 now, but hope endures nonetheless. The Pistons that beat us last night are a seriously good team.

During the second quarter, the Wizards outscored the Pistons 31-20. At one point, the Wizards went on a 16-0 run. In the last 6:55 of the first half, the Wizards outscored the mighty Pistons 22-4, and the Wizards were leading at halftime. It was like when I was on the freshman St. Albans team, and we were beating St. John’s at halftime, and the coach said to us in the locker room, “Someone call the Washington Post!” They wound up beating us by twenty.

Near the end of the game last night, Phil Chenier said, “If the Wizards had played like this on Wednesday, we would have run away from the Nets by 20 points.”

0-2, yes–but hope is alive.