BRAVEONAWARPATH

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/wizardsinsider/2010/10/ted-leonsis-hints-at-a-possibl.html

Ted Leonsis says name change to Bullets is 'under consideration'

New Wizards owner Ted Leonsis has gone a long way toward engaging with fans of his team since taking over the franchise since June. He has taken suggestions from fans through his email address, TheWashWiz@aol.com, responded to the ones he deems reasonable, and made every effort he can to keep the fans he has, regain any that the franchise has lost and acquiring new ones along the way.

The efforts are already noticeable at Verizon Center and through some other changes for the Wizards, who recently established an alumni association for former Bullets and Wizards players and held training camp in Northern Virginia to be closer to the local fan base. But Leonsis spelled out everything that he has done or plans to do now that he is control, in full detail on his personal blog, Ted's Take.

In a blog post titled, "The Wisdom of Our Crowds - 101 To Do List Final," Leonsis puts out his "List of 101 Signs of Visible Change," which includes fans suggestions and what he has done. The list includes such things as "2. Reconnect with Gilbert Arenas" and "59. Install beverage shelf in the men's restrooms." But two of the most startling developments in the blog, which should generate considerable excitement among fans were Nos. 28 and 31. What do those say?

28. Change Wizards' colors back to red, white and blue, which Leonsis said is "In-development."

31. Change Wizards' team name to Bullets, which Leonsis said is "Under consideration."

You should check out the entire list, but returning to red, white and blue and the Bullets is enough to make some people woozy around here.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/wizardsinsider/

Gilbert Arenas says he is not seeking an early exit

After the Wizards concluded practice at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Gilbert Arenas grabbed a seat on a portable water cooler and put an ice pack on his left knee. He then called me over because he wanted to clarify his post-game comments after the Wizards' 97-94 win against Dallas in the preseason opener, lest there be any confusion about what he said or even intended to say.

Arenas created a bit of stir after John Wall's thrilling preseason debut when he said that his new role with the Wizards is to "teach John the ins and outs of the game, and eventually go on and move on." When asked what he meant when he said, "move on," Arenas replied, "This is the NBA. There's few players that stay in the same city, so right now the city is John's. I'm not here to fight anybody. I'm here to play alongside of him. He's Batman, I'm Robin. When I came in, Larry [Hughes] moved aside for me to become a star and I'm moving aside for him to become a star."

To some, Arenas's comments appeared to be a message that he was looking to be moved before his contract expires after the 2013-14 season. Arenas said he isn't looking to go anywhere, or seeking a trade; he is content serving as a mentor to Wall and the other young Wizards as one of the few veterans on the roster. He said he simply meant that he would move on when his deal ends, not before it.

"I've got four years left," Arenas said, "and that's it. That's all I was saying."

At the end of his current contract, Arenas will be 32 and the rest of the Wizards' young players -- such as Wall, JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche and possibly Yi Jianlian, if he re-signs next summer -- will be entering their respective primes. He said it's only natural for teams to move on and bring in younger players, but he enjoys being around this group.

Arenas said was merely stating the obvious: It is Wall's team now. He's a veteran role player around to show him the ropes and help him become a star. "I had my time," Arenas said.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/wizardsinsider/2010/10/gilbert-arenas-im-moving-aside.html

Gilbert Arenas: "I'm moving aside for [John Wall] to become a star"

"Right now I'm out there to hit open shots, teach John the ins and the outs of the game, and then eventually go on and move on. I'm on my way," Arenas said, offering a subtle hint that he could be dealt before his $111-million contract expires in 2014. "This is the NBA. There's few players that stay in the same city, so right now the city is John's. I'm not here to fight anybody. I'm here to play alongside of him. He's Batman, I'm Robin. When I came in, Larry [Hughes] moved aside for me to become a star and I'm moving aside for him to become a star."

"I love his game," Arenas said about Wall. "I loved it when he was in high school. He can get to the basket at will. He's fast."

Arenas said he told him, "With the shooters you have on this team and the talent you have, you're going to do everything you want to do. Whatever you feel comfortable, we're just feeding off of you. This is your team and we're behind you. Let him be, let him fly and let us fill in the gaps.

"He's going to be great," Arenas said. "He has knack for finding people and getting to the basket. I told him he's too young to be hitting the ground so hard, so often. When it's all said and done, they're going to have to compare him to what Derrick Rose and them are doing now because he's going to have the ball in his hands and an opportunity to score. He has a whole bunch of shooters around him and we're going to make him look good and he's going to make us look good."

"You always start a franchise with a point guard and a big," Arenas said, mentioning Blatche, McGee and Yi Jianlian. "You just build the team around them. You've got to keep building until you get something special and right now they have special players."

When asked if he needed to go elsewhere in order to play a more desirable role, Arenas said, "I'm content on what I'm doing right now. Everything happens for a reason. It's easy to play with [Wall] basically we're basically family. We both came from the same agent [Dan Fegan], so me and him get along great. We're like brother, so if I want my brother to grow, I've got to step down."

Wait, so did we sign Adam Morrison?

Yep.

Click on the link to read the rest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/02/AR2010100204018.html

Adam Morrison remembers being matched up against Kobe Bryant in one of his first practices with the Los Angeles Lakers. Coach Phil Jackson was trying to get a sense of what the new arrival was made of, less than three years after Michael Jordan had made him the third overall pick of the 2006 NBA draft for the Charlotte Bobcats.

The results were as lopsided as one would expect. "He was killing me," Morrison said.

But Bryant didn't just welcome Morrison to the Lakers with a barrage of post-up moves, pull-up jumpers and fadeaways. Bryant saved his best work for the locker room after practice, when he posed a question to Morrison.

"He said, 'Can you guard me without S.O.S. on the back of your jersey?' " Morrison said, adding that Bryant never let up with the trash talk during his time in Los Angeles. "Some of the stuff I can't repeat."

Morrison said being around the Lakers, and Bryant specifically, the past few seasons helped him become a better player and gain an understanding of what it takes to improve individually and accomplish the ultimate team goal. Morrison left Los Angeles with two championships, but the 26-year-old also acknowledges that most of his time in Los Angeles was spent as a spectator in a sport coat.

"I didn't get on the court - at all," said Morrison, who appeared in just 83 games the past two seasons in Charlotte and Los Angeles. "I always tell people I was a fan with an all-access pass, pretty much, and I got a check every week. I felt part of the team but, being the draft pick that I was, I got a lot of flak for not playing. People don't understand; it was a very good team. Wasn't like I was playing somewhere that wasn't good."

Morrison found himself buried, lost, and forgotten. But now he has an opportunity to resurrect his career - or get it started, depending on your perspective - with the Washington Wizards. "I really like the situation here," Morrison said after a recent practice at George Mason's Patriot Center.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/wizardsinsider/2010/09/earl-monroe-drops-by-wizards-p.html

Hall of Fame guard and Baltimore Bullets legend Earl Monroe stopped by practice at George Mason's Patriot Center on Thursday to speak with the team. Monroe said it was the first time that he had been in a training camp since his final season with the New York Knicks in 1979.

Although Monroe spent the majority of his career in New York, where he won a title in 1973, he always felt a connection with the Bullets/Wizards franchise; one that was cemented three years ago, when he became the fourth player in team history to have his jersey retired. Monroe was invited by new owner Ted Leonsis to take part in a new Bullets/Wizards alumni association and he was more than willing to get on board. He plans to be around through Saturday and he gave the players his thoughts on the upcoming season.

"I expect big things from them," Monroe said. "They are at the beginning of something that I think is going to be very, very special and just keep going. I told them, I don't want to impede on what they do, but if any of them had any questions they want to ask, I was going to be here and that I was here, basically for them."

Monroe finished with the third-highest scoring average in franchise history at 23.7 points per game and he held the franchise scoring record of 56 points until Gilbert Arenas scored 60 points against the Los Angeles Lakers in December 2006. I spoke with Monroe on the night of his jersey retirement three years ago and he congratulated Arenas on knocking him from atop the record books, but added, "I wasn't shooting three-pointers at that time."

On Thursday, Monroe said that he has never had the chance to meet Arenas. "I haven't had a one-on-one type of chance to talk to him, but we have a very mutual respect for each other. In the last couple of years with the injuries and whatnot, he really hasn't gotten back to what he was, but I'm expecting him to really come forth and be a force this year."

After watching practice, Monroe said he was impressed with No. 1 overall pick John Wall. "John, I didn't realize he was as fast as he was, as tenacious as he is," Monroe said. "But I'm glad to see it and I'm hoping that as the year goes on, that this team will really come together. Good teams start with camaraderie and these guys have a lot of that, and I'm looking to see how that progresses over the year."

When asked about how Arenas and Wall would mesh, President Ernie Grunfeld mentioned how he grew up watching Monroe and Walt "Clyde" Frazier playing with the Knicks. I asked Monroe how he would able to make it work with another point guard and he said: "It's a little bit different here because they are basically on the same team from jump street, so when I went there, they already had a squad in place and it was a matter of me just trying to fit in there. When I look at it, I look back and say, okay, somebody has to take a back seat, until such time where I needed to step up."

Other former players, such as Wes Unseld, Bobby Dandridge and Kevin Grevey from the 1978 championship-winning Bullets are expected to stop by this week. Elvin Hayes had said he would attempt to attend training camp this week, but he is not expected to participate.

My outer 'burbs/heart of DC comment was aimed at the idea that this is in anyway a hockey town. I should have made that clear.

And again, we're talking sports. Not teams.

+1

How can you work for the Wizards and not know who Elvin Hayes is?

ALL TIME LEADERS: POINTS

1.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar PPG: 24.6 PTS: 38,387

2.Karl Malone PPG: 25.0 PTS: 36,928

3.Michael Jordan PPG:30.1 PTS: 32,292

4.Wilt Chamberlain PPG:30.1 PTS: 31,419

5.Shaquille O'neal PPG:24.1 PTS: 28,255

6.Moses Malone PPG:20.6 PTS: 27,409

7.Elvin Hayes PPG:21.0 PTS: 27,313

8.Hakeem Olajuwon PPG:21.8 PTS: 26,946

9.Oscar Robertson PPG:25.7 PTS: 26,710

10..Dominique Wilkins PPG:24.8 PTS: 26,668

Click on the link to read the rest

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/27/AR2010092706347.html

Elvin Hayes and other former Bullets reconnect with team

Elvin Hayes said somewhere along the way - possibly after the Washington Bullets dealt him to the Houston Rockets in 1981 - that his relationship with the only organization for which he had won a championship, the place where he had established most of his Hall of Fame credentials, had been severed.

It always pained him that he had mostly lost that bond but he didn't realize how deep the disconnect was until he called the Wizards last season and struggled to find someone who recognized his name and could offer him assistance. Hayes, whose No. 11 jersey hangs in the rafters, eventually called former teammate and current Wizards broadcaster Phil Chenier, who helped put him in contact with the right people.

"That's when it really hurt me. You have put so much sweat and blood on the court and you call a place, and it's like, 'Who?' " Hayes said in a telephone interview from Houston. "It was like nobody knew. I called everywhere. I finally got one person who said, 'I know who you are.' "

Hayes likely won't have that problem anymore. Since taking over as owner of the Wizards, Ted Leonsis has made a concerted effort to reach out to former players with the hopes of establishing a formal Wizards/Bullets alumni program. He has reached out to Hayes, Wes Unseld, Bobby Dandridge, Earl Monroe, Kevin Grevey and Kevin Porter and asked President Ernie Grunfeld to assist him in contacting players.

Taking a cue from organizations such as the Boston Celtics, who constantly intertwine their past history, Leonsis wants players who have contributed to the success of the Bullets and the Wizards to have a more visible presence - in the owner's box at Verizon Center, at games, at practices - sharing their wisdom with the current players and serving as ambassadors for the team.

After Abe Pollin's death, and the Pollin family selling the team last June, Leonsis felt the organization lost an important link to its past success and needed to start anew.

"I promised we'd pay homage to the past, but I didn't have that natural connective tissue," Leonsis said. "I need to build that sense of community, because Mr. Pollin owned the team for so long, he was the team. I'm new. I can't do it on my own. I need help. In my due diligence and my research, I felt like this franchise has had a lot of great players, Hall of Fame players, championship-winning players who had developed and become great and successful in life."

The Wizards have invited several players to attend training camp this week at George Mason University's Patriot Center. Monroe plans to attend Thursday to Saturday, and during that time, the Hall of Fame guard who won a title with the Knicks but began his career with the Bullets said he hopes to spend some time with No. 1 overall pick John Wall. Dandridge and Grevey are expected to participate in the Fan Fest before the final practice on Sunday.

Click on the link to read the rest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/26/AR2010092603248.html?sid=ST2010092700183

Quote

Ted Leonsis has owned the Washington Wizards for little more than three months, but the official coming-out party for his regime will be on Monday when the new-look team meets with members of the media in the afternoon and hosts an extravagant pep rally at George Mason in preparation for the first NBA midnight practice to start training camp.

Leonsis already offered a hint of what is to come, in terms of generating excitement for his franchise, when he welcomed No. 1 overall pick John Wall with an over-the-top introduction the day after the draft, complete with a police escort, red carpet entrance, balloons and screaming fans in "Game Changer" T-shirts.

But Leonsis and his marketing team have much more in store this season. The camp-opening "Midnight Tip-off" festivities - which include live music, a DJ, the George Mason marching band and food, ticket and other giveaways - are considered a test run.

"We're going to try a lot of different things," said Greg Bibb, the Wizards' executive vice president of business operations. "We're going to be innovative. Maybe some of the things we try don't work, but some of the things we try will work. And we're not going to be mundane. We're going to be dynamic in how we market this team and move this business forward."

The Wizards are already benefiting, as they rank among the top 10 in the NBA in new season ticket sales. Bibb said the team is closing in on 2,000 new season ticket holders, a significant move for a team that has won just 45 games the past two seasons.

When Leonsis signed his purchase agreement with the Pollin family to become the majority owner of the Wizards and Verizon Center last May, NBA Commissioner David Stern called it a "spectacular transition" and praised Leonsis for his ability to market and promote the NHL's Capitals.

"I think that the numbers, in terms of their season tickets, renewals and ticket sales, speak for themselves," Stern said last week. "The fans feel that this is a new season and a new era and they are rallying to support the Wizards."

One of the big selling points for the franchise is that this is a fresh start, but Leonsis does not want to move forward without reaching back and connecting with the successes of the past. The late Abe Pollin and Irene Pollin represented the history of the franchise, having owned the team since 1964.

As a newcomer, Leonsis felt the need to reach out to past greats, such as Earl Monroe and members of the 1978 championship team Wes Unseld, Bobby Dandridge, Elvin Hayes and Kevin Grevey.

In addition to establishing a Wizards/Bullets alumni association - which will include past players appearing at Wizards games, practices and special events - Leonsis has also created what he calls the "over-the-shoulder campaign" to link the past with the present. The campaign will feature pictures of Wall dribbling, with a faded image of Monroe over his shoulder; and Andray Blatche shooting, with Hayes in the background

:bsflag:

Pacquiao didn't agree to the blood test the first time.

I don't know about the second time.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=5520996

The fight was nearly made in January, then fell apart when Pacquiao refused Olympic-style drug testing in the weeks leading up to the fight. But the newly minted congressman from the Philippines said he's even agreed to the strict blood testing in an effort to make the fight, but he hasn't heard from Mayweather's side why an agreement couldn't be reached.

"We agree with, you know, his demands," Pacquiao said, referring specifically to the blood testing. "I wanted to know if that's his real reason [for not fighting]."

The entire negotiation process came to resemble an unsavory soap opera, with HBO Sports boss Ross Greenburg publicly stating that he had worked tirelessly as an intermediary between the two sides. Pacquiao's promoter Top Rank has a poor relationship with Mayweather, who rose to become a world champion under its banner, so it's not unreasonable to assume there was an intermediary.

Shortly after a deadline imposed by Top Rank for Mayweather to accept the fight had passed, his adviser Leonard Ellerbe issued a bizarre statement in which he said no negotiations ever took place -- contradicting Greenburg and the folks at Top Rank.

Roach said that Top Rank had been calling him for advice on what gloves to wear, what ring size to use, what weight to fight at -- standard details during a negotiation process.

"When people are calling me and asking me, 'Is this OK? Is this OK? Is this OK?' There's something going on," Roach said. "I know there must have been negotiations going on.

"Whatever he wanted to do, we were accepting it. Whatever he wanted. Manny said, 'I want to fight. I'll agree to anything.' I thought the fight was a shoo-in."

It has been a lonnggggg time. close to 20 years. Would be nice.

Heck, just think how long its been for Wizards/Bullets fans?

Not that I think Bolt would do it but supposedly some NFL teams are intrigued by him. :whoknows: