Hooped Up

Gilbert Arenas agreed to a new contract with the Washington Wizards that pays him $111 million US over six years.

Arenas reportedly took less than first offered in order to give the club some flexibility to sign other players.

“[They] offered me the max, and I’m basically giving back $16 million,” Arenas said to the Washington Times from China where he’s doing a promotional tour for a shoe company.

“This is line with what I’ve been saying the whole time. You see players take max deals, and they financially bind their teams.

“I don’t want to be one of those players and three years down the road your team is strapped and can’t do anything about it.”

CBC

Signing Antawn Jamison is step one of two for GM Ernie Grunfeld this summer.  So far 1 for 2 ain’t bad.

The Washington Wizards took care of one piece of summer business yesterday when they signed two-time all-star forward Antawn Jamison to a four-year contract extension that will pay him $50 million.

With Jamison locked up, team president Ernie Grunfeld was able to turn his attention to working out a deal for three-time all-star guard Gilbert Arenas, who officially became an unrestricted free agent at 12:01 a.m. today.

Washington Post

Gilbert Arenas said he opted out of the final year of his contract with the idea he would remain with the Washington Wizards. When NBA free agency officially opens at midnight tomorrow, Arenas will have an opportunity to show he was sincere. According to a league source familiar with the situation, Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld plans on soon offering Arenas a lucrative long-term contract, one that could cover up to six years and could be worth more than $100 million. However, whether Grunfeld and the Wizards are willing to meet the three-time all star guard’s wish for a maximum-level contract — one that would cover six years and pay him over $124 million — remains unclear.

Washington Post

Derrick Rose is going home, and a record crowd of freshmen are following him to the NBA. The Chicago Bulls selected Rose, who grew up on the city’s South Side, with the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft Thursday night, choosing the Memphis guard over Kansas State forward Michael Beasley.  Below are the rest of the NBA draft results.

Round 1 NBA Draft Results

Second round results after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

Big Tigger’s 7th Annual Celebrity Classic brings the celebrities out, and the dancer in Caron Butler out too. 

Check out photos of this event over at DC Fab.  Oh ya, Melyssa Ford was in the house looking very Melyssa Fordish.

Much like Sam the Record Man, Gilbert Areans said it and then did it. The Hibachi officially opted out of his contract with the Washington Wizards today and will be a free agent July 1.

Although Areans is looking to be paid the max, he has said he would take a pay cut in order for Washington to resign Antawn Jamison who will also be a free agent on his blog.  

In limited action because of two operations on his left knee this season.The three-time all-star averaged 19.4 points, 5.1 assists, 3.9 rebounds, 1.8 steals and 32.6 minutes in 13 games.

Hooped Up

The real question in all of this is will Gilbert get a max contract, coming of a serious injury that derailed him this year in the playoffs.  He has already said that he would take a pay cut in order for management to sign Antawn Jamison, but he might be better off taking a pay cut somewhere else with a team that will contend for a crown. 

While Gilbert Arenas still plans to opt out of his contract, making him an unrestricted free agent, he will not do it until the June 30 deadline, the Washington Post is reporting.

When asked why he planned on waiting until June 30 to opt out, Arenas wrote, “I just want to wait.”

Arenas was cleared to begin rehabilitating his surgically repaired left knee over the weekend, and expects to make a full recovery in time for training camp.

Washington Post

 

Mike Bibby
Like fellow NBA star LeBron James, Bibby has been known to nervously bite and chew his nails during games. When relegated to the bench for a breather during games with the Sacramento Kings, Bibby would obsessively pick at his nails until he stumbled across a better solution: using fingernail clippers on the bench. The clippers became his superstition, and whenever Bibby came to the bench for timeouts, someone would hand him a set so he could go to work on his nails.

Caron Butler
When most of us want a glass of something heavily caffeinated that fluoresces green, we can just reach for a Mountain Dew. Sadly for Washington Wizards’ All-Star small forward Caron Butler, he can’t do the Dew whenever he wants anymore. As Butler told Dan Steinberg of the fantastic D.C. Sports Bog, he would guzzle a two-liter bottle of the sugary soda before and during every game dating back to his All-American career at the University of Connecticut. Butler would throw down half the bottle before the game, then finish it off at halftime. That is, until the Wizards clamped down and forced him to switch to a more traditional sports drink, water.

Jason Terry
Bibby and Terry, college teammates at Arizona, started another odd superstition while playing for the Wildcats. The restless pair slept in the uniform shorts the night before each Arizona game on the logic that it would make the game feel like it was starting sooner. When Terry broke into the NBA with the Atlanta Hawks, he decided to start wearing the shorts of the next day’s opponent, instead. This ritual is fairly tenuous, though, as it requires Terry to procure a pair of uniform shorts from each opposing NBA team. Although his network of connections with equipment managers and former teammates has helped him out, he had to wear Mavericks shorts before each game of the 2006 NBA Finals since he couldn’t find a pair of Heat trunks.

After months of paying attention to 4th quarters and cursing the Knicks for existing…again! The most holiest of times are upon us my friends. Here are my predictions for the first round. Now I could use my crystal ball to also predict how many games each of these match ups will go but, I left my crystal ball in the Thunder Tank.

Round 1
Western Conference
Lakers vs. Nuggests - Lakers
Jazz vs. Rockets - Rockets
Spurs vs. Suns - Suns
Hornets vs. Mavericks - Mavericks

Eastern Conference
Celtics vs. Hawks - Celtics
Cavaliers vs. Wizards - Cavaliers
Magic vs. Raptors - Magic
Pistons vs. 76ers - Pistons

Getting ninja kicked to the balls insn’t a foul in the pro game and Danny Granger puts this to the test with Antawn Jamison’s twig and berries.  Of course this had to hurt but, the millions of dollars that he is making that I am not; soon comforted him and his shattered balls currently on injury reserve.