• Kwame Brown: Here’s basically all you need to know about the top pick from the draft.
• Tyson Chandler: He might not have lived up to the potential that comes with being the second pick, and the Clippers got the better end of the deal when they traded him for Elton Brand, but he’s become a solid player for the Hornets and very well may set the record for alley-oops by the time he’s done with Chris Paul.
• Pau Gasol: The first player from the draft to live up to their draft position and the first player (based on draft order) to make the All-Star Game.
• Eddy Curry: Was one of the promising big men in the league for a few years. Then Isiah Thomas traded for him.
• Jason Richardson: Gilbert’s high-flyin’ teammate for two seasons, has developed into a solid player for Charlotte Bobcats. He’s making good money, but you have to think that there’s part of him that wishes he was still getting those bounce pass alley-oops.
• Shane Battier: Not a star player, but Shane’s stellar defense has made him a mainstay in Houston.
• Eddie Griffin: R.I.P.
• DeSagana Diop: Servicable big man coming off the bench for the Nets, stellar endorser.
• Rodney White: Rodney is currently playing (wait for it…wait for it…) in Puerto Rico for the Arecibo Captains.
• Joe Johnson: The two-time All-Star has become one of the better scorers in the league and arguably the second best scorer from this draft. The name of the one scorer from the draft better than him seems to escape me at the moment…
• Kedrick Brown: He’s put up decent numbers this season, (15.2 PPG, 5.8 RPG) in the D-League.
• Vladimir Radmanovic: Good player, great snowboarder, awesome dunker.
• Richard Jefferson: He averaged over 22 points per game this season, which is nice, but he still has a ways to go if he wants to catch up to his Arizona alums.
• Troy Murphy: Troy has two great passions in life: basketball and spray tanning. He could probably use some work in each area.
• Steven Hunter: People accuse Gilbert Arenas of being a ballhog. Steven Hunter had zero (0) assists this season. Granted, he only played 120 minutes and he plays as a center, but that’s still pretty bad. In his career, Hunter has 79 assists. In only 13 games this season, Gilbert had 66.
• Kirk Haston: Kirk very well may have sold Gilbert one of his houses. No really, he’s in real estate now.
• Michael Bradley: According to this report from EuroBasket, he got released from CB Granada last month.
• Jason Collins: He laughs at the 4th pick from this draft.
• Zach Randolph: He won the Most Improved Player award back in 2004 and he had solid numbers while in Portland. Then Isiah Thomas traded for him.
• Brendan Haywood: After some up and down years, Brendan finally leveled out his play this year, arguably becoming the 2nd best center in the East.
• Joseph Forte: You can catch him in Italy.
• Jeryl Sasser: The SMU grad led Al Arabi to the Kuwait League Championship this season.
• Brandon Anderson: Brandon went out with a bang(!) averaging 2.7 points per game in his finaly season back in ‘03-’04.
• Raul Lopez: That Jazz decided to take this point guard instead of that combo guard from Arizona. Clearly Raul’s 2 year stay where he averaged just over six points per game validated their decision.
• Gerald Wallace: Makes his living as knee breaker.
• Samuel Dalembert: Sam has become one of the better shotblockers in the league today, averaging over 2 per game. That’s about it.
• Jamaal Tinsley: The Grizzlies decided to take this point guard instead of that combo guard from Arizona. Clearly Jamaal’s career averages of 10 points and 7 assists per game validated their decision.
• Tony Parker: Parker has been one of the key cogs in the Spurs last 3 championships, but he’s still less popular than his wife.
• Trenton Hassell: The defensive specialist is currently making his money with the Nets. That gives them 3 picks from this draft, along with Jefferson and Diop.
• Gilbert Arenas: Undersized combo guards? Those guys never get shoe deals, video game covers, or All-Star votes.

Strengths: In a word: special. Bayless combines incredible speed, quickness and athleticism with a high level of intelligence and composure … Winners mentality … He really excels on the offensive end of the floor with his scoring ability … Has an extra gear blowing by defenders with ease, and needs just an inch of daylight to get his jumpshot off … Excellent body strength for his age … He understands how to create shots for himself and has incredible leaping ability … Very strong offensively, great form on his shot … Plays with a high level of intensity … Good defender, team player. Has leadership ability …

Weaknesses: Must become better at running the PG position … More of a scoring point, but his PG abilities are improving … Can be prone to trying to do too much, must be more patient and composed … Still hasn’t sustained himself as an elite level player for an extended period of time.

Now for comparison, here’s Gilbert’s profile from back in ‘01:

Strengths: A clutch player with great athleticism and quickness….. Has a great three point stroke and creates well off the dribble…… Very crafty getting his shots off…. Leads by example. Very good competitor.

Weaknesses: At 6-3 doesn’t have ideal height… Height hurts him especially defensively where opposing guards can post up and pass/shoot over him.

If that wasn’t enough, here’s a statistical breakdown of their respective freshman seasons:

All Jerryd needs now is a little bit more quirkiness and he should be set.

Q: Do you think the Wizards would be interested in a sign-and-trade of Gilbert Arenas for Josh Howard?

Aaron in Wisconsin

Sefko: Are you the only Mavericks fan north of the Red River? Certainly you are the only one in Packerville.

But that’s OK, because you asked a terrific question.

The Wizards, like most of the league, can use another swingman. The question is whether they feel they could lose Arenas for nothing if they don’t make a move. And any team interested has to be absolutely positive Arenas is going to be physically fit next season.

Due diligence, they call it. But this sort of deal actually makes some sense. Arenas is damaged goods right now, though clearly a better player than Howard if the playing field is level.

Howard, also, is on the low end of his market value right now. Saying you are a pot-smoker and having a late-night party for yourself during the playoffs can have an impact on your trade value.

For those reasons, it’s not a bad piece of speculation, though it would require extra pieces by the Wizards — probably a bad, long-term contract — included.

Now, I doubt this would happen for a few reasons, first among them being that the Mavericks would have to move Arenas to shooting guard unless they could find a way to trade Jason Kidd somewhere else.  Then you have to consider that the deal would have to be part of a sign-and-trade deal, which would make it even harder for Dallas to match Arenas’ contract.

The trade is probably more speculating for the sake of speculation than anything else, but you can bet it won’t be the last the trade idea that gets bounced out there.

We’re on the same page, then. Because we want to sign Antawn. We want to sign Gilbert, I kind of liked it. He’s supportive of his teammate. And he enjoys playing with Antawn. And that’s been our plan all along. I’m glad to see everyone in the organization is on the same page.

Our intent all along has been to have both of those players back and to keep our core together. And at the appropriate time, we’ll sit down with both of those parties and see what we can work out. We’re going to be fair with our players. These players have done a lot for our franchise and we hope to have them here for a very long time.

From everything that’s been said so far from all the parties, it looks like Gilbert is going to be staying in Washington, but there’s still another month and a half before free agency opens on July 1st. We’ll see what happens.

Here’s the quote that everyone is going to be talking about from Gilbert’s latest blog:

The future is the future. I want to be back in Washington, but weird things happen in free agency. If Antawn is not back, then there’s no point in me coming back because he’s part of my success, too. When you’re doing pick and roll with a player like him, they can’t double you, they can’t trap you because you have a pick and pop guy who can shoot the three at your four position. My success is because of him too. If he doesn’t come back, I’m not coming back.

I know everybody is focusing on whether I’m coming back, but I’m focusing on what he’s doing. If he doesn’t come back, then I’m not coming back.

This shouldn’t really come as a shock to anyone, considering that he already said he’d take a pay cut to keep Antawn.  Not to mention this quote from his blog back in December:

So I had this interview with John Mitchell. I’m sure his original story wasn’t going to go that way. Knowing John, I know his original story started off, “Is that the last time we’ll see Gilbert Arenas on the basketball court – the 30 and 11 — as a Wizard?” (Just in case I don’t come back this year.) I know that’s what his angle was.

But I’ve been saying for the longest, I want my jersey retired here, but if something happens this summer where we somehow rebuild because we lose players …

We lost Etan due to his heart right now … We don’t know if he’s going to come back. Antawn’s a free agent … We don’t know if he’s going to come back. Right there, that’s two key pieces to your success. You lose both of those players and you don’t bring anybody else in on that level or better than them, and we have a problem.

It should be interesting to see what happens here, because while Antawn has publically stated that he’d like to stay in Washington, another contender could throw him a deal that would sweep him off of his feet.  As for the rest of his blog, he starts off by putting an end to the rumors that this was his last blog…kind of:

I know the rumor is that this is my last blog.

I can say …

No. It isn’t.

I’ll give you all a hesitant no, this is not my last blog.

Make of that what you will.  He then goes on to talk about the playoff series versus Cleveland and the disappointment in not being able to help as much as he wanted:

I’m very disappointed that I wasn’t healthy enough to help them through the First Round. It was a very disappointing year for me personally, but as far as team success, they should walk around with their heads held high. When I got hurt, the critics said they weren’t going to be able to make the playoffs and I think they proved everybody wrong.

I know they’re disappointed at losing in the First Round to Cleveland, but they had a great player over there in LeBron, and they did a great job.

He also had some good words for the Wizards’ organization for this year’s playoffs:

Luke Walton paged me after Game 6 and said, “Why don’t you take off that Easter outfit.” I didn’t have white! So I had to wear some clothes that I usually wear on my Miami trips. The only thing I had that was close to white was beige. So I got clowned for wearing it, and I got fined $10,000 for it because I didn’t have a jacket on. But that’s OK. I had to go with the theme. I liked what the city did with the White Out. This by far was the best playoff performance that the organization has put together out of all the years that I’ve been here.

Next, Gilbert talked about the significance of the tattoo on his knee:

Originally I had one tattoo on my knee. When I was getting ready to make my comeback, I put one cross on my knee cap. I was like, “God is going to be with me for this journey.” So, then I remembered, when Jesus sacrificed himself he was with two thieves on either side of him on the cross. So then I had to get three crosses to represent Jesus and the two thieves and sacrifice, because I was going to sacrifice my knee for the team. Since it was going to be a sacrifice, I figured, let me just double up on the crosses. So I had the one original, plus the two sets of three, so that gives me lucky number seven. And I know there’s something symbolic with seven. So I get blessed on the knee cap with one cross, get blessed on the left side with three crosses and I get blessed on the right side with three more crosses … If that makes any sense.

Um, yeah.  I think.

Once Gilbert finished that explanation, he went on to talk about his plans form the summer and getting back to 100%:

I just have to monitor my body now. Last summer I took it seriously, but I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. I worried more about my skill ability than really working on my leg as a whole. This summer I’m focusing my No. 1 priority on my knee and getting it back to 100 percent. Day in and day out, I’m going to strengthen up my knee.

Right now my pool is being built. They said it was going to be done May 2. Today is May 7, and it’s drier than a desert out there.

I just got to concentrate on this knee. For Washington, or whatever city I go to, I don’t want to come in being a half a player. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get this knee right so I can be the full force I was last year.

After giving some thoughts on the Conference semi-finals, Gilbert goes on to talk about Grand Theft Auto:

I was just playing Grand Theft Auto before I started this blog. I love it. I can say this with full confidence: I was one of the original, original players that played GTA. I was in high school and I had this Asian friend who used to burn games from China. He put a chip in my Playstation 1 so I could play burned games and that was one of the games that I had.

The best part about that game which I wished they would do again, and they have it done it since, was in that game you could upload your own music CD in there so that whenever you jumped into a car it would play your music. I guess it automatically loaded to GTA or something. So I used to always put in Snoop, so whenever I was causing destruction in the car, I was listening to Snoop.

You aren’t a real Grand Theft Auto player if you don’t know about that one. I thought they were going to do that again on the new one, but they didn’t. I like how you can play with your friends and do missions and stuff though.

Finally, Gilbert shows some love for his dad:

My dad is getting oldddddd! I don’t know if I’m the only person to look at his parents and just think, “Man, you’re getting old!” He came for the playoffs and he has the gray and black mustache, and a little hint of a beard, you know he cut it but you can still see gray coming out of his face. He had the little afro that wasn’t combed. He had the same old leather hat on and it was hot out, and I’ve told him about wearing a leather hat when it’s hot before.

I looked at him like, “Mannn, you’re getting old!”

That’s all I could say. I didn’t have nothing else to say to him. I was like, “Man, you’re letting yourself go. You look like Jordan on the cover of ESPN the Magazine.”

Well, maybe not love, but you get the idea.

It’s pretty deep stuff that I can’t really get into because I’ve got to run in a few, but as always it’s worth the read.

Well, it looks like Gilbert doesn’t see it that way. According to Mike Jones, Gilbert is still intent on opting out of his current contract for a deal that “could exceed $100 million” (Mike’s words, not Gilbert’s or mine) this summer.

I can see where a lot of people would think this is a bad idea since a year of health would significantly increase his chance of getting a big contract. On the other hand, if he stayed in his current contract and got injured again, he could stand to lose a whole lot more than he has at this point.

Wizards GM Ernie Grunfeld is going to have a end-of-season press conference tomorrow, so expect a lot of questions on his plans with Gilbert tomorrow. We’ll keep you up to date with what he says.

Here’s my favorite dialouge from the piece:

On whether he enjoyed watching DeShawn unleash his personality: “Yes. Especially for somebody, we’ve been knowing each other since we were in high school, to finally get the identity where people know him as his own self. That’s what I told him when he first started doing this [Can’t feel my face hand wave], and then his agent told him ‘Don’t do that, that’s a gang sign.’ I’m like, ‘five fingers across the face? What the hell kind of gang sign is that?’ And I was like, ‘You’ve found something that people are actually taken [with], you’ve got fans doing this, you’ve got little kids. Antawn’s daughter used to do it. She used to come, ‘daddy look.’ [Waving hand.] So I was like, that’s your snitch now, you’ve got to do it.”

Snitch? “Stitch.”

Niche? “Stick.”

Schtick? “Yeah.”

As you can tell, Gilbert has a lot of snitches in his personality.