JaVale McGee offers up another blooper

I’m beginning to wonder if JaVale McGee is not a normal basketball player, but rather some sort of avant-garde art project unfolding on a national stage. There just aren’t any other plausible explanations for the continuing verbal and physical blooper reel that is McGee’s NBA career to date — a career that has him set up to be a restricted free agent this summer, when as many as half the league’s teams could have the cap room to chase a maximum-salary free agent. McGee, of course, is not a max-level player, but Kwame Brown just got a one-year, $7 million deal, and DeAndre Jordan is earning more than $10 million per year annually on his new contract.

To review, in rough reverse chronological order:

• McGee angered his coach — but not Nick Young! – in successfully executing an off-the-backboard alley-oop to himself during a close game last month against the Raptors. McGee’s mother, Pamela, a former player and coach, defended McGee two days later in a remarkable interview with the Washington Post. She insisted her son was “not a knucklehead,” called him “special,” and criticized now former Wiz head coach Flip Saunders for failing to play McGee enough, allegedly throwing McGee “under the bus” and not calling enough plays for him.

• He was the first player to exit a key union meeting in October, during the height of the lockout, and when he came out, McGee told reporters some players “were ready to fold.” The reporters were holding various recording devices, which McGee must have seen. He immediately denied via Twitter ever saying the “fold” remark, to which news outlets responded by posting audio of said remarks. Derek Fisher, the union president, dismissed McGee’s remark, famously saying, “The person who spent the least amount of time in the room can’t make that statement.”

• McGee at the end of last season — with Saunders’ clear approval — nearly outdid Andray Blatche in chasing the final points he needed for a triple-double. McGee broke from the Wizards’ offense, shot jumpers and tried to work off-the-dribble from the perimeter. The results were as you’d expect–farcical.

• McGee attempted a foul line dunk during fourth-quarter garbage time of a blowout loss in Sacramento last season. He threw the ball off the backboard.

And then on Monday night, McGee missed a running hook, did not notice his own team recovered the rebound and sprinted back on defense — and right off your television screen.

John Wall’s reaction is priceless.

I’m sorry to pick on McGee, but the material is just too good. McGee is, in some ways, having the best season of his career. He is posting a career-best PER, putting a bit more polish on his (still very raw) post moves and playing a smarter brand of defense than the out-of-position, block-chasing style he has favored before. But the progress has been inconsistent, as you’d expect, and things like this just continue to happen.

What are the Wizards to do with this guy?