The Nuggets sent Nene to Washington for JaVale McGee, among other pieces. (Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)

What a bold move from the Denver Nuggets: One of the great NBA stories of the last calendar year, a team that thrived without Carmelo Anthony, has traded its centerpiece player to the Washington Wizards in a three-team deal that netted them an expiring contract and the league’s most enigmatic young center in JaVale McGee. The Wizards will now take on the remaining four-plus seasons of the $65 million deal Nene signed with Denver just a few short months ago, and in order to make the salary cap math work, the Wizards sent Nick Young to the Clippers.

Let’s start in Los Angeles, because our stay will be brief: This is a very nice move for the Clippers. They get a true 6-foot-6 shooting guard who has often swung to small forward in smaller Washington lineups. Young is a catch-and-shoot gunner with shot-selection issues, but he’s also on a cheap expiring deal and thus presents little risk for the Clippers.

The Clippers have gone just 9-10 since Chauncey Billups suffered a season-ending Achilles tear, and they are so thin on the wing that they acquired Bobby Simmons, who was out of the NBA, and immediately inserted him into their rotation. Caron Butler had no other backup, and teams were attacking Mo Williams in the post when the Clippers played Williams alongside Chris Paul. Young is bigger than Randy Foye, the Clips other alternative at shooting guard, and he’s a better shooter than Foye from two-point and three-point range. The Wizards need shooting, because none of their front-court players can shoot from the perimeter; add one so-so shooting guard, and the spacing gets tight.

FULL LIST OF DEADLINE DEALS

Young isn’t perfect, but he’ll get the ball only when Paul chooses to give it to him, and he’s not as bad a defender as his shoot-first, shoot-always reputation suggests. The move provides important depth for the Clippers at virtually no cost. The Clippers sent Brian Cook to the Wizards and used a trade exception acquired in the original Chris Paul deal to fit Young’s salary. Read More…

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. Read More…

The Wizards parted ways with Flip Saunders after a 2-15 start. (Chris Szagola/Cal Sport Media)

• Flip Saunders, hired in 2009 to coach a veteran team on the (alleged) cusp of something, has been fired after a disastrous start in Washington. Sean Fagan, writing at Bullets Forever, on the links between the dismissals of Eddie Jordan (in 2008) and Saunders:

However, one salient point gets lost amidst all the chatter: neither coach was ever given the tools to succeed at his profession. Despite all the criticism that Jordan received for not playing his youngsters, he ran a complicated system that necessitated the drafting of players with high basketball IQ who could come in and contribute immediately. Instead, Jordan was supplied with a series of long shot projects and low-IQ players who needed excessive amounts of development on what was at the time a veteran team. How Jordan was supposed to develop Andray Blatche and Nick Young while also keeping the team competitive within his system of play would eventually (along with the injury to Gilbert Arenas) prove his undoing. Bones were thrown to Jordan by supplying him with Antonio Daniels and Darius Songalia, but neither an impact player nor a draftee with a high-IQ pedigree was ever supplied. Instead, “we got buckets, son.”

Ownership has changed, but this same lesson has borne out with Saunders.

• The final lasting image of Saunders in Washington, found in the video clip at the bottom of this post, is fitting: Saunders, bashing his clipboard on the ground after Brandon Bass outworked Andray Blatche for a rebound.

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JaVale McGee did something silly on Monday when he tossed an off-the-glass alley-oop to himself on an uncontested fast break during the Washington’s’ loss to the Rockets. Wizards coach Flip Saunders called the play “unacceptable,” accused McGee of chasing a highlight in a classic style-over-substance move and limited McGee’s playing time the rest of the game.

McGee didn’t really understand why the whole thing was such a big deal, according to this post from SB Nation’s Mike Prada, who was at the game:

“Apparently, if you get a fast break and you throw it off the backboard in the third quarter and you’re 1-11, you’re not supposed to do stuff like that,” McGee said, seemingly sarcastically. “I felt like I was trying to get the team hyped and trying to make a good play, so I felt like we did that, and we went on a run from there.”

McGee has a point, according to Prada and his SB Nation colleague Andrew Sharp, both sharp (sorry) NBA observers. McGee’s showboating works as a convenient shorthand symbol for everything wrong with the Wizards, even if it has nothing to do with what is wrong with the Wizards. You can draw a line between McGee’s dunk and his occasional botched rotations, shot block-chasing and epically ill-advised goal-tends, but the line is not as clear as the screamers would have you believe. You can draw another line from McGee’s theatrics to Andray Blatche’s shoot-first, shoot-second, shoot-third mentality,  Blatche’s lazy defense, Jordan Crawford’s egregiously bad shot selection and Nick Young’s love for the long two-point jumper. But you’d be stretching things at least a bit. Read More…

Carl Landry has filled in nicely for the injured David West as the Hornets battle Memphis for the seventh seed. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

The long slog of the regular season gets extra sloggy this week, as more playoff races get decided and teams expand rotations. For some fans, this is a week to ignore, but that’s not an option here. And good news: There are still a few things to watch, and some of them are even important! Here’s what I’ll have my eye on as we approach what should be a dynamite postseason:

• Memphis vs New Orleans for the No. 7 seed

The Hornets have had a blip of top-notch offensive play in the last week, with Carl Landry ably filling in for David West, but the bigger picture suggests that drawing the Hornets instead of the Grizzlies will be a boon for the Lakers or Spurs. The Hornets have muddled along at .500 since their 11-1 start, while the Grizzlies have gone 30-14 since a 14-19 start and look to be, at worst, an exhausting first-round out.

The Spurs especially are likely hoping Memphis vaults past the Hornets and into the seventh spot. The Lakers, with all their size, are perhaps the only team equipped to thwart the Marc Gasol/Zach Randolph combination. The Spurs don’t have that kind of size, and they have struggled with Memphis in splitting four games this season. San Antonio would still have an edge, especially since its whip-smart, fast-moving offense has the potential to serve up the perfect punishment for the Grizzlies’ tendency to overplay passing lanes and gamble for steals. But still: Any rational team would prefer the Hornets to the Grizzlies today.

Memphis and New Orleans are tied at 44-33, and both have pretty favorable schedules the rest of the way. Memphis has more cupcakes — three games combined against the Clippers and Kings, both of whom have been feisty of late — but the Hornets’ late-season schedule has gotten easier now that two opponents (Phoenix and Utah) are finished and a third (Dallas) will almost certainly rest its core guys in the finale.

This all makes the Memphis-New Orleans head-to-head game on Sunday a must-watch. If New Orleans wins, it’ll pick up a game on the Grizzlies and clinch the tiebreaker by virtue of what would be a 3-1 head-to-head edge. If Memphis wins, the Grizzlies at least give themselves a chance to win the tiebreaker because they’d move to 8-8 against divisional opponents (the next tiebreaker after head-to-head). The Hornets are 8-5 against their mates in the Southwest, and they could fall into a tie with Memphis if they lose their three remaining divisional games — a home game against the Rockets on Wednesday, plus visits to Memphis and Dallas. That scenario is unlikely, but if it happens, the Grizzlies would win the next tiebreaker (record against Western Conference teams).

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• Bill Reiter, FoxSports.com: The exiled [Isiah Thomas] speaks of contemporaries who have not been banished with unusual candor. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson — all of these men remain intricately involved in the league, respectively, as owner, general manager, color commentator. In Miami, Magic sits next to Pat Riley at games in full view. Isiah, when he goes, does so in the anonymity of a luxury box. Unseen. So, when asked about his place compared to such men, this is the response:  “I have no problem saying this at all,” he says. “They’re all 6-(feet)-9 and Jordan was 6-6 and a half. If they were all 6-1, it wouldn’t even be a question. They wouldn’t even f—ing rate. If they were all my size, s—, they wouldn’t even be talked about. I beat the s— out of them when they were that big. If we were all the same size, f—.” He stops to laugh good-naturedly. “Make them 6-1 and let’s go on the court.” Pride, hope, anger, frustration, self-belief and self-doubt, a flurry of facts and an ability to see things a certain way — all of these things mark a life in limbo.

• Michael Lee, Washington Post: In many ways, John Wall really had no choice. In this league, reputations are formed quickly, and once they are established, they stick. So when Miami Heat center Zydrunas Ilgauskas was casually peppering Wall’s face with errant elbows, he responded the only way he knew how — by defending himself. He initially tried to show some restraint. Wall said he was shaken by the first elbow, which hit him square in the face, but he responded by going harder after the ball. But when Ilgauskas swung his arm around to hit him again with the left, he snapped. Wall wasn’t merely trying to protect his face, but also his reputation — since he doesn’t want to be seen as someone who will back down. “Second one, I got hit and I reacted,” Wall said. Wall threw a punch at Ilgauskas’s midsection, which led to an automatic ejection, and now the Wizards will have to wait and see if their best player will be available for the next game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. A suspension is likely, considering present within the NBA league office, but as he got ready to leave the locker room after the Wizards’ 123-107 loss to the Heat, Wall tried to not to ponder his future. “I can’t worry that about that right now, just try to keep practicing and try to get ready for the next game and see what decision the league makes,” said Wall, who had two points and five assists before getting tossed with 8 minutes, 46 seconds left in the second quarter. “I’m disappointed with how I reacted to it. I let my teammates. I let my organization down.”

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I’ve poked my share of fun at Wizards center JaVale McGee this season, for his desperate (but team-approved) pursuit of a triple-double; his ridiculous hot-dogging during one blowout loss; and his tendency to commit crazy goal-tending violations.

But credit the man: This is the block of the year:

And here’s a re-mix of the play from Tuesday’s game in Portland, with a close-up of the stunned looked on Wesley Matthews’ face as he processes what has just happened to him. As Jared Wade pointed out on Twitter, McGee’s block/catch looks a lot like something LaPhonso Ellis — an old Point Forward favorite — pulled before knee problems derailed his career. Maybe getting so many kudos for this stuff will remind McGee — a guy with enormous potential — that blocking shots to his teammates is usually better than blocking them 10 rows into the crowd.

• Mark Medina, Los Angeles Times: If there was any such exercise that’s the equivalent of throwing red meat to the masses to devour, this would be the perfect item. Sure, there are plenty of Laker stories that cause division and uprising. There’s an Andrew Bynum injury, questioning of Kobe Bryant’s shot selection, debating the Lakers’ all-time greatest players, Luke Walton’s contract and any praise for the Boston Celtics or Miami Heat. But this one surpasses them all — questioning the Lakers’ fanhood. The latest issue of GQ Magazine ranks the top 15 worst sports fans in the country and to no one’s surprise, Lakers fans are on that list. … “I think they’re accustomed to success,” [Phil] Jackson said in amusement about the rankings. “That’s kind of a natural reaction when you have a lot of success. People enjoy the show rather than feeling they have to encourage the team in an element of fanatacism.” But by no means are Lakers fans simply star-gazers [OK, GQ put it a little less delicately]. That’s all part of the show of course. There’s no atmosphere that can duplicate Laker games, where you’ll see Jeanie Buss allowing Justin Bieber to wear Jackson’s championship ring, Ron Artest chatting up Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg courtside about a possible collaboration and Dustin Hoffman appearing in every Kiss Cam segment. But to pin Laker fans as mindless celebrity-crazed socialites is simply wrong on every level.

• Matt Steinmetz, CSNBayArea.com: When Warriors owner Joe Lacob says publicly at the end of the season he’s not bringing back Keith Smart as coach — which seems very much a foregone conclusion at this point — he’ll certainly have some reasons. Right at the top of the list will be Smart’s relationship with second-year point guard Stephen Curry. There is no feud, no profanity-laced shouting matches or even any dislike, really. There’s not even really a “problem.” But something’s amiss between the two. If you’ve been watching the Warriors all season long you’ve seen it. To say Smart has had Curry on a shorter leash than Don Nelson did a year ago would be an understatement. You’d have to be watching a different game to not notice all those times Smart showed his frustration after a Curry mistake or misplay, which was typically followed with Acie Law at the scorer’s table.

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Among the Wizards' new fan traditions: Holding up "A" signs for every John Wall assist. (Ned Dishman/NBAE via Getty Images)

I was surprised when a string of folks on Twitter joked Monday night that Wizards fans, standing until their team scored a bucket, might be standing for quite a while, as the Thunder built an 8-0 lead over the first few minutes of the game in Washington. I had not known that the Wizards have one of those “stand till we score” traditions, a college thing that has caught on mostly in Oklahoma City and New Orleans in the NBA.

It turns out the Wizards don’t really have that tradition. The team is trying to create it as part of an overhaul of the in-game experience for fans — and a larger image makeover that (as Henry Abbott pointed out today) also may involve redesigning the Wizards logo. 

The man behind a lot of this is Greg Bibb, the Executive Vice President of Business Operations for the Wizards and the WNBA’s Mystics. Bibb took his position with the Wizards when Ted Leonsis assumed control of the team from the Pollin family, and he set about immediately to change the way fans experienced a Wizards game, Bibb said. The standing tradition, new this season, is part of that mission. “It’s part of a larger theme of trying to create an environment where, win or lose, fans leave the venue saying, ‘That was time and money well spent,’” Bibb said. “When fans are engaged and interactive, they are much more likely to say, ‘Yes, that was time and money well spent.’”

Also Bibb’s idea for this season: Having someone in the crowd hang a huge “A” along one of the Verizon Center’s facades for every John Wall assist – similar to the “Ks” fans hang in baseball stadiums for a strikeout. In Washington, though, the guy hanging the letters is a part-time employee paid to do so, and not a fan. The “stand till we score” thing isn’t exactly organic, either, Bibb says. The public address announcer and an in-arena DJ, Big Tigger, exhort fans to stand during that downtime between the starting lineup introductions and the opening tip — and there is an accompanying message on the big scoreboard above the floor, according to Bibb and some Wiz fans I spoke with. 

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The Point Forward is a bit of a stat-padding watchdog, I realize. This season alone, I’ve taken issue with Rajon Rondo’s blatant pursuit of assists at the expense of easy shots; examined the legitimacy of Dwyane Wade’s (totally legit) monster rebound game; and examined who does and should get credit for steals.

The latest instance worth examining comes from the Wizards, a hopeless team that went out of its way to get JaVale McGee a rare points/rebounds/blocks triple-double late in a hopeless game Tuesday night in Chicago.

McGee could have ended the suspense at the 3:43 mark of the fourth quarter, when he dunked and drew a foul to give himself nine total points. But McGee is a career 63 percent free-throw shooter, and this is the Wizards, so McGee of course missed the free throw, leaving himself a point short of the triple-double.

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