Arenas injury spells d-o-o-m for Wizards' playoff hopes

The Eastern Conference's "other big 3" will be down to a mere 2 for quite some time. News came yesterday that Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas will be out of commission for 3 months, leaving Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison to carry the Wiz in the nation's capital. Arenas suffered torn cartiledge in his knee (ouch!), which he admitted on his NBA.com blog could be a result of pushing himself a little too hard coming back from last year's somewhat unrelated knee injury. According to Arenas, he didn't give himself enough time to let his muscles heal and put too much pressure on the knee over the summer.

"I’m going to stay positive this time, because feeling sorry for myself didn’t work last time. It just kind of hurt that everything I did this summer really meant nothing, to the point where I’m rehabbing again...Running bleachers, riding bikes and doing all that stuff was just a little too much," wrote Arenas on his blog.

While Agent Zero sits out until February, the Washington Wizards so far have been doing a pretty decent job keeping the ship going in the right direction. After a rather worrisome 0-5 start to the season, Washington has won 6 games in a row and word around town is that Arena's injury, while tough, probably won't be enough to derail the team's playoff hopes. But, while Butler and Jamison are plenty talented, and Brendan Haywood, Darius Songaila and Antonio Daniels have stepped up this season, we're not so sure the Wiz can keep rolling along for long without o'l Gil.

First, their 6-game winning streak is a bit of an abberation. During that streak the Wizards have beaten Atlanta, Indiana, Minnesota, Portland, Philadelphia and Charlotte. Of all those teams, perhaps only the Charlotte Bobcats have a legitimate shot at the playoffs -- and their's a tricky shot to say the least. On paper it looks like the Wiz have picked up the defensive intensity and are staying on track offensively without Gilbert, but in reality the numbers are seriously skewed as a result of poor competition. Combined those squads have a horrendous 23-42 record. The Wizard's 0-5 start, which included losses to teams like Boston, Orlando, New Jersey and Denver, is probably closer to their actual status in the East. And, they are yet to play other Eastern powerhouses like Detroit, Toronto and Cleveland.

The loss of Etan Thomas to injury before the start of the season hurt significantly, as Washington lost a force on the offensive glass and a big body underneath from a front-line that is paper-thin to begin with. Now, the loss of Arenas could put them in a large enough hole in the standings, where a climb back to playoff contention may be too difficult to accomplish. In a perfect world, Arenas would be back before the All-Star game, which would in theory give the Wizards enough remaining games, if they play near-perfect ball, to get back in the mix. But in reality, that seems unlikely. The magic 8-ball says that the prognosis for a playoff run this season is "very doubtful".

The bottom line to all of this of course -- if the Wiz do miss the playoffs -- is that Eddie Jordan's coaching tenure in Washington could be in serious jeopardy. Sure, GM Ernie Grunfeld and Jordan have brought the Wizards franchise, which had been less than mediocre for decades, back to playoff prominence. But, for the last three seasons the team has been been treading water a little bit. It's not just about making the playoffs anymore for this franchise. They need to take the next step, before it's too late. Given that they now possess one of the most explosive scorers in the game in "hibachi", it's high time the Wiz stepped up into the upper echelon, with neighbors like the Celtics, Cavaliers and Pistons.

The top 10 underpaid NBA studs

Operating under the current collective bargaining agreement it almost seems like a fairy tale now, but once upon a time player salaries in the NBA became dangerously fragmented, driving a widening gap between the leagues’ have’s and the have not’s. Not too long ago, if you remember, star players like Shaquille O’Neal and Kevin Garnett were racking up 5 or 6 year deals with salaries totaling well north of $100 million dollars, while the prosperity gap between a handful of All-Stars and the rest of the NBA’s players was expanding at an alarming rate.

Of course, as history tells us, recognizing that his league’s financials were completely out of whack, David Stern, the forward-thinking uber-commish that he is, in collusion with the league’s owners terminated the ill-fated 1995 collective bargaining agreement and locked out the league and its players in 1998 for a record seven months, or 191 days. The shortened season and a whopping $400 million lost in player salaries as a result of the lockout caused the NBA Players’ Association and its members to blink. The result was a brand new seven-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that led to a hard limit on maximum salaries, an extended rookie wage scale, a reduction in year-over-year percentage salary increase in a multi-year contract, the implementation of the mid-level salary exemption and later the institution of a luxury tax. The net result, as Stern and the NBA owners had anticipated, has been the gradual elimination of outrageously high star salaries and a more redistributed pay scale creating a more balanced salary structure.

The history lesson is to set up the point that the new CBA has done what countless accountants couldn’t get the NBA’s owners to do, which is set up a tiered performance and tenure-based pay scale. Since star players won’t hog payrolls under the current CBA, most owners are no longer overpaying relatively marginal players like Juwan Howard, for example. Given the relative fiscal frugality in today’s NBA it’s no surprise that there are a growing number of top-talent bargains to be found on NBA rosters.

We had a change to look at the overpaid duds in a recent post, but how about the top 10 underpaid studs?

10. Ron Artest: Sure he’s crazier than Britney Spears, but it’s tough to argue against the 18.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.1 steals that Artest put up last year. At least the Maloofs don’t have to dig too deep into their casino profits to pay for Artest’s economical $7,800,000 for the coming season – after which swingin’ Ronnie Artest can opt out of his deal and seek equitable compensation.

9. Bruce Bowen: Hate him, or despise him, you have to admit that Bowen is a critical part of the Spurs championship team. Without Bowen around to at least bother players like Kobe and T-Mac, the Spurs defense doesn’t look as solid. So, to retain Bowen at the $4,125,000 that the team will pay him for the 2007/2008 season is a pretty sweet deal for San Antonio – and, we’re sure they’re ecstatic about the 3 additional seasons left on Bowen’s contract at around that thrifty price.

8. TayShaun Prince: Anytime you can get All-Star caliber player at a yearly salary of around $8 million, you’ve done your job as a GM. In the immortal words of rapper Big Daddy Kane, Pistons’ GM Joe Dumars sure does “get the job done.” Dumars will be paying All-Star Prince $8,675,620 next year with 3 additional seasons remaining on his contract at around that same price.

7. David West: This Hornet is only 27 years old, going into the prime of his career, and is coming off a season where he averaged 18.3 points and 8.1 rebounds per game. So, any idiot can see that his value should only go up over the next few seasons, right? Funny thing is that his salary is going to do the opposite. West will make $10,650,000 this coming season, but over the subsequent 4 seasons his salary will actually decrease, ending up at a relatively low $7,525,000 in the final season. It’s called a front-loaded contract boys and girls, and the Hornets were pretty smart to sign West to one wouldn’t you say?

6. Gilbert Arenas: “Agent 0” won’t be a bargain for long, because as soon as he opts out of his contract following this season his salary should balloon to the $18 - $20 million range. In the meantime, the world’s most famous Halo 3 player will lace it up for a bargain price of $11,946,667. We thought we’d get Arenas on our list now, before his pending jackpot contract takes him out of the realm of the underpaid.

5. Caron Butler: Once again an All-Star who doesn’t quite make All-Star dough – a perfect fit for our underpaid list. Butler, who was first traded for Shaquille O’Neal and then traded for Kwame Brown (try to make sense of that logic), deserves more than the $8,218,990 he will make next season. To top it off, Butler has 3 years left beyond next year, so, given his stellar game on both ends of the floor, he should remain a staple on the underpaid list for quite some time.

4. Emanuel Ginobili: It probably says something about San Antonio management that there are two Spurs on our underpaid list. Ginobili is a special player, and on a Spurs team that’s generally devoid of emotion he brings that much needed passion, hustle and fire. So to get Ginobili’s services for a paltry $9,075,000 for the upcoming season with 2 additional years left on his deal shows solid negotiating on San Antonio’s part.

3. Gerald Wallace: Last season, Wallace averaged 18.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2 steals, while shooting a scorching 50 percent from the floor. This preseason, he has been even hotter, averaging 21.7 points per game, despite the addition of high-scorer Jason Richardson to the Bobcats roster. And to top it all off, Wallace is only 25 years old and going into his prime. Let’s just say that Bobcats part owner Michael Jordan is exorcising the demons of picking Kwame Brown with the first pick, by getting a bargain basement deal of $7,500,000 for Wallace’s services.

2. David Lee: Lee averaged a double-double 10.7 points and 10.4 rebounds last year, and he’s set to make only $990,600 this coming season? Are you kidding us? That has to be, by far, the lowest dollars per rebound total in the NBA. The Knicks have a team option on Lee’s contract for the 2008/2009 and a qualifying offer for the 2009/2010 season, so he could be on underpaid lists for some time. Given all of the other bloated contracts on the roster, good karma has to find the Knicks at some point right?

1. Steve Nash: He is 33 years old, listed at 6’3” (probably closer to 6’1”) and a scant 195 pounds, and looks more like a surfer than a NBA player. Despite all that he’s a two-time NBA MVP and one of the top 5 players in the game. But, unfortunately for Nash, and fortunately for Suns ownership, the crazy Canadian makes nowhere near top-5 player money. In fact, despite his accomplishments, Nash will take home a relatively pedestrian $11,375,000 in salary for the upcoming season, with 2 additional seasons left on his svelte contract.

Gilbert Arenas caught cheating

Gilbert Arenas PwOns at Teh Halo 3! Or, at least that’s what he’d like the Xbox Live community to believe. Apparently, Agent Zero has been setting up fake online games of Halo 3 to boost his game stats and Xbox Live game rankings. But, of course the gaming community wasn’t having that, as some gamers on Halo 3 developer Bungie’s online forums pulled out their pocket protractor and ruler to triangulate the deviousness of Arena’s cheating ways. Word spread like wildfire, as it’s prone to do on the Internets, prompting Washington Post sports blogger Dan Steinberg to pose the question to Gil himself.

Steinberg wrote on his blog:

"Gilbert," I asked, approximately," Are you creating dummy games with two fake friends and using the wins to rack up experience points?"

"Yeah," he said, laughing. "Yeah."

"It's a glitch," he explained. "It's a glitch in the game. I seen some kids that were like 600s, they won 600 Halo games and we only had that game for two weeks. And all the kids go to school. So I'm like, 'What the hell you all doing?' And they said that's what they doing, two-on-two."

If Gilbert Arenas cared as much about winning at basketball as he does about winning in Halo 3, maybe he’d learn to play defense instead of playing video games all day.

Etan Thomas' injury could derail Wizards promising season

It’s not often that a player averaging 6.1 points and 5.8 rebounds in 19.2 minutes per game can have such a huge impact on a team’s fortunes going into a new season, but given the injury to Etan Thomas that just might be the case with the otherwise promising Washington Wizards squad. Thomas, in case you didn’t hear, had open heart surgery today to repair a leak of the Aortic valve. Word out of Wizards camp is that the ailment will cause the big man to miss the upcoming season and may jeopardize his playing career. For a Wizards team coming off a playoff bound season, the loss of Etan Thomas is a major blow, which, unless one of their young players step up, could keep the team from making a repeat trip back to the postseason.

Thomas to the Wizards roster, as it is currently constituted, is as important as Manu Ginobili is to the Spurs or Peja Stojakovic is to the Hornets. Not saying that Thomas’ individual skills approach the level of those two near all-star caliber players, but like Ginobili and Stojakovic, Thomas, with his interior toughness, shot-blocking and hard-nosed offensive rebounding, brings skills to the Wizards team that really no-one else on the roster has shown they can replicate. Incumbent starting center Brendan Haywood is soft and is generally about as motivated as a high-school dropout. Behind him are 6’11”/248 pound Andray Blatche and European import 7’0”/234 pound Oleksiy Pecherov. Both players are perimeter-oriented big men and have little post game to speak of – though Blatche has shown that he can be a decent weak-side shot blocker. And behind them? Possibly, 6’9”/250 pound, 40-year-old Tony Massenberg, who is at Wizards camp and, given Thomas’ injury, is now almost a lock to make the squad. If a 40-year-old journeyman is your best power option up front, as a team, you’ve got some issues.

Wizards GM Ernie Grunfeld and Coach Eddie Jordan have done a pretty solid job over the past few seasons turning around the fortunes of a franchise generally crawling along the bottom of the NBA standings. But while busy collecting trophy pieces like Caron Butler and Gilbert Arenas on the perimeter, they’ve generally been unsuccessful in finding tough big men that can give them a solid presence on the blocks and the boards. Etan was one of those guys, but now he’s gone for the season. The lack of depth behind Haywood will really hurt the Wizards this year, particularly with the massive improvements that some Eastern Conference teams have made this summer.

The Wizards frontcourt depth was already rather thin, but now it’s downright anorexic. Unless they make some roster moves to solve the problem, the occasional scoring outbursts from “Hibachi” won’t be nearly enough to keep the team’s season from heading south in a hurry.

2008: The summer of all-stars

With Kobe Bryant going bi-polar, Tim Donaghy likely going away to jail for a long time and Kevin Garnett going “green”, the summer of 2007 was certainly eventful in the world of the NBA. But, if you thought the happenings of this summer were exciting or newsworthy, you might need to take a seat before reading the names of high-profile NBA players who could potentially become free agents when summer 2008 rolls around. The list reads like a who’s who of NBA all-stars, with Mr. points-per-minute Gilbert Arenas leading the pack.

Granted, some of the players listed below will likely re-sign with their respective teams (see Tim Duncan) and some, like Marion and O’Neal may be traded during the 2007 season, but all of the following players carry the dreaded ETO moniker next to their names. ETO, or early termination option, allows a player to opt out of the remaining years of his contract, meaning if they so chose each of these stars could become unrestricted free agents during the summer of 2008.

Point Guards: Allen Iverson, Baron Davis, Stephon Marbury, Gilbert Arenas
Shooting Guards: Corey Maggette
Small Forwards: Ron Artest, Antawn Jamison
Power Forwards: Elton Brand, Shawn Marion, Tim Duncan
Centers: Jermaine O’Neal

Other unrestricted free agents next summer include:

Sam Cassell, Kwame Brown, Maurice Evans, Stromile Swift, Jason Williams, Ricky Davis, Juwan Howard, Bruce Bowen

Oh, in case you were wondering, the self-labeled "Black Mamba" can’t opt out of his contract until the end of the 2008-2009 season. So, he’s stuck with the Lakers, whether he likes it or not, for at least 2 more seasons.