Aikmans Killer No.56
January-28th-2005, 04:14 PM
5. The Wiz were irrelevant, everybody knew that. It's not so much that we damned them, it's more like we didn't even think of them. We took a look, saw that they'd brought together three 2002 Golden State Warrior teammates, made a little mental note about the logical parallel between this move and the one that brought Gary Cherone, former lead singer of Extreme, in as lead singer for Van Halen, and then promptly forgot about them.
That was a mistake.
The pieces of the puzzle were there: Antawn Jamison, one of those freaky, wrong-body, right-moves scorers doing what he's been doing for six years; Larry Hughes looking to build on a bust-out season; Gilbert Arenas in his second year with the team, with a head coach (Eddie Jordan) working a system (Princeton); and the infusion of lunchpail vets (Anthony Peeler, Michael Ruffin, and Samaki Walker) who would set a tone, bring some professionalism, in practice and during games. We knew the East was ripe. We knew some team would rise up. We might have figured on the Wizards ... if we'd thought about them at all.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=neel/050128
That was a mistake.
The pieces of the puzzle were there: Antawn Jamison, one of those freaky, wrong-body, right-moves scorers doing what he's been doing for six years; Larry Hughes looking to build on a bust-out season; Gilbert Arenas in his second year with the team, with a head coach (Eddie Jordan) working a system (Princeton); and the infusion of lunchpail vets (Anthony Peeler, Michael Ruffin, and Samaki Walker) who would set a tone, bring some professionalism, in practice and during games. We knew the East was ripe. We knew some team would rise up. We might have figured on the Wizards ... if we'd thought about them at all.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=neel/050128