The Dog Days Of An Olympic Summer



We are definitely into the dog days of summer. The average high temperature over the past two weeks in the Washington DC area has been 94 degrees. Brutal! And while the temperature and humidity at the end of July and early to mid-August is going up,  NBA action for the serious fan slows down and stays that way for a couple of months. Summer League is done, trades are few and far between and free agency is pretty much over. Most teams at this point have managed to get 12 or 13 players under contract and are willing to wait for guys without teams to take veteran minimum deals or just wait until training camp to fill out the roster. This year, all this likely means Dwight Howard is stuck in Orlando until mid-January at the earliest and we don't have to deal with paying attention to that nonsense for the next few months.

Despite things slowing down, there have been some diversions to keep me focused on the Wizards at least part time. The NBA schedule was released on July 26 so I got to do a little schedule planning for the winter. The Wizards managed to sign A.J. Price, a point guard who spent the last three years playing for the Indiana Pacers and they managed to lose Roger Mason Jr. and James Singleton by just not being willing to pony up the kind of dough it takes to keep those two. Too bad. I think both Roger and James did a great job of bringing veteran leadership and production to the team after the trading deadline last year.

The biggest distraction to cure my lack-of-NBA malaise the last few weeks, though, has been the Olympic Games. And fortunately and unusually, the Wizards actually have some guys playing so I got to at least see some of our players in action. I spent my time rooting for Nenê playing for Brazil, Kevin Seraphin playing for France and of course my home country of Great Britain. No, I was not rooting for the US. I really don't like some of the guys on that team and I resent the fact that that team is basically like the playground bully. Having said that, if there were some Wizards playing for the team, I'd be watching every minute wanting them to win. Hypocritical, I know. Let it go!

In case you have been living in a cave, the Olympics were held in London this year, which is five hours ahead of Washington DC. That means basketball games which start at 9 a.m. in London start at 4 a.m. here so my alarm clock has been set awfully early some days: two 4 a.m. wakeups (including one on a Saturday) and one 6 a.m. wakeup on a Sunday. So much for sleeping in. The afternoon and evening weekday games in London fall in the middle of my work day so I had to sneak out of work on a Tuesday afternoon to watch Brazil play Great Britain followed by France edging Argentina and bailed early the following Wednesday for the quarterfinals. It's all worth it. When is missing work to watch basketball NOT worth it? Never, is the answer.

Saturday morning, 4:15 a.m. France vs. Tunisia.

True to form, my teams did not win much (do they ever??). The team I wanted to win most, Great Britain, lost their first three games to admittedly stronger competition although they only fell to silver medal favorite Spain by a single point. Then in their fourth game, it appeared for a brief moment that they might actually have a shot at getting out of group play. They extended a 10 point halftime lead over Australia to 15 a few minutes into the third quarter but then the bottom fell out and they ended up losing by 31. That's a 46 point swing in less than 20 minutes. Wow! They did manage to salvage their Olympics by beating China in the final game of group play but then were reduced to spectators after that.

Brazil and France actually only lost one game each and finished second in their groups during pool play but couldn't manage to win an elimination game, falling to Argentina and Spain respectively. Nenê came off the bench for Brazil, averaging 6.6 points and 8.0 rebounds per game in an average of 22 minutes per game. If those numbers can translate over about 35 minutes a game for the Wizards next year, I'll be pleased. I thought Nenê played good defense and showed smart passing, something the Wizards were sorely lacking at the center position prior to last year's trading deadline. He did miss one game due to a listed injury, although the real reason may have been that the game didn't matter. I know the injury concern with this guy nags at most real Wizards fans.

Kevin Seraphin represented the Wizards well. He managed only 15 minutes per contest and averaged 6.0 points and 3.3 rebounds in his time on the court. I think these numbers are true to his NBA production from last season and watching his game still demonstrates the need for improvement in boxing out and rebounding. Kevin had a critical seqence in the game vs. Argentina which sealed the upset victory for France, poking the ball away from Luis Scola at the defensive end of the court and then running the floor for a layup at the other end. He also was on the receiving end of an alley oop against Lithuania. I'd love to see some alley oops to Kevin starting this November. I think it's also worth noting that Kevin led France in field goal percentage, shooting 54.8%. I have to wonder if France made a mistake keeping him out of the last 16 minutes of their elimination game against Spain when they failed to connect on 13 consecutive field goals in the decisive stretch. Guess we'll never know.

Anyway, I know the Olympics are not yet over and there are four more hoops games to watch. But for the Wizards faithful, our guys are done. I assume the US will take the gold. I'll keep a casual eye on things to make sure.