Griffin's Rehab Brings Back Memories of Arenas

Griffin's Rehabs from Knee Surgery.

Robert Griffin's documentary "Will to Win" recently aired on ESPN.  Griffin showcases his road to recovery from not one but two knee surgeries.  Some interesting tidbits from the documentary shows the Redskins trainer using an IPad to record movement and Griffin drives a Nissan as well Griffin's extreme motivation to get back to form.


Griffin's drive to come back reminds me of one Gilbert Arenas who also was said to be making incredible progress after he suffered his knee surgery.  Arenas was coined a gym rat and that offseason's goal was to make over 100,000 shots.

Right now I'm in the middle of making 100,000 shots over 73 days. It's a little mini-series I do. Right now I'm shooting 69.7 percent from the three-point line and I'm shooting 79.3 percent, I think, from the college three. 

Arenas Sprinting with a Parachute doing several springs

Arenas also talked the talked saying that he was well on his way back to 100% and also showcased his training program in 2007.



 Currently Arenas is out of the NBA and playing basketball in China.   Bottomline, Griffin will have to show his results in order to really show that he's recovered and also must improve his decision making to avoid hits.

Grantland overrates the Washington Wizards not so great Team Name

Zach Lowe of Grantland sports recently came out with an interesting read about ranking NBA team names. I was surprised to see that the Wizards ranked as high as 19 on the list. Here is his rationale:

19. Washington WizardsWizards slips ahead of Magic for one basic reason: Wizards do magic. Without wizards, magic is just a concept waiting for someone to learn and execute it. The Wizards name has some agency. 

It's not an unthreatening nickname, either, despite the soft associations critics might draw — the flowing robes, thin stature, and meager physical strength. Wizards are dangerous, and they can strike from anywhere, at any time. If any Washington player actually knew the Imperius curse, their opponents would never score a basket. 

However, you lose major points when the most-trafficked blog covering your teamchooses its URL based entirely around the concept of switching back to the old name — Bullets, a moniker with roots deep into the franchise's Baltimore days. The original Bullets were named for a local foundry and promoted the slogan "Faster than a speeding bullet." New owners revived the name when the league's Chicago-based franchise relocated to Baltimore after the 1963 season. 

Abe Pollin, the team's late owner, famously switched to Wizards in 1997 in order to avoid any association with the gun violence that plagued the D.C. area in the late 1980s and early 1990s.⁷ It was a shaky choice for a franchise with so many patriotic and political choices at its fingertips — Nationals, Monuments, Senators, or even Generals. The latter would have carried some intellectual property costs and created confusion with the Globetrotters' hopeless victim (he's spinning the ball on his finger! Just take it!), but it would have been cool for Washington to co-opt that name and turn it into a winner. 

Actually, considering the last 20 years in Wizards history, maybe the Generals thing would have turned out badly. "With the no. 1 pick in the draft, the Washington Generals select … Kwame Brown! How's it feel to take your place in the Generals tradition, Kwame? Kwame? Are you OK?"

The Wizards should probably be in the bottom 4 and perhaps the worst considering that the Washington basketball team already had a solid nickname with the Bullets.  Still not sure how the Bullets team name encourages violence.

The biggest reason why the Wizards is such a horrible team name is that it replaced a respectable team name

 Team owner Ted Leonsis responded.

AND "GRANTLAND" IS BETTER?

Posted on August 20, 2013

 "The Sports Guy?"

Read this one. The pot calling kettle black. Just saying.

Leonsis unfortunately failed to realize that Bill Simmons but Zach Lowe wrote the article.  Apparently Lowe has been getting a lot criticism (rightly so) that the Wizards is a horrible team name.  

@TedLeonsis I'm not "The Sports Guy," FYI. And Wizards at No. 19 is pretty good -- even according to your fans!
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) August 20, 2013

Ted Leonsis response can be summed up as saying that the Wizards is not a good team name but "Grantland" is a worse name for a sports website.  This is not exactly a strong case for keeping the name the Wizards which I somehow doubt Leonsis will take the lead in changing.