No Regard Presidential Previews: Washington Wizards (William Howard Taft)

Oh the season. Oh the season! Election or NBA, both are upon us. We're getting into the spirit by bringing you our season previews (with a little help from the presidents). One per day for the next 30 days—which will bring us to the Day of Reckoning. So please join us on the campaign trail as we shake hands, kiss babies and sink jumpers.

“I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.” - William H. Taft


William Howard Taft did not care about politics. He didn't know the system, didn't appoint the right people to the right positions within his party and didn't care about any of it. More than anything, Big Bill wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. Taft lucked into the presidency by gaining 159 more electoral votes than opponent William Jennings Bryan, but got only 51 percent of the popular vote. Four years later, in 1912, Taft won only eight electoral votes and suffered the worst defeat of an incumbent president in American history. In 1921 he got his wish of being named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, so there's that.

The Washington Wizards do not make sense. The "glory years" of early playoff exits are long over. The Verizon Center has not been a fun place to be since $111 million dollar man Gilbert deemed it necessary to pack heat and the Gil-Tuff Juice-Antawn Jamison core was split up. Our nation's capital has featured a heavy dose of Andray Blatche getting booed, Nick Young and Jordan Crawford shooting within three seconds of touching the ball, questionable trades and an incredibly slow maturation process for John Wall.

Taft, by all accounts our fattest and most epically mustached President, wanted badly to lower tariffs despite Congress' unwillingness to go along with it. His own party was also against it, thus alienating all sides. Willing to trade seemingly anyone for anything, the Wizards turned a ton of guaranteed cap space in Rashard Lewis into the bloated deals of Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza. Okafor was brought in for veteran leadership while Ariza appears to be completely disinterested and has changed teams seven times in nine years. GM Ernie Grunfeld defended the move by saying free agents do not want to sign with the Wizards, so he had to do something. If you want to alienate both the players and fans, saying nobody would want to play with or for them is a pretty good start. If that's your thought process, you should not be an NBA general manager. (Also, what's he talking about? DC ain't half bad! It's at absolute worst the 11th best NBA city to live in.)

Our 27th President had his moments—helping to economically support Latin American countries using "Dollar Diplomacy," resisted unnecessary involvement in the Mexican Revolution and generally urged world peace. The Wizards, though not ready to actually compete for a playoff spot, have rid themselves of immature headcases Andray Blatche, Nick Young and JaVale McGee and replaced them with Okafor and Nene, two respected professionals. This is actually kind of a grown-up team now, and having responsible veterans around will help in the development of John Wall (once he gets healthy) and youngsters Bradley Beal and Jan Vesely.

Purchasing tickets to see this team appeals to me about as much as a trip to the William Howard Taft National Historic Site in Cincinnati, but they won't be the laughingstock Taft was that one time he got stuck in the bathtub and told his aides to use butter to get him out. If Taft can lose 80 pounds after being President and achieve his dream of being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Wizards may one day get back into playoff contention (hopefully re-branded back to the Bullets).

Rushed Pull-Up Jumpers

Pokemon who the team should adopt as its new mascot: Koffing

Headline we'll be most sick of reading: "Ernie Grunfeld Still Not Yet Fired"

Headline we're most looking forward to: "Jannero Pargo, Earl Barron Still in NBA"

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you enter the pearly gates?: "Sorry JaVale and Nick weren't allowed to play with you anymore. I know you guys had fun at your laser tag birthday parties."

No Regard Presidential Previews: Orlando Magic (Richard Nixon)

Oh the season. Oh the season! Election or NBA, both are upon us. We're getting into the spirit by bringing you our season previews (with a little help from the presidents). One per day for the next 30 days—which will bring us to the Day of Reckoning. So please join us on the campaign trail as we shake hands, kiss babies and sink jumpers.

“Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things... Life is one crisis after another.” - Richard Nixon

Richard Milhouse Nixon's legacy, in the minds of most, begins with the Watergate break-in and ends with a resigned Tricky Dick throwing up deuces and boarding a helicopter out of town. While that is his enduring image, our 37th President of the United States was so much more than we remember. In his time in office, Nixon ended America's involvement in the Vietnam War, opened diplomatic relations with China, signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviets, established the Environmental Protection Agency, established the first minimum wage, brought the first national attention to cancer research and won the Space Race by putting a man on the Moon. But all you remember is Watergate.

The Orlando Magic have had some really, really good years. Shaq and Penny Hardaway brought them to the 1995 NBA Finals, and Lil' Penny was the best non-Jordan ad campaign of the '90s. Tracy McGrady won a scoring title for the Magic in 2003. Dwight Howard won three Defensive Player of the Year awards in a row. The Magic have been to the playoffs the past six years. In 2009, the Magic went through the Celtics and LeBron's heavily-favored Cavs to reach the NBA Finals. But all you remember is the Dwightmare.

Where Nixon covered up the Watergate break-in and was essentially forced to resign from the Presidency, the Magic (particularly since-fired GM Otis Smith) handled the long, miserable Dwight Howard fiasco about as poorly as possible. Trading for Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson and Gilbert Arenas was basically re-arranging the deck chairs on Titanic, just as the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew did nothing to take the heat away from Nixon. Dwight Howard wanted a trade. Sometimes he pretended he didn't, but rather than go quietly, Howard took down coach Stan Van Gundy in one of the NBA's worst heel-turns. Howard was traded to the Lakers and the Magic wound up with Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington, a platter of spare parts and some draft picks. Andre Iguodala and Andrew Bynum changed hands in that trade, the Magic wound up with neither of them.

In the aftermath of his resignation, Nixon quietly withdrew from the public eye for a while before being pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. The 2012-2013 Orlando Magic are led by Afflalo, Jameer Nelson and Glen Davis. Hedo Turkoglu averaged 10.8 points per game last season and is the highest-paid player on the team. There's always the lottery, which, by the way, the Magic have won three times.

Rushed Pull-Up Jumpers

Pokemon who the team should adopt as its new mascot: Cubone

Headline we'll be most sick of reading: "Shadow of Howard Hangs Over Magic"

Headline we're most looking forward to: "Glen Davis, Hedo Turkoglu Face Off in Eating Contest at CiCi's Pizza, Everyone Involved Loses." 

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you enter the pearly gates?: "Did you bring Stan? I really want to hang out with that dude."

Why You Should Root For The Thunder: Everything Dies

"My next year is now." - William Gates

This is about Kevin Durant.

The first time I thought about death thorough enough to have a breakdown I was probably around 11. The panic was spurred by the "Make Your Own Time Capsule" book I had been reading. It took me a few minutes, but all of a sudden I was hit with eternity. When the time capsule would finally be opened, however many hundred years in the future, I would not be. There, then not there. One moment, next moment.

Things change for good, quickly. And how! I've attended enough funerals to know how these things work. The floor can drop out any second, and it relishes in doing so.

Yeah, I know. This is a Website about the NBA, so here you go...

No Regard Recaps: A Dream Come True?

One Game We Watched This Weekend: Boston Celtics vs. Chicago Bulls

Celtics: 95 Bulls: 91

Rajon Rondo took advantage of a Rose-less Chicago, playing his best ball of the season and earning a triple-double en route to beating the first place Bulls. Rondo was in attack mode all afternoon, fast-breaking his way to easy points and assists throughout. With that boring recap out of the way, here are some of the topics my brother and I discussed while watching the game:

If You See Something, Say Something: Double Standard

IYSSSS is our semi-regular Internet intelligence report, a liberal arts approach to following the NBA on the Web. E-mail us at jewsforjesusshuttlesworth@gmail.com if you've got any suggestions.

Brain on Funk Tumblr: So, I have just been made aware that Doc Funk is back captioning for the playoffs. This is honestly the only way I can think of for these playoffs to get even better.

@JohnCTownsend: I would imagine Gilbert finds it a little frustrating that everyone else is allowed is allowed to do finger gunz. Poor Gilbert.

Bethlehem Shoals at GQ's Balls Out Blog: Shoals' work at his GQ-housed playoff blog has been great all the way around, and is the current URL at which to find his best work and visit daily, but this conversation with David Roth (contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Awl) is particularly strong. From their digression about Chris Webber's color commentary:

Shoals: He always takes risks. In the studio, it's being vulnerable. On the call, it's cutting loose in weird, creative ways that have as much to do with confidence and intelligence as they do with a lack of experience. It's like watch Walt Frazier find himself, but the floor's on fire and nobody has any idea how they got here in the first place.

Roth: His malaprops are basically psychedelic, but he makes some good calls—Indiana and Denver as mirror images of each other was an on-the-fly gem he just tossed off between weird syntactic decisions—and I think he's doing great. He leverages his credibility in a really interesting way.

Bill Simmons: Despite the monstrous word count and tired references to "The Real World" that have come to define Simmons' writing, this new joint on small market teams—specifically the Kings—is a pretty fair and restrained look at the borderline crisis the NBA is facing. Worth a skim. He also makes a Thelma & Louise reference, which was shocking, because I always thought the only movies Simmons had ever seen were Rounders, Boogie Nights, Shawshank Redemption, Top Gun and Cocktail (the last of which he does reference here). The over/under on how many movies he's seen has to be 12. (I love using Simmons gimmicks when writing about him.)

2011 NBA Resolutions

2011 is here and here to stay, folks, and we're sure some of you are knee-deep in your New Year's resolutions. At No Regard, we believe that NBA players should be no different than the rest of us when it comes to making some much needed changes. We've found a list of some of the more popular resolutions and decided to apply them to some of the league's employees.

1. Spend More Time With Family and Friends: Carmelo Anthony

Well, it looks like things are finally shaping up. And by "things" I mean a complete demolition of three current teams in order to, once and for all, bring 'Melo to the NY/NJ region. It's not pretty, but it will be nice to just have this over with so that we can stop hearing one DOA rumor after another. So, 'Melo, if and when the ink is on the paper, make sure you take advantage of your return and call all those cousins and childhood friends from Red Hook that you haven't seen in years. They've been waiting for you. -Ain't

Hey, Someone's Listening!

The Wizards are getting smart and thinking about following our suggestion. See #31.

Do the right thing, Ted. Do the right thing.

Sorry about the racy picture of scantily-clad, ethnically ambiguous twins(?). It's the best I could do.

Team Dreamin' 2011: WIZARDS (Bullets)

At No Regard, we love basketball. We love the spectacle and strategy of the game, but sometimes the league's lack of imagination confounds and disappoints us. Call us optimists, visionaries, or kids who watched too much Space Jam, but we have ideas. Damn are we gonna share 'em.

Much to the dismay of many No Regard staffers, the Washington Wizards got the first overall draft pick this year and snatched up star-ready John Wall. Rewind to last December and remember a time where the future was not so bright for basketball in the District. A dark cloud hovered over local superstar Gilbert Arenas and his season-ending suspension for carrying firearms to work. With the loss of veteran sharp-shooter Mike Miller to the Heat, now more than ever, the Wizards need Gil to return to form and dominate offensively alongside the young sensation Wall. How then, can the Wiz make sure Gil feels comfortable returning to play with his teammates after such and ugly incident?

The Wizards can change their name back to the Washington Bullets.

If You See Something, Say Something

Sports Illustrated: The late Manute Bol was not only a steadfast humanitarian and supreme shot-blocker, the man was also photogenic as hell. A remarkable photo gallery.

NBA.com: Chris Bosh: "...I think every kid when they dream about playing basketball, they don't dream about being a role player. They dream about being the man. I have that position in Toronto and to give that up and go somewhere else to be an addition would kinda defeat the purpose of my dreams." Well, Chris, then you have an inflated sense of your talent and a poor understanding of the design of championship teams. Did you have trouble seeing those playoff games you went to this year through your sunglasses?

FreeDarko: Guest journalism about Ricky Rubio's unhappy draft night in 2009, directly from the man who assisted Rubio that entire night.

Slam Online: Drake bringing Kobe onstage. Mamba doesn't overstay his welcome like LeBron did. And he reminds everyone how many rings he has, which LeBron did not do. Unfortunately, Drake didn't let Kobe perform this gem.

Forbes Most Disliked Athletes List [via D.C. Sports Bog]: Gilbert's fall depresses me almost as much as Penny or Grant Hill's injuries did. But the bigger story here: WHY IS IVERSON ON THIS LIST? That's how much his image scared people back when he was actually popular? For the casual sports fan of 2010 to place him on the same list as a man who senselessly killed dogs, a man who cheated on his wife at least hundreds of times and a quarterback who cannot plug his boat's leak while sailing the sea of sleaze means that they really must have had strong feelings about his fucking cornrows. (Look, I know that Iverson's been involved in some unfavorable situations similar to these other guys, but I'm assuming that the people polled don't and I know that's a reasonable assumption.)