MAO of the Week (9-28) Reloaded

Gilbert is back. Showing off his new video game, spouting off nonsequitors to fawning reporter types, holding bizarro 24-hour pressers to more fawning reporter types, hyping upcoming blog entries; it's as if it were the Early Autumn of 2006 all over again (with similar soul-crushing Redskins results included). Frankly, the DC Optimist is ecstatic. There hasn't been much in the way of Capitals-esque Wizards news lately. The Grun-trust had a fairly quant offseason with no major Antawn Jamison-for-disgruntled-power-forward swaps happening, and only two slight brushes with the law. As a result, the Wizards, a first place team last year*, have suddenly flown below everyone on earth's preseason prediction radar screens. Determined to rampen up the image of his oft-overlooked franchise, Agent Zero has taken to the airwaves to proclaim the Wiz as a powerhouse of a team, predicting to reporters that an Eastern Conference finals appearance is imminent in 2008. For this strong 'tism-boosting backslapping of the city, Gilbert has been rewarded his first Manny Acta Optimist of the Week award. The award is named after Nationals Manager Manny Acta, who, like Gilbert, had strong predictions for his first season as Nationals manager, and, like the DC Optimst, he was positively correct.

Saturday, Gilbert began his week of again showing the world that he rules by blessing the USA Today paper with 'tism nuggets denouncing the sudden anointment of the Boston Celtics as the class of the East and all but guaranteeing MVP-level performances.

"If we can get to 50-55 wins, I'm a heavy (MVP) candidate," he said. "I'm going
to do what I do."

And what does he do? Continues to dominate the press coverage, sparking a brushfire of typing with his strangely-worded analysis of the Wizards friendly big man duo.

"No matter if Etan is the starter or the backup, he's going to give you the same
kind of energy and the same kind of play," Arenas explained. "Brendan will give
you three-four (strong) games (off the bench) because he's mad, then he's going
to tank it."

This threw arms up in various other inter-blogs, but the DCO only sees a slight misunderstanding of Gilbert-speak. "Tank" in this format, likely represents Brendan's largess and explosiveness when he rebounds the ball in front of the basket and jams it in real hard two-handed style. The move (and not his subsequent name tag removing hysterics) has been dubbed the "tank," and that is what Gilbert is referring to.

But just to clarify things, Gilbert big-upped his big men (meaning de-stressed their necessity) in subsequent media meetings, while further boosting his team's prognosis like in the (not free) blog of espn.com's Chris Broussard.

"We rely so much on the perimeter that our big guys don't need to do that,'' he
says. "If one gives us 10 [points] and 10 [rebounds], he's 'The Man!' If one
gives us 5 and 5, 'Hey, that's what he does.' The guards are going to make it
up. We're not worried because when we were playing our best basketball, we were
the number 1 team in the East. We just got hurt; we got hit with the injury
bug.''

See? So even if the "Tank" isn't firing, and Etan isn't providing his inconvenient truths in the post, the Wiz can rely on their perimeter gunners to fill up the basket and ultimately carry the team throughout the season, like they did last year when they were in first place.

So why wouldn't this team's return to health cause such wondrous results? It's not just Gilbert who is finally starting the season healthy. Caron has been shedding weight while reminiscing about pushing weight, giving us another much needed refill of the Tough Juice. Darius Songaila has been overseas lighting things up (with his discs not bulging), looking to finally show what 100% of Lithuanian post moves, money 15-footers, and milky skinned bench work looks like. Antoinio Daniels celebrated the storied ADAW with a hall of fame induction. In addition to that, AD has finally been redeemed, and he looks forward to translating some timely career-highs and gutty work into more Ws. And this doesn't even mention the potential contributions of potentially impressive rookies like Domenic McGuire, Oleksiy Pecherov, and Nick Young. It seems that as Gilbert has initially, impressively predicted, the Wizards are in great shape, and we trust that the 'tism he is emitting will only seek to make these greater things happen, and ultimately redeem us from the worst.

Campaigning for Change*

In a few recent Wizards-related DCO posts, we have mentioned taking the events of last season's ending and removing it from our recollection permanently. After some internal discussions, we thought this concept ought to be applied to all official Wizards-related business, and now utilizing all available communcative outlets, we are campaigning to have an asterisk (*) forever applied to any mention of the Wizards' record last season. No team in the history of basketball has ever had their two most quintessential players stripped from their roster not two weeks before the start of the post season, and whilst the remaining shambles of the team fought more dilligently than we have ever seen anyone on the New York Rangers fight, they could not shoulder the burden god had placed on their already shaky joints. Therefore, we feel that the "41-41 (2nd Southeast)" that bears itself on most official Wizards business needs to be given a signal that it wasn't pure. It needs a marking that would delinate that the strategism of Eddie Jordan (All-star game coach), the constructive genius of Ernie Grunfeld, the first ever all star Caron Bulter, and the watershed Gilbert performances were not all in vain. The record needs an attachment that would show the world that this team was a title contender, much more worthy than the pathetic Eastern Conference representers, that team of me-first Nike-shill-watchers that caused millions to turn on dance competitions instead.

Since we were (sort of) able to gain a mention of our four-lettered, apostrophe-ed philosophy by a major sports columnist, and since we are stars of cable television (YOU RULE, LITTLES), and since our burgeoning Secret-influenced readership has already marked their place in the sports landscape with their positive thoughts, we feel that we can make this happen. So fellow Optimists, call your congressmen other than Herb Kohl, start threads on your favorite message boards, email people who produce Wizards-related media material, stand outside of Metro stations hollering into the night air as bewhildered golf fans scurry by, post on your awesome sports- and kitten-related blogs. It is time that we make this change permanent—permanently noted.*