Remember last year when Bullets Forever and Mister Irrelevant campaigned to get Nick Young in the Slam Dunk Contest?  Well, the campaign is back again this year and this time around we've got an entire page dedicated to the effort of getting Nick Young into the 2009 Slam Dunk Contest.

The page is chock full of highlights, quotes, and wallpapers that you can use to help spread the word and hopefully get our high-flying sophmore into the Slam Dunk Contest this February.  Check it out now, and start gearing up for what should be a memorable campaign.  The sky's the limit!

Here's your thread for the second half.  This is where you can talk about that old geezer, Marvin Harrison.

The latest rash of injuries has gotten me thinking about what we can do in the future to prevent this from happening.  The only logical conclustion that I can come to is that somehow we've offended the basketball gods and the only way to resolve the issue is for me to own up to what I've done wrong and hope it's the path to a healthier future.

• The only reason I called Andray Blatche "The Mongoose" in this post was in the hope that if anyone ever googled "Andray Blatche Mongoose" Bullets Forever would be the first site to pop up.  It worked, but it was an abuse of power, and that's wrong.
• For a fleeting moment, I thought being a Magic fan would be way cooler than being a Wizards fan.  Then I realized what I was really thinking was that it would be way cooler to live in Orlando than Washington.
• I use bullet points like this a lot because I'm lazy and hate doing little things like paragraph transitions.
• Last year, I didn't have cable so I watched Wizards games online using streaming feeds of varying legality and language.  Thankfully, I've got cable this year, so I should have a better idea of what's going on this season.  But, if Buck and Phil start talking in Chinese, I'll still have a vague idea of what's going on.
• Times that I've blamed our string of injuries on my first post being about a bone healing machine: 70,000 and counting.
• Contrary to popular opinion (and what I may have said in the past), in his hit single, Southside, when The Game says the line "Tha man Jake the Snake" he's not referring to me.
• If it weren't for Dan Steinberg and Gilbert Arenas, I probably would've quit blogging a long time ago.
• I honestly thought LeBron should've been MVP last year.
• If someone gave me the option of free pizza or free Wizards tickets, I'd probably take the pizza.  That's not a slight against the Verizon Center game experience, that's just being a college student.
  

As you've probably noticed, there's a YouTube directly under this paragraph.  If you're bold enough to click that play button, you might be shocked by what you see.  You won't be shocked by vulgar language, lewd behavior, or anything like that, this video is strictly PG, but nevertheless, I get the feeling that you'll be blown away by what you see.

First, let's clear something up for those of you who are confused: That guy in the crowd wearing the white shirt that bears a striking resemblance to Peyton Manning, is Peyton Manning.  Scary, I know.  Personally, I'm not quite sure how we'll move forward in a world where we know that Peyton Manning has attended a Bruce Springsteen concert, but I suggest the best way to do so is by making observations about what we just beheld:

• I think the window of opportunity to ever see Peyton Manning wearing a T-Shirt in a casual setting is completely shut.  If he can't stray from the tucked-in, collared shirt for a Springsteen concert, it's just not going to happen.
  
• There's Kevin Faulk concert joke here that I just can't put together.
• Just in case you needed proof that the Super Bowl XLIII halftime show will be better than the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXIX, XL, or XLII, you now have it.
• Shouldn't they cut out the lights when they play that song?  I mean, it's all about the visual effects at big concerts like that, right?
• Now that we've seen that, imagine the opposite event occuring: Seeing Bruce Springsteen at a Colts game.  For some reason, I see that being far less awkward.
• It's a lot better seeing Peyton in the crowd, as opposed to being on stage, where something like this could've broken out if Peyton had been given a mic.

The Essentials:
Pistons vs. Wizards
7:00 p.m.
Verizon Center
570, 1260, & 1370 AM, plus the audio will be streaming from the Wizards' blog.

Notable Pistons numbers last season:
2nd in expected winning percentage (.725)
30th in pace factor (87.3 possessions per game)
4th in offensive efficiency/offensive rating (111.4)
4th in defensive efficiency/defensive rating (102.9)

Key Links (drop any others in the comments)
Detroit Bad Boys
Need4Sheed
Pistons Nation Blog
Detroit Pistons Basketball
Competition Discussion: Detroit 

Starting Lineups:
Pistons
PG: Chauncey Billups
SG: Richard Hamilton
SF: Tayshaun Prince
PF: Amir Johnson
C: Rasheed Wallace

Wizards
PG: Antonio Daniels
SG: DeShawn Stevenson
SF: Caron Butler
PF: Andray Blatche/Antawn Jamison
C: Etan Thomas

This is Pradamaster, by the way.  Jake started and I finished.

My computer is still fried and will likely be for a little while (something about a broken graphics card and the new ones being on backorder), but I've comandeered a computer to write this thing up.  It does mean I likely won't be participating in tonight's thread, but those there should still post post post.

This here's our only home preseason game before we hit the European vacation, armed without our most marketable player (take that, NBA!).  We talked extensively about Detroit a few posts down, so there isn't much to say about them at this point.

Not sure as to whether Antawn Jamison will play tonight.  Frankly, it's probably best he didn't anyway.  We get more Blatche and more Taser for it. 

I'm curious to see how Blatche, JaVale and Oily do against Detroit's surplus of bigs.  Each brings something different to the table, and they'll be much more of a challenge than Marc Gasol.  In particular, Jason Maxiell killed us last year on the offensive glass.  I'm interested in how well our young bigs put a body on him.

Otherwise, all we need is to pray that nobody gets hurt. 

This is an open game thread, so boo Kwame here.

Okay, maybe that's a little extreme.  But 20 points (on 8-12 shooting), 8 rebounds, and 3 blocked shots in 27 minutes is nothing to sneeze at, especially coming from your the guy that's supposed to be our project player.

Coming off of a performance like that, we have to decide that either:

1. JaVale isn't the raw, developing player that we all thought he would be, or...
2. We're putting way too much stock into one preseason game. 

Having not seen any of the game (since I wasn't one of the 7,176 in attendance at the FedEx Forum tonight) I cant really say which it was for sure yet.  Precedent would dictate that we're likely dealing with option #2, but that isn't to say that option #1 isn't at play here either. 

There have been lots of centers that have passed through this league and never sniffed a stat line like that, even in a preseason game.  Certainly, it's not something that we should get used to expecting out of him every night, but seeing production like this so soon makes me think that we're much closer to that time than we thought we were when he was drafted in June.