john wall

Peter Hailey’s weekly writing roundup: Mid-August edition

Posted on by Peter Hailey

Barely in Bounds will always hold a special place in my heart. This blog has given me a space to demonstrate my admiration for D.C. sports stars like Santana Moss and John Wall, a page to express my frustrations with local sports figures like Brandon Meriweather and Randy Wittman, and an area where I can refine my writing skills while talking about my favorite topic of all: Sports in the nation’s capital.

Luckily, I’ve been able to take those skills I’ve been working on here and parlay them into additional jobs/internships with a few other publications. Besides being the creator of this lovely site, I’m now writing for Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic, blogging for Maryland’s student newspaper (The Diamondback) a contributor to Breaking Burgundy (Scout.com’s Redskins site) and a contributor to The Left Bench (a sports site started by Maryland’s finest journalism students). Read More

Ranking every Wizards 1st round draft pick of the 2000s, then comparing them to an aspect of air travel

Posted on by Peter Hailey

Air travel is something that sucks most of the time, but every once in a while, it can be fantastic. It is for that reason that air travel reminds me of watching the Wizards go through the NBA Draft each year.

Most of the time, Washington’s picks turn out horribly, but every so often they’ll find a player that pans out beautifully. And with the 2015 Draft less than two weeks away, Wizards fans will soon get to go through the mostly-painful-but-sometimes-wonderful experience all over again.

However, while a lot of people are looking ahead to when the Wiz will be on the clock, I would like to quickly look back at the franchise’s recent previous drafts. In this post, I’m going to rank all of the team’s first round draft picks since 2000 from best to worst, and then, because air travel is so similar to watching the Wizards drafts, I’ll top off each ranking by comparing every pick to something we’ve all experienced as an air traveller. Read More

Magic people vs. Canadian dinosaurs: Answering the most important questions about the Wizards-Raptors first round matchup

Posted on by Peter Hailey

For the last few weeks of the NBA season, it looked like Wizards and Bulls fans would be treated to a rematch of last year’s first round playoff matchup, in which Washington dispatched Chicago in five games. However, after the way the year’s final games played out last night, the Bulls were able to surpass the Raptors to snatch the Eastern Conference’s third seed, meaning the Wizards will actually be facing Toronto with a spot in the Eastern Conference Semifinals on the line.

Game 1 between the two teams tips off on Saturday at 12:30, and before it does I’m going to do you a favor and tell you everything you need to know about the series by asking and answering the most important questions surrounding it. Now, I know there’s a lot of playoff primers going around on the web today, but I guarantee you this one will be the most fun and most comprehensive preview you’ll read. So put on your John Wall jersey, throw out all of your canadian bacon, and start scrolling. I know the second half of the year kind of sucked, but these guys need our support now more than ever. They’ve got a real shot to win this thing. Read More

Crossing over: Comparing past and present DC athletes with some of rap’s biggest names

Posted on by Peter Hailey

I’m gonna keep this introduction simple.

I’m a college aged male, which means I’m basically required to like two things: sports and rap music. And after reading this Grantland post a few days ago, in which Andrew Sharp combined his love for the NBA and the NFL by comparing players in each sport to one another, I decided to do the same sort of thing: take a list of past and present DC sports athletes and compare them to some of the biggest names in the rap game.

(Thinks to himself for a moment) Um, yeah. That’s about all that needs to be said. Below you’ll find the list, where I took 14 of DC’s current and former players and found their counterparts in hip hop. Some are matched up for positive reasons while others, well, aren’t. I had a lot of fun with this, and would love to hear your thoughts on it as well. Let’s get this going. Read More

Using Randy Wittman’s various faces to describe how Wizards fans have felt at different points in the season

Posted on by Peter Hailey

Wizards head coach Randy Wittman has received a lot of heat lately, and it’s probably deserved.

Many fans who watch the team night in and night out have grown tired of Wittman’s plain offensive sets, unwillingness to shake up the rotation, and the team’s overall lack of growth in the past month or so. Sure, Wittman should get a lot of credit for helping turn this franchise from a bottom feeder into a respected team, but the whispers about whether he’s holding them back from taking the next step are growing louder with each loss.

Now, whether or not Wittman is a good NBA head coach is up for debate. Whether or not the Wizards should get rid of him before the team’s recent slide turns into a free fall is also up for debate. But there is one thing about Randy Wittman that is not up for debate (and never will be up for debate) and that his ability to make really funny faces.  Read More

DO IT FOR THE VINE: The seven most entertaining Vines from the Wizards season thus far

Posted on by Peter Hailey

Yesterday, Grantland.com, the second best sports website in the world (behind this one, of course) published a pretty sweet post featuring some of the NBA’s best Vines from the season thus far. 

Now, because my mom reads this blog, and I know she has no idea what a Vine is, I’m going to really quickly explain what a Vine is: it’s a brief, six second video that anyone can take if they have the app on their phone, and then they can put it online. There you go mom (and anyone else who isn’t familiar with Vine), now ya know.

Grantland’s post was a lot of fun, but I couldn’t help notice as I was reading that there weren’t any Wizards related Vines in the article. This of course made me sad, until I remembered that:

1) I have just as much access to the wonderful world of Vines as Grantland’s writers do,

2) I know quite a lot about the Wizards, and

3) I happen to run a mildly successful DC sports blog that would allow me to create a similar “Best Vines of the year so far” post, but make it allllllllllll about the Wizards if I wanted to.

Well, guess what? I wanted to. So that’s how this (strictly Wizards) best Vines of the year post came to be. Read More

The First Annual DC Sports Awards: 50 fans decide on the best of the best in the past decade of DC sports

Posted on by Peter Hailey

The Golden Globes wrapped up a week ago and the Academy Awards nominees have just been released, meaning that It’s officially awards season for movie producers, directors, actresses, actors and fans alike. These awards are prestigious honors that everyone in the movie business dreams of winning, and watching the entire process unfold is a lot of fun.

Which is why I was inspired to bring the whole idea to DC sports.

For the second time in the past month, I surveyed 50 DC sports fans, this time asking them to choose a winner in five Academy Awards-ish categories to produce an Oscars-like DC sports awards post. The five categories the 50 fans were asked to vote on were: “Best Newcomer,” “Best Coach,” “Best Game,” “Best Team,” and “Best Player.” Read More