Monday, January 08, 2007

Who's Better: Agent Zero Or Alexander The Gr8?

As some of you may know, the Caps aren't the only professional sports team that calls the Verizon Center home. I've recently been made aware of something called the NBA, which is a professional basketball League, one of whose member organizations - the Washington Wizards - plays its home games at the V.C. (I've seen some banners hanging from the rafters referencing a "Washington Bullets," but haven't seen anything related to these "Wizards." I also have seen banners denoting a "Washington Mystics" as "WNBA Attendance Champions," but figured that has to be a joke.).

Anyway, apparently these Wiz (as they are familiarly known) have a superstar of their own - Gilbert Arenas - who possesses that rare combination of brilliant skill and radiant personality that puts him in a class of his own. Nearly. For as we all know, the Caps have their own phenom, Alexander Ovechkin. This being a sports blog in which apples-to-oranges comparisons are par for the course, then, the logical next question is, "Who's better - Agent Zero or Alexander the Gr8?" This being a Caps blog, then, you might think you already know the answer. You might be wrong.

The Numbers

The Rest Of It

The Results

Clearly, the nation's capital has two of the brightest stars in their respective sports in terms of both ability and personality (three, if you throw 'Skins runningback Clinton Portis in the mix). But who's better? At present, Arenas might seem to have the slight edge, but he also has more experience and a more veteran (and relatively-expensive) team around him. However, if you polled NBA and NHL GMs and asked them to pick one player with whom to start a franchise in their respective sport, my bet is that AO would garner more votes than Gil, based on the two players' respective ages and the depth at the positions they play (surely Dwayne Wade and LeBron James would receive more votes than Arenas, and Sidney Crosby would likely receive more votes than AO).

At the end of the day, this leaves us with advantage... Ovechkin. Of course with these two, you can't go wrong with the apple or the orange.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having grown up in DC, I can't tell you how happy I am to have multiple superstars on local teams. I can't recall the last time when the area had one player in the top-10 list of those up for discussion as to who to take when starting a team, let alone two!

Anonymous said...

bwahaha! great article! thanks for the pleasant read. if the nats' or skins' ever do anything i guess you can throw in a comparison for one of their players (i would have said DC United too but they have been trading everyone away, Adu/Eskandarian, etc)

JP said...

If at some point waaaaay down the line, Gil and Alex find themselves in their respective Halls of Fame, I believe this would be the first time future HoFers were playing for the Wiz/Boulez and Caps at the same time since 1987-88 and 1988-89 (when Moses Malone, Rod Langway and Mike Gartner were all playing).

The only other time that happened was in 1980-81 and 1981-82 when Gartner was a kid and Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes were still playing for the Bullets.

WFY said...

I think the last athlete to be this big in D.C. was Doug Williams in 1987. If Arenas keeps it up for several years, he'll be up there will Riggins and Jurgenson. I am very curious to see how big Ovechkin will get.

Portis was on his way to being a juggernaut, but he got hurt this year and it turns out Ladell Betts can run too.

faux rumors said...

1) Ovechkin will get 'Big' if, like the others you alluded to, helps win a championship for the city/area.

Abhinav said...

"Arenas is tied for last in the NBA in hits with none (Carmelo Anthony leads with one). Ovechkin is 33rd in the NHL in hits. Advantage: hockey"

That's tremendous. Hockey >> NBA

(for all you non-nerds out there, >> means "much greater than")