Former Washington Wizards draft bust Kwame Brown signed with the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday, his fifth team in seven seasons since leaving Washington. In discussing the signing with Yahoo! Sports, Mark Bartelstein, Brown’s agent, tried to paint Brown’s as a story of redemption, invoking his disastrous four seasons with Washington–which used the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2001 on the 19-year-old prospect–in the process:

“It wasn’t his fault he was drafted first. He wasn’t ready for the NBA. He was too young, there was too much pressure and he got thrown into the bonfire with Michael Jordan and [former Wizards coach] Doug Collins.”

Brown signed with Jordan’s Charlotte Bobcats squad for the 2010/11 season and performed fairly well, starting 50 games and averaging 7.9 points and 6.8 boards. “Going to Charlotte, playing for Michael Jordan, helped exorcise those demons from the years they had together in Washington,” Bartelstein said. “It was great for Kwame.”

Great for Kwame indeed. His deal with Golden State will pay him $7 million this season and enable him to become a free agent next summer.

You know that two-season comeback Michael Jordan embarked on with the Washington Wizards from 2001-03, the one that ruined the perfect final image of His Airness’ career being his jumper over Bryon Russell in the 1998 NBA Finals?

It turns out that was all Wolf Blitzer‘s fault.

Blitzer, host of The Situation Room on CNN, likes to claim he had a role in talking Jordan into his last comeback, reports The Washington Post’s Michael Lee.

The joke stems from a conversation Blitzer says he had with Jordan at a town hall meeting during the 2001 NBA All-Star Weekend in Washington, D.C.

“At one point, I said to [Jordan], ‘This city would really explode if you put your uniform back on and started playing a little bit,’” Blitzer said, according to Lee. “And he laughed. Then I pressed him and pressed him.

“Now, me being the egomaniac that I am, I take personal credit. But I suspect there were other factors besides my excellent questioning that convinced him to come back and play.”

Jordan’s comeback began seven months later, so if Blitzer indeed convinced Jordan, it must have taken a while to sink in.

Wolf Blitzer has long featured a dry sense of humor that stands in stark contrast to his rather awesome name, which sounds like the titular video game character your little brother played with on Sega Genesis 18 years ago. So we suspect he’s working with his tongue placed firmly in cheek as he discusses his role in convincing then-Washington Wizards GM Michael Jordan to return to the NBA following a three-year absence in 2001.

From an interview with the Washington Post’s Michael Lee:

“At one point, I said to him, ‘This city would really explode if you put your uniform back on and starting playing a little bit.’ And he laughed. Then I pressed him and pressed him. After the interview, he did it,” Blitzer said in a recent telephone interview. “Now being an egomaniac that I am, I take personal credit. But I suspect there were other factors besides my excellent questioning that convinced him to come back and play.”

Again, this is probably a sly joke on Blitzer’s part. And a needed one, because it reminded of the forum in which he asked Jordan — an awful (though no fault of Blitzer’s) town hall meeting on CNN to discuss what was so terribly wrong with the NBA while using 47 descriptions of the same insinuation (“too young, too black,” essentially) while ignoring the real problems (hand-checking and physical play was killing the offenses, stars were in short supply, and too few coaches let their teams run).

If you do take Blitzer at his word, jokes aside, understand that Jordan was going all out at Wizards practice the day he signed with the team as GM and part-owner 13 months before the Blitzer back and forth. He was a regular with the team in practice throughout 2000-01, rumors began to spread about his slow build to a comeback midway through that season, but he waited until Sept. 10, 2001 (seven months after Blitzer’s question) to admit (without much fanfare and late in the evening to the Associated Press, and on the steps of his go-to workout center in Chicago) that he was planning a full-fledged comeback as a player.

Of course Wolf is joking, though. Right? Right.

(Please tell me he’s joking. HT: Tom Ziller at SB Nation.)

Related: Washington Wizards

Wolf Blitzer has long featured a dry sense of humor that stands in stark contrast to his rather awesome name, which sounds like the titular video game character your little brother played with on Sega Genesis 18 years ago. So we suspect he’s working with his tongue placed firmly in cheek as he discusses his role in convincing then-Washington Wizards GM Michael Jordan to return to the NBA following a three-year absence in 2001.

From an interview with the Washington Post’s Michael Lee:

“At one point, I said to him, ‘This city would really explode if you put your uniform back on and starting playing a little bit.’ And he laughed. Then I pressed him and pressed him. After the interview, he did it,” Blitzer said in a recent telephone interview. “Now being an egomaniac that I am, I take personal credit. But I suspect there were other factors besides my excellent questioning that convinced him to come back and play.”

Again, this is probably a sly joke on Blitzer’s part. And a needed one, because it reminded of the forum in which he asked Jordan — an awful (though no fault of Blitzer’s) town hall meeting on CNN to discuss what was so terribly wrong with the NBA while using 47 descriptions of the same insinuation (“too young, too black,” essentially) while ignoring the real problems (hand-checking and physical play was killing the offenses, stars were in short supply, and too few coaches let their teams run).

If you do take Blitzer at his word, jokes aside, understand that Jordan was going all out at Wizards practice the day he signed with the team as GM and part-owner 13 months before the Blitzer back and forth. He was a regular with the team in practice throughout 2000-01, rumors began to spread about his slow build to a comeback midway through that season, but he waited until Sept. 10, 2001 (seven months after Blitzer’s question) to admit (without much fanfare and late in the evening to the Associated Press, and on the steps of his go-to workout center in Chicago) that he was planning a full-fledged comeback as a player.

Of course Wolf is joking, though. Right? Right.

(Please tell me he’s joking. HT: Tom Ziller at SB Nation.)

Related: Washington Wizards

Here we thought that Michael Jordan donned No. 23 for the Washington Wizards because he was an egomaniac who knew he was better than a fresh Rip Hamilton and couldn’t stand the losses. Nope. It was because CNN anchor/Wizards diehard Wolf Blitzer is terribly convincing. From the great Michael Lee of the Washington Post, who talks to Wolf about that fateful time.

“At one point, I said to him, ‘This city would really explode if you put your uniform back on and starting playing a little bit.’ And he laughed. Then I pressed him and pressed him. After the interview, he did it,” Blitzer said in a recent telephone interview.

Now we need to find out who is responsible for Hakeem in Toronto. Grab the torches and pitchforks.

It takes some serious skill to be able to dunk over LeBron James. But it takes a lot more than that to be better than a six-time world champion, five-time MVP and 10-time scoring champion.

But Jordan Crawford, a 2010 first-round draft pick playing for the Washington Wizards, apparently aspires to be better than Michael Jordan. And he thinks it could be in the cards.

“I don’t tell nobody, but I feel like I can be better than Michael Jordan,” Crawford told The Washington Post. “When I’m done playing, I don’t want people to say, ‘Michael Jordan is the best player.’ I want that to be me. That’s how I am. That’s how I was built.”

Crawford averaged almost 12 points per game in 24 minutes per game last season. It’s difficult to think of anyone surpassing Air Jordan, but Crawford has become extremely confident in his abilities — even though he realizes the idea of becoming better than Jordan seems crazy.

“Yeah, I know that, I definitely know that. But I’m not settling for anything less,” he said. “I feel like I’m better than him, anyway. My mom is going to say I’m better than him.”