If you’re a regular reader at With Leather, you know how much I love mascots. Keeping that in mind, know that while I find the above video to be hilarious, I also imagine that it might be what Hell feels like. I’m going to guess the D.C. Air All-Star team wasn’t voted on by the fans.

The DC Air All-Stars – Big George, Hippo, G-Wiz, Air Screech and Air Slapshot, joined forces to entertain the crowd at Colonials Invasion 2011 to help the GW men’s and women’s basketball teams start the 2011-12 right.

This routine, like so much trampoline slam dunking, would be embarrassing but forgettable if the George Washington University Midnight Madness crowd were clapping and enjoying themselves, but their dead silence takes it to another level. It’s one part Zooperstars, one part high school pep rally and ten parts those weird amusement park live shows where kids sit on bleachers in a crayon-themed amphitheater or whatever and listen to five young actors who wish they were dead smile through a Now That’s What I Call Music dance medley.

All kidding aside, there’s something concerning about watching an inflatable hippo do a headstand while FloRida sings about how great his blowjob feels.

[sorrowful h/t to Off The Bench]

Are you a Florida-based fan of the Washington Wizards? Do you enjoy having a lady you don’t know rub her business on your legs? Have you ever wanted someone from the Wizards to watch you while a lady rubbed her business on your legs?

Now you can, thanks to Lapdance Tuesdays, hosted by Wizards forward and Twitter fight promoter Andray Blatche. It all goes down Tuesday nights at the Cameo Theatre nightclub, presented by something called “The Opium Group” and featuring a “strict dress code,” which I guess includes those logo-nonspecific uniforms players have to wear when they show up on boxes of macaroni and cheese. Also advertised: music by DJ Affect and DJ Mummy. DJ Mummy! I bet he plays a lot of wrap.

So, only two questions remain: one, if you live in Florida, why do you care about the Washington Wizards? And two, can you maintain wood with Andray Blatche circling you, going “oh! oh! oh! Give it up?”

[D.C. Sports Bog]

As the Washington Wizards close out their home season tonight against the Celtics, one can’t help but checking the work on last year’s No. 1 overall pick, and Wizards rookie guard John Wall has one big obstacle in his campaign for the NBA’s Rookie Of The Year–Blake Griffin. What’s odd is that Griffin, last year’s No.1 overall pick, sat out all of 2009-2010 with an injured kneecap. So this comes down to Which Guy Played Better For His Awful Team?

The former Kentucky Wildcat [Wall] is averaging 16.3 points and 8.5 assists per game this year. Perhaps the league’s most exciting young player, Blake Griffin, leads all rookies with 22.5 points per game. –NESN.

Wall is in the conversation for Rookie of the Year, although the consensus pick appears to be Griffin, whose Clippers (31-50) are languishing near the bottom of the Western Conference and will be a lottery team just like Wall’s Wizards. –Washinton Times.

But not everyone is down on the Great Wall Of Chinatown. Yeah, I’m still calling him that. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no news that the Washington Wizards have been in the process of reverting back to their franchise’s classic red, white, and blue color scheme, because I guess that’s what you do when you play in the nation’s capital. But now one image of a piece of NBA apparel seems to have unintentionally leaked what might be the new Wizards logo. Of course, this is just the old logo with the blue and gold swapped out for blue and red.

So is it the actual new logo? Wizards owner Ted Leonsis is keeping mum.

We won’t get into confirming or denying the validity of any logo designs. We appreciate and understand the excitement surrounding the new color scheme, and we are planning a comprehensive brand launch.

I doubt that’s it, because it looks like total ass, and the one thing the NBA usually gets right is its branding. After all, they changed the team’s name from the Bullets because so many people in DC were getting murdered. Sometimes you can be too right.

A gripe I’ve always heard from those who aren’t as fond of the NBA as I am is that players don’t take the regular season very seriously. Unfortunately, many of these complaints are validated when guys mail it in like Andray Blatche did last night in an 87-80 loss to Chicago.

If you’re a fan of perpetually awful teams like I am, you sometimes delude yourself into believing that your team isn’t that terrible. But when you watch one of your star players, who would warm the bench on a contender, make the laziest play you’ve ever seen, you feel pretty miserable. So miserable, in fact, you start to reassess a lot of the decisions you’ve made throughout your life. Then you start drinking heavily. Bills fans know where I’m coming from. Video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

It has often been said after the dismissal of a prominent head coach that “You can’t fire the infantry.” On Saturday, the Orlando Magic actually did that, executing two blockbuster trades that saw nearly a third of its roster heading elsewhere. The bigger of the two deals was arguably for Gilbert Arenas, who finds himself leaving DC after seven years as a Washington Wizard.

The Magic sent forward Rashard Lewis to Washington and Vince Carter, Mickael Pietrus and Marcin Gortat to Phoenix in a separate trade. Orlando also gave Phoenix its 2011 first-round draft pick and cash and received Suns forward Earl Clark.

“We needed a little bit more punch,” Magic president Otis Smith said. “All those guys coming in have an ability to move the ball. After looking at our team through 25 games, we were missing a little something. I thought change was needed.”

–Fox Sports.

From Phoenix, Orlando acquired Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu, who rejoins the team after departing for Toronto as a free agent in 2009. It’s an insanely busy roster shuffling, and one has to wonder now if the state of Florida’s new Big Three will get their act together like their counterparts down south. Arenas, Hedu and Dwight Howard is no LeBron, D-Wade and Bosh, but it’ll be fun to see how close they can make the comparison.