Wizards Report

Seen and heard last night at MCI Center:
IT COULD BE LONGER Before the game, Wizards coach Doug Collins indicated that Jerry Stackhouse’s injured left groin might keep him out for more than just a week. In fact, the prognosis sounded a little bit more grim than it did at first.
“They’ll look at him on Saturday. They’ll have a better handle on how long he’ll be out,” Collins said. “It could be up to three weeks to a month, we just don’t know. That’s how [a teams fortunes] change.”
So far Stackhouse, the team’s leading scorer (22.5), has missed two games.
OAK CHIMES IN Forward Charles Oakley said if high school sensation LeBron James were not black, he would not have gotten the attention he did for driving a brand new Hummer.
“Everything about us is magnified,” Oakley said. “That’s just how it is. It’s always magnified and blown out of proportion. There is a different standard for black people. That’s how it is when you’re black and the microscope is on you.”
Oakley said that if James had grown up in a middle-class neighborhood and were white, the big stink over his new car would never have come up. James’ mother, with whom he lives, is unemployed.
“Look, a lot of [white] people drive Mercedes to high school and nobody stops them and ask them about their car,” Oakley said. “But if a black guy is seen driving something like that, the first thing people say is he’s a [drug] dealer. But that’s just how society is. Blacks are living in the back of the bus and we might never get to the front of the bus. We are never going to be able to drive the bus like we should. What are you going to do about it? You just have to keep going ahead.”
John N. Mitchell