When the NBA calendar turns to March, teams are either start thinking about lottery choices or jockeying for playoff position. The Washington Wizards, after a slow start to the season, seemed to find their groove in February and catapulted themselves back into the playoff race, currently holding a precarious grip on the sixth seed in the East. Tonight on ESPN, they take on Allen Iverson and the Philadelphia 76ers, who currently trail the Wizards in the playoff race by a mere half game.

You may have heard that earlier this week ESPN leaked the names of the 22 NBA players that will be invited to try out for the 2008 Olympic team. You also may have heard that unlike Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison, Allen Iverson was not on this list. He was not happy about this, as evidenced by the 40 points he dropped on the Houston Rockets earlier in the week. Lets hope the Wiz focus on slowing The Answer down tonight instead of simply trying to outscore him.

It’s been a rough week thusfar for the Wiz, Olympic nominations aside. They lost winnable games at Memphis and against a depleted Indiana squad, something that doesn’t bode well for their upcoming schedule. Of the 15 remaining games the club has this month, only three are against teams that are out of the playoff race, a home and home series with Charlotte and next Tuesday’s tilt against the Boston Celtics, who are 5-3 in their last eight games with the losses coming to Phoenix, Miami and Cleveland. To make matters worse, the Wiz end the month with a brutal six game road trip in the West that carries them through to April. With only three and half games currently separating the fifth and eighth seeds in the East, we should be in for a wild ride to the finish of the season.