Photo by jagosaurus.

Summertime. Yeah, it’s hot, but it’s still not bad as the coldest cold. Except for D.C. sports.

The Nationals are doing okay, though its fans have booed their most recent highly priced acquisition. What about the Redskins? Football is back, though the impending John Beck era doesn’t appear to be exciting too many people. At the moment, the Caps are deep into a fairly sleepy offseason.

The NBA, meanwhile, has only provided messages of impending doom due to what is likely to be a long lockout. That sleeping basketball hotbed you hear proponents of Washington’s professional basketball team waiting to monetize will have to remain dormant. A highly touted game of basketball stars, including out of work NBAers from Los Angeles and D.C., scheduled at Coolidge High in late August might again prove that Washington loves basketball. It’s just those people aren’t that in to the pro team.

Everybody wants a winner. Washington wants a winner. Who wants to claim the first championship amongst the big four sports in the last 20 years? Capitals? Redskins? Nationals? Wizards?

After the chances of the built-to-last, but down-on-playoff-luck hockey team, it’s anyone’s guess as to which team has the best chances of being next. But with activities between the Wizards and their hope on the hardwood brought to an halt — NBA teams are tagged with a million dollar fine if there is so much of a hint of communication between team and players (with the exception of wedding dance floors) — the budding seeds of the franchise are left to roam as they please. This begs the question: what are the Wiz Kids doing this summer?

John Wall

Wall has already given the impression that, despite some hiccups along the road as a teenager (to be expected, obviously), he is more about the game of basketball, and much less, if at all, about using basketball for money, fame and glory. The day after NBA players were locked out, he tweeted: “Gotta play in some summer leagues…Just wanna hoop!!”

And that he did. Wall’s played in Pro-AM basketball events in Seattle, North Carolina, and even dropped 41 points in D.C.’s own Goodman League during a game held a Spingarn High School.

He’s worked out a ton in Las Vegas at Impact Gym, trainers of a who’s who list of NBA players, but he’s also spent time at the pool. He won the Golden Boot at Baron Davis’ 2nd Annual Rising Star of America All-Star Kickball Game. (Yes, it’s named that. Nick Young was there!)

Wall has also spent time in his hometown of Raleigh, but not without attending the Reebok Breakout Camp in Philadelphia, this time as a mentor, not a hopeful. He threw out a horrendous pitch at a Nats game, showed up at a basketball clinic when he didn’t have to, breezed through Los Angeles for the ESPYs, clearly. But he’s also recently been eastbound, putting on a basketball show at the Carmelo Anthony Hoop League in Baltimore.

What more could Wall do? Well, word has spread that he might go back to Kentucky to play with other former Wildcats (like Dematha’s Keith Bogans) in an exhibition against the Dominican Republic national team. And if the NBA lockout extends further, Wall’s college coach John Calipari claims that Wall and other former Wildcat NBA players just might enroll back in college for the fall. Now that just doesn’t seem very NBA at all.

JaVale McGee

After staking claim to being one of the most creative people on Twitter because he refers to his self-created alternative name, Pierre, in the third person, JaVale McGee has done his best to promote the trending fad of planking that everyone else is doing. He’s planked a moving walkway in the Hong Kong airport, a grocery store freezer, a UPS truck, a stack of tires, an out-of-order vending machine, a car on the highway and the corner of a boxing ring. He’s even planked during a basketball game in the Philippines while on a barnstorming tour with other NBA stars like Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose. While on the tour, he got his photo taken with Manny Pacquiao, and, of course, trended on Twitter.

Like Wall, McGee attended the ESPYs. Unlike Wall, his outfit fueled a Twitter debate with Michael Wilbon. Dan Steinberg’s got the back-and-forth on the DC Sports Bog, which includes McGee telling Wilbon to “[pause]” after Wilbon criticized what McGee wore on the red carpet over Twitter. McGee with the latest:

His mom Pamela was elected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, McGee came close to hitting his head on the rim while playing in the Drew League in Los Angeles, and he also took a tour of China in conjunction with Peak, the Chinese athletic shoe company that sponsors him.

Andray Blatche

Ever since the furor over Andray Blatche lending his good name to “Lap Dance Tuesdays“, a club promotion in Miami for which team owner Ted Leonsis tisk-tisk’d him about, the much-maligned polarizing figure of pro basketball fans in the District has been flying low, finally.

Tweets from @drayblatche have been here and there. There’s been real talk:

Laughs:

The mundane:

The defensive:

And finally, a Lap Dance Tuesdays explanation:

According to 43 seconds of web research, his story pretty much checks out. Other web research/gossip could lead you to believe that Blatche was caught up in some baby-mama-drama. Otherwise, the man they call “7 Day Dray” on Tuesdays, Wednesday and Fridays (and for two and a half hours on late Sunday afternoon), has gone on a charity mission to Jamaica and has been working out in Miami and his home in South Carolina. Most recently, he returned to where he grew up in Syracuse, NY to hold his third annual camp, do some interviews, and appear to perhaps sound mature.

Jordan Crawford

The sassy scorer whom the Wizards acquired in a deadline deal with the Atlanta Hawks for Kirk Hinrich (a trade which also netted Florida State’s Chris Singleton in this year’s draft), once said, “If I can see the basket, it’s a good shot.”

Crawford’s summer hasn’t been as indiscernible in the blogs and the series of tubed Internet portals as the likes of Wall and McGee. There’s been mention of playing in Dwight Howard’s First Annual Showcase basketball game and time spent at basketball camps in his hometown of Detroit. But otherwise, his Twitter feed, @JCraw55, has been equally indiscernible, yet quaintly entertaining in an NBA player type of way.

Hamady N’diaye

The always happy-go-lucky N’diaye exhaled a sign of relief when the Wizards extended his qualifying offer in late June. It doesn’t mean he’s signed for next season, but it does mean that team brass doesn’t not want him, in training camp at least. N’diaye spent a good bit of time in the District, until the NBA locked him out. Otherwise, he’s made a return to New Jersey — where he spent four years playing at Rutgers — and took a trip back to his native Senegal where he saw some close family for the first time in four years and worked on his side gig of philanthropy. Most recently, N’diaye travelled to Syracuse with Blatche to participate in his teammate’s camp and talk with kids about lessons in leadership.

Kevin Seraphin

The relatively quiet French-speaking bruising big man from Cayenne in the French Guiana has kept a relatively low profile this summer, meaning you can count his Tweets from May to July from his account, @kevin_seraphin, on one hand. He’s visited home and claimed (through his agent) that he would play in Europe if the lockout extended, like many a NBA player. At the end of August, the EuroBasket 2011 Tournament is set to begin and Seraphin intends on playing for the French National Team. If you speak French and want to hear Seraphin say French things in a recent interview, then it’s your lucky day.

Trevor Booker

The South Carolina native started the summer under restriction. After breaking his foot in late March, all basketball action was frustratingly suspended for the rookie who was starting to get more time and come into his own at the end of last season. On June 6, Booker tweeted from @Trevor_Booker that he was able to work out for the first time in two months.

Otherwise: pretty ho hum compared to some teammates — Booker was awarded to key to the city in his hometown of Mauldin, South Carolina, where he also held a basketball tournament with teammate Josh Howard, got caught up in the planking fad at least once and Tweeted plenty about watching his guilty pleasures that he’s not so abashed about — Basketball Wives and shows about teen moms.

Nick Young

What would a summer be without Nick Young, the best candidate to replace Gilbert Arenas in the role of team “personality”? The L.A. product started the summer by reintroducing himself to Twitter in a variety of ways — talking about getting pulled over by the cops, tweeting pictures of his hairdos, all the while calling himself “the cuddler,” while conveying that he’s just a lonely NBA player looking for love (while gladly accepting any ladies willing to throw themselves his way).

Young has also promoted reading in South Los Angeles by handing out free books, played a “prank” on a sleeping friend (Young hit him with eggs until he woke up), played another prank where he poured what appears to be chocolate milk and pickles on a friend in the shower (putting him very close to shoe defecation pranks a la Arenas), wonder if he and Nick Cannon are twins, held the “Nick Young Flight Camp” for kids, and attracted wide-ranging Internet eyes with an off-the-backboard, between-the-legs dunk.

Young’s tweets from @NickSwagyPYoung have certainly had a West Coast lean. He even managed to criticize women’s soccer:

Out of all the Wiz Kids, Young is the only one whose contract situation for next season is up in the air. So hopefully he enjoys his summer as a locked-out Wizard, because it could be his last. But in terms of the rest, we simply don’t know when their summer of fun will end.

Until they tweet about it, of course.