<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Gilbert Arenas almost blew his team's cover Saturday night. When Arenas scored 46 points in little more than 30 minutes against the New York Knicks at MCI Center, Washington Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan decided to slow him down. With a 110-89 victory well in hand and with a potentially tough game looming tonight at Memphis, Jordan sat Arenas for the fourth quarter, preventing Arenas from making a run at Earl Monroe's franchise record of 56 points in a game, set against the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968. Arenas didn't break Monroe's record, but he did make history. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Arenas's 46 points were the most scored in 30 minutes or fewer of playing time since the 24-second shot clock was implemented in 1954. Larry Bird held the previous record, scoring 43 points in 29 minutes against Cleveland in 1986. A historic night from Arenas, against the Knicks no less, might have earned the Wizards some national attention, the kind of publicity that has evaded the team during a recent stretch in which it has won 16 of 22 games while steadily climbing the Eastern Conference standings. "Yeah, we've been kind of laying low, so I guess we'll just let everyone sleep on us some more," said swingman Caron Butler, who had a hand in holding Cleveland's LeBron James without a field goal in the second half of Friday's 102-94 road win over the Cavaliers. "If that's what our role is going to be, that's cool. The important thing is for us to just keep playing good basketball, keep winning. The rest will take care of itself." Despite playing in a major East Coast market and despite the presence of Arenas, Butler and Antawn Jamison, the team is all but anonymous in the NBA's big picture. Somehow, all the headlines go to James and the Cavaliers; Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat; the latest drama surrounding Philadelphia's Allen Iverson; the latest baffling trade by the Knicks; and, of course, the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Even though the Wizards have beaten all of those teams except Miami, Cleveland twice, and are now very much in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff picture, they continue to fly under the radar. "I'm not sure what it is, but we all notice it," Jamison said. "Outside of D.C., nobody talks about us. I guess we lack that extra something. I mean, we have some real good ballplayers, but I guess we don't have that kind of big-time star who grabs all the headlines. If we're going to get more [attention], we're going to have to keep winning. That's what it's all about anyway." Of course, the Wizards lost a chance to send a message when they allowed a winnable game to slip away on national television at Western Conference power Dallas just before the all-star break. That 103-97 loss, in which Arenas made only 4 of 22 shots while turning over the ball six times, has been the worst setback in an otherwise strong stretch. The Wizards will get another shot to send a message tonight when they play at Memphis, which is 17-9 at home. A win would move the Wizards five games over the .500 mark for the first time while a victory combined with a Cleveland loss to Detroit tonight would draw Washington within a game of the Cavaliers for fourth place in the East. Jordan, while pleased to see his team accumulate wins in recent weeks, wants more. "It's a good thing," Jordan said. "When we were playing Cleveland though, I was looking at their record [the Cavaliers were 32-22 before the Wizards beat them Friday night] and I was thinking that I would like to be like them, 10 games over .500. That's a sweet number. But again, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves." And now, Jordan's players appear to be as focused as their coach. Arenas has been a self-described "assassin," intimating that he is no longer content with being considered one of the better players in the league. Butler has flourished as the team's third scoring option and primary defender on the opponents' best shooting guard or small forward. Jamison has been on a hot streak since Jordan held him out of the starting lineup for two games in mid-January. Antonio Daniels is playing with a level of confidence that was nowhere to be seen for most of the first half of the season. "We wanted to start off this part of the season after the all-star break on a good note," Arenas said of his team's 3-0 record after the break. "We lost two before the break, but we played good basketball. This is when the best teams come out to play. We want to show ourselves that we can contend with some of the best."</div> Kobe, who? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6022601397.html
