It’s been said by the guy who types Cheap Seats Daily that “Big Threes don’t work in Washington basketball.“

But the quick and brutal collapse of the Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison regime ever since Arenas got all firearmy with a teammate made us all nostalgic for the serenity of those days when Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Rod Strickland embarrassed the same uniform. Legal issues undid that trio, too.

Awesome Trivia #1 about Webber-Howard-Strickland: The franchise’s original Three Musketeers never won a single playoff game.

Awesome Trivia #2: The Bullets gave up four first-round picks, counting Tom Gugliotta, to the Golden State Warriors to get Chris Webber in 1994. For no playoff wins. Munch on that for a while.

Awesome Trivia #3 (which only qualifies as Awesome Trivia to those who don’t have cable TV and go years at a time without attending an actual NBA game): Juwan Howard is still in the league! At 37, he’s been in and out of the Portland Trail Blazers’ starting lineup this season — playing center. And to think he was run out of town here with the slouch label more than a decade ago. And I wouldn’t even bid $12 for a pair of Howard’s sweat pants at an auction benefiting a great charity.

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Allegedly 108,713 people attended last night’s Wizards-free NBA All-Star Game in Dallas.

If true, that means that 12 times as many folks saw that game live and in person as the average TV viewership of a Washington Nationals baseball game on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) in 2008.

But I still think the Nats’ long-term prospects are better than the NBA’s.

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Kyle Shanahan made his local media debut on Saturday during “Inside the Redskins,” a Dan Snyder-produced infomercial hosted by Redskins communications staffers Dan Hellie and Larry Michael.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Nepotism is no longer bothersome? Brendan Gaughan crashed Dale Jr.? You use Gaughan’s crash of Dale Jr. to bring up John Sr. and the Hoyas whitelessness again? Is DCSPORTSFAN.COM being sold or what?)

Shanahan, the team’s new offensive coordinator and a longtime son of big boss Mike Shanahan, came off awesomely well. He looked too young and too skinny to boss NFL players around, sure, but Kyle seemed confident without any of his dad’s offputting cockiness or tan. I’m for Kyle!

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Former Georgetown basketball player and Allen Iverson roommate Brendan Gaughan was among the pack of crashers that took out Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Saturday’s Nationwide race at Daytona. Gaughan’s Hoyas’ career was notable mainly for his one start, coming in a 1996 Christmas tournament in Las Vegas during his senior year.

Gaughan went straight to NASCAR after leaving Georgetown. He races for Rusty Wallace’s race team, and his car is sponsored by South Point Hotel and Casino, a Vegas gambling outfit owned by his father, Michael Gaughan.

Normally, I would point out once again that Gaughan was that rare white kid who wore the Hoyas uniform while John Thompson II was coach, and that Michael Gaughan owned a casino that John Thompson II was trying to buy into at the time the Georgetown coach gave the younger Gaughan his token start.

But, because of the lambasting I took from color-blind Hoyas supporters the last time I mentioned Gaughan’s situation, while I was also pointing out that the booming Georgetown women’s program now also has a whiteless aura about it — the Gandhi-like commenter Yeller told me I should be “ashamed” of myself for “publishing this filth” — I will not bring that stuff up here.

I would also normally note that Georgetown’s basketball program even under Thompson was the picture of integration next to Gaughan’s current endeavor, NASCAR.

But, again, I’m not going to go there.

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Media consolidation seems soooo 2007.

But a thread appeared on the great DC Sports Fan message board over the weekend declaring that the site, which has been the premier clearinghouse for local prep sports news and gossip for a couple years now, was about to be sold to big media outfit for big bucks.

But just as speculation from posters grew about who was going to be the new owner, and somebody declared something along the lines of “My dad’s the lawyer working out the sale,” the thread was yanked out of the readers’ forum.

Very intriguing!

Who would buy a high school sports web site? The Washington Post, which just debuted the similarly all-encompassing high-school outlet, allmet.com? Jim Brady, because that would give him a turnkey operation as far as high school sports is concerned as he launches a site to compete with the Washington Post? Dan Snyder, because he can?

Hmmmm.

And is there really any money in web sites yet? In any case, congrats to the dcsportsfan.com folks if they are getting paid. They’ve worked real hard.

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Full disclosure: I freelance music reviews for the Washington Post.

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