{Arco Arena, where it's at - flickr/Bo Knows California}

1 ) Added attention

It’s a nationally televised game on ESPN (10:30 pm EST). Actually, this is probably a bad thing for the Wizards.

2 ) It’s going to be a close game

• All seven of the Wizards’ games in December have been decided by four points or less.
• The Wizards have lost five in a row by a combined margin of 11 points. Dan Steinberg of the DC Sports Bog reports that this is the lowest total five game loss margin in franchise history.
• So, the Wizards have obviously lost their last five by four or fewer points. The last team to do that in a single season was the 1979-80 Knicks. The most consecutive losses by four points or less is set at six games by the 1976-77 Suns.

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{flickr/Keith Allison}

No, this isn’t a joke … although, with the season going the way it is, you’d think it might be.

But really, what’s the harm in Flip Saunders & Co. using one play selected from a pool of civilian submissions. At this point, it can’t hurt. Right?

The details of the contest, via ESPN, are below … and more can be found by following the link at the bottom. (However, this will take you to an ESPN Insider page, so you might need an account).

The contest says it will be an inbounds play, but doesn’t really indicate if the play will be an ‘Out-Under’ (an inbounds play from the baseline under the basket) or a ‘Side-Out’ (an inbounds play from the sideline), so I guess you’ll have to use whichever one floats your boat.

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I don’t think the Wizards have ended a game with turnover this season yet. Chalk another one up in the ‘Inventing Ways To Lose’ tally. Although, turning the ball over to lose a game isn’t a new invention, it’s just what bad teams do. What more can I say?

{fact}

Four of Gilbert Arenas’ six fouls came immediately after a turnover. Three of those turnovers were committed by Arenas himself, one by Caron Butler.

{wizards vs. clippers: 11 frames}

{links}

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NOTE: I’ll be chatting about tonight’s Wizards-Clippers game on www.CSNWashington.com at 10:15 pm. Come by and hang out if you’re up … and by “up” I mean both awake and down to watch the Wiz.

I’m doing this post for a couple reasons: I can’t escape the carnage of Saturday night, and in his post-game interview, Brendan Haywood mentioned some repeated, successful plays run between Earl Watson and Tyler Hansbrough. I wanted to investigate further.

“We didn’t make defensive plays at the end of that game. They ran the same play with Earl Watson and Hansbrough three, four times in a row … didn’t make an adjustment, no help on the weak side, nothing was done.” -Brendan Haywood

I’m not sure how many times the specific play with Watson and Hansbrough was run throughout the course of the game, but I’m going to focus on the final 1:22 where it was run twice in a row.

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In my initial Wizards-Pacers game post, I was completely remiss in not mentioning the foul with 0.5 seconds which gave Mike Dunleavy the game winning free-throws.

In his post-game interview, Brendan Haywood cited the defense allowing Earl Watson and Tyler Hansbrough to do whatever they wanted in preceding key possessions as one of the main causes of defeat (along with a horrendous second quarter), but I got the feeling that most everyone on the team felt they got cheated out of a win because an unjust foul was called.

Is that so?

“The call … I looked at it ten times, that call at the end. They called the foul on Brendan Haywood. If the foul was called on Brendan Haywood, the game was over … so that was a bad call.” -Flip Saunders

“Uh … yea … the score says they won, but you know …” -Antawn Jamison

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“Gilbert has ice water through his veins and he knocked them down. It was a very strange ending.”

Former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan said those words over 1,000 days ago. Down 106-104 on March 4, 2007, Gilbert Arenas drove to the rim against Mikael Pietrus of Golden State and drew a shooting foul that some called questionable. Warriors Don Nelson stormed off the bench, the referees assessed him a controversial technical. When the ensuing confusion was finally quelled, the refs put 0.1 seconds on the clock and Arenas calmly sunk three straight free-throws to win the game 107-106 on his home court.

But those were different times. That was a different Gilbert Arenas. And Saturday night’s game ended in a very different manner for the Washington Wizards. The basketball gods have evidently swung their pendulum of favor in the opposite direction.

I’ve seen crazier NBA endings. Reggie Miller’s eight points in nine seconds (ironically the name of the TrueHoop Network’s Pacers blog) comes to mind.

I’ve seen more shocking happenings solely involving the Wizards. Just look up a game against the Toronto Raptors on March 30, 2007 (26 days after the infamous Don Nelson tech).

I’ve also been in more sad, heartbroken locker rooms. Try being in one after a 5-seed expected to make noise in the NCAA Tournament goes down in the waning seconds to a 12-seed.

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6:16:02 PM: DeShawn Stevenson on starting: “It’s whatever. I just want to play basketball.”

6:18:41 PM: DeShawn Stevenson: “It doesn’t matter who starts, who doesn’t start. In the end, we just gotta win ball games.”

6:23:49 PM: Tonight’s Wizards-Pacers officials: Scott Foster, Brian Forte & Ed Malloy.

6:25:54 PM: BTW, records show that Tim Donaghy called fellow referee Scott Foster more times than his bookie b/t 10/2006 & 4/2007 (134 times to 126)

6:27:51 PM: Flip Saunders aims to match the energy of the Pacers & have a carry-over from the 2nd half against Boston. Hope he didn’t mean FTs.

6:29:46 PM: Flip Saunders on various his starting lineups: “Right now we’re still in the juggling phase.”

6:31:45 PM: Mike Miller will travel with the Wizards on their 4-game West Coast swing. Also, his family lives out there.

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Feel like I keep saying this, but here goes … The Wizards really need to win tonight against Indiana.

Enough about getting on the right track, pushing the tempo, finding a way to get Caron Butler involved, making free-throws, starting with energy, winning the battle on the boards, etc., etc..

All of that stuff is important. But the “this game starts and ends with _____” fill-in-the-blank cliché comes down to pride. Seems pretty simple.

Play like you want to win the game. Play like you have too much pride to lose to a team that should be inferior (especially without Danny Granger). A team that demoralized the Wizards last time out … known to many as “The Honeydew Game.”

The Wizards haven’t progressed much since candy dishes and fruit plates were strewn across the visitor’s locker room at Conseco Fieldhouse over a month ago. They currently stand equal to Indiana at 7-13. If the time to turn this thing around isn’t tonight, it might never happen.

I may have another post closer to game-time, but until then, here’s some video and links from the past couple of days. Read more »

It's cloudy in the Nation's Capital - flickr/eugene

Well, last night was a tough one. I wasn’t as distraught/incensed as after the Charlotte or Toronto home losses. Rather, I was emotionally prepared for the inevitable. The Celtics are a damn good team. There’s no shame in losing to them. On the other hand, making mention of moral victories is loser talk.

Sure, it was only one game out of 82, no sense in dwelling on past defeats. But if each loss isn’t making the players and coaches more angry and determined than the previous one, then something isn’t right.  And I still don’t exactly get the feeling from the team, as a whole, that there’s a sense of urgency arising from these losses.

With the Indiana Pacers (who absolutely embarrassed Washington the last time they played) coming to D.C. on Saturday before the Wizards embark on a four game West Coast swing, playing seven out of the next eight on the road, there will be no shortage of tests/chances for this team to right the ship and prove themselves worthy. We will see.

Below is the beginning of what I wrote about the game for ESPN’s Daily Dime. Follow the link for more, the rest is #8 in the right-hand column. I’ll also have more coverage on the game to come. Read more »

Big game between the Wizards and Celtics on TNT tonight … read below the picture of the patch on the Wizards’ jerseys honoring Abe Pollin for what you need to know.

Andray Blatche vs. Kevin Garnett

Talked to Andray Blatche a little before the game about the recent long, “Back To Basics” practices the Wizards have had (that’s a pic of ‘Dray’s jersey above). He said that Flip mostly focused on his desire for the team to get out and run, and to find more tempo in their game.

I asked him what the team needed to do about setting better screens. He said, “Need to get up on them … BAM! Lay the wood on them,” and then proceeded to let assistant coach Randy Wittman know about his enthusiasm for setting screens.

I then asked him about Garnett, who he looked up to growing up … and a couple times when they’ve met, Garnett has given him no slack with the trash talk (like K.G. is apt to do with opposing players).

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On this edition of the Dagger Report, Mike Prada of Bullets Forever and myself are joined by Mike Jones, currently the Wizards beat reporter for the Washington Times, and Jimmy Toscano of Celtics Blog.

With Mike, we discuss:

• Dealing with Gilbert Arenas in general and the exclusive he got with him this summer;
• His reaction when Arenas called the media “lazy”;
• Developing a rapport with players as a reporter;
• The current state of the Wizards and Arenas playing with a “video-game mentality”;
• The path Mike took to covering the Wizards at the Times;
• The back luck he faced on his first day on the job, covering a Wiz game in Cleveland … of all places;
• His next move as the Times has decided to cut its coverage of sports;
• The changing media landscape, its affect on local and national sports coverage, and the presence of blogs.

With Jimmy, we discuss:

• His foray, like Mike Prada and myself, into the locker room to cover an NBA team up close as a blogger;
• How Brian Scalabrine recognized Jimmy as a new face amongst the media and took the time to ask him his name, among the other characters of the Celtics locker room;
• The progression of Garnett’s knee, the statistical production of Paul Pierce, and the Celts in general.

And of course …

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{flickr/Keith Allison}

ESPN’s Marc Stein reports:

The Miami Heat’s position on trades is no secret. They won’t even consider making a deal for anyone whose contract extends beyond this season to preserve every cent of their projected trove of salary-cap space for July 1, 2010.

But the Heat have, according to NBA front-office sources, explored the possibility of trading for Washington’s highly available Mike James, whose first coach in a 11-team career in 2001-02 was Pat Riley in Miami.

Sources say that the teams discussed a trade during the preseason, but the Wizards balked because Miami would not send back an expiring contract. The Wiz have a similar mindset to Miami’s, determined not to take back anything but expiring salaries in minor deals like this one.

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{flickr/Keith Allison}

I saw it coming. Most probably did. In August, Brendan Haywood understandably and predictably caught some heat when he associated (via his blog and a subsequent radio interview) an irrelevant act by Stephon Marbury with being gay.

And last Friday, he wrote this:

All I’m saying is that Elin better be glad she’s married to Tiger Woods instead of Chris Brown or this whole story could’ve been reported differently!

Ok, nothing outlandish. Honestly.

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Two weeks ago Wizards majority owner Abe Pollin passed away prior to a Wizards game against the returning Eddie Jordan (on the anniversary of his firing no less) and the Philadelphia 76ers at the Verizon Center. Tonight, Pollin will be memorialized at the arena he helped build in the Chinatown area of Washington, DC where he championed a resurgence.

Covering that Wizards-Sixers game was a whirlwind with no concern for how time flies. I knew being around for the return of Eddie Jordan to D.C. would be tough enough. The passing of Abe Pollin changed everything. It was going to be a hard night at the Verizon Center, hard to focus on the reason why everyone from Abe Pollin to kind gentlemen checking bags at the press entrance was around, the game of basketball.

Being at the game became a privilege, an honor to experience an impromptu celebration of a man’s life through the sadness of his death. The man who owned the team I love. The man who was responsible for revitalizing part of the city  I love. It was a sad day for all who have been involved with the franchise, but I couldn’t feel luckier to be apart of it in the way that I was.

To see the fresh look of shock on Caron Butler’s face as if a close relative just died. To see Antawn Jamison having a moment where it wasn’t known if a tear was going to flow down his cheek or not (he held on). To see Phil Chenier up close talking about Mr. Pollin with a smile on his face. To see the faces of the emotionally stricken employees of the Washington Sports & Entertainment empire. And to be there as Wes Unseld said the words which moved me the most, two feet away and almost encapsulated by the media scrum, sweat beading on his brow from the camera lights, but looking as comfortable in his gray adidas jump suit as a grandpa telling stories to whomever would listen while sipping ice tea on a broken-in porch on a hot summer day.

“I just lost a real, real good friend … and I think it’s more than any of you will understand or I could even explain,” said Unseld. Like Big Wes foretold, I wasn’t able to fully comprehend. But because of his words, I still did.

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December 7, 1999: Ten years ago today, as Y2K hung over the world, the Washington Wizards lost their 20th game of the season to the Los Angeles Lakers, dropping their record to 5-15. In fact, the game was probably going in L.A. about the time I published this post. Let’s check out the Washington Post game story by Steve Wyche, courtesy of Dan Steinberg:

The Washington Wizards’ entire front court scored 16 fewer points than Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal, and as a result, Washington fell, 91-80, tonight before 15,571 at Staples Center.

O’Neal scored a game-high 30 points and grabbed 16 of his team’s 44 rebounds as the Lakers won their seventh straight game. The Wizards lost their fifth straight, an unflattering mark seeing as they have a seven-game losing streak already to their credit this season.

Washington forward Juwan Howard scored just six points on 3-of-17 shooting. Forward Michael Smith added two points and center Ike Austin had six. Combined they were 7 of 30 from the field, and none of the three attempted a free throw.

“We just couldn’t get anything from our starters in the front court,” Wizards Coach Gar Heard said. “We can’t win any games unless those guys score, and we had opportunities to score. But you’re going to have games like that.”

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