What Is Andray Blatche Doing Here?
Andray Blatche’s play is becoming a thorn in the Wizards’ side. Sure, he puts up numbers here and there. Sure, he’s only whatever young age people keep citing as an excuse. He’s also induced boos from the home crowd on more than one occasion … and for good reason.
I’ve seen grown men, eyes reduced to glowing red from rubbing in despair at his ineptitude on defense (and I wasn’t looking in the mirror). It’s an abomination to the game of basketball, I say. And that’s why I’m here, simply as a concerned person for the game. There will be more to dissect and observe about 7-Day Dray’s defense, but let’s take a look at the equivalent of 4,000 words about his bad help defense on a particular hand-off in Saturday night’s 92-81 Wizards loss to the New Orleans Hornets.
Blatche’s man, David West, is in hand-off mode to Rashard Lewis’ man, Trevor Ariza. Lewis is trying to stick his hand in there to keep this from happening … and maybe Lewis’ own defense got him a bit behind the 8-ball in this situation, but it looks like Blatche will need to help nonetheless.
Yet, Blatche has yet to move his feet in this next shot.
Okay here, Blatche kind of moves his foot to the side, but they’re pretty much in the same spot on the floor. He seems to be doing more watching than defending here.
Yep … total, complete watching of the action going on here by Andray.
Blatche never even moved to help Lewis on the hand-off. Maybe he isn’t the only one falling short on defense on this possession, but he is by far the worst. One would hope that this isn’t what he’s being instructed to do … but it’s been an all-to-common occurrence throughout his career, and especially this season, his sixth in the NBA.
