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[The DC Council -- After each Wizards game: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the bench, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is over the table. Click here for cumulative DC Council 3-star ratings over the course of the season. Game 41 contributors: Markus Allen, Adam McGinnis (@Adam McGinnis) and Arish Narayen.]
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#10… a guy on Iowa’s basketball team hitting a no-look, granny-style shot in practice from the opposite free-throw line…
#9… a hockey goal…
#8… a halfcourt alley-oop, Iowa basketball…
#7… DeMarcus Cousins spinning by David Lee and dunking…
#6… Russell Westbrook vicious dunk on the Rockets…
#5… bro in a backwards hat flicks a frisbee as someone pole-vaulting catches it…
The Washington Wizards continue the road trip in Dallas tonight for a matchup against the Mavericks. These two teams are most recently connected by the seven-player deal they completed on February 13, 2010. Washington sent supposed cornerstone pieces Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson (and cash, don’t forget the cash) to the Mavericks in exchange for Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, James Singleton and Quinton Ross. The crew from Washington helped Dallas win an NBA championship; the crew from Dallas helped Washington accomplish nothing but a chance to clean up after mistakes. Haywood is the only player from the trade remaining on either team. What maneuvering. Moving on, for tonight’s 3-on-3 we have Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh) from the ESPN TrueHoop Network Mavs blog The Two Man Game (amongst other blogs), Beckley Mason (@BeckleyMason) of HoopSpeak.com/ESPN, and TAI’s Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It). Three questions, three answers starts now…
IAN LEVY: I think Haywood gets the better of McGee, and it means a ton for the Mavericks. The Mavericks have capable depth in the front-court but when Haywood is out, everyone has to move up a chair into a role that asks a little more of them then they are capable. Getting Brandan Wright back will help settle the rotation as well.
BECKLEY MASON: McGee prevails with his activity and earnest effort. If McGee can control the glass, it might make up for what I predict will be a decided shooting advantage in the Mavs favor. The Wizards need to get more possessions, and while Dallas won’t test McGee at the rim too often on drives, he’ll need to be active and communicative on the perimeter. What I’m saying is: McGee will likely outplay Haywood, but he has to do more than that to swing the game.
KYLE WEIDIE: As long as Haywood doesn’t attempt to dribble a la Stanley from The Office, his team will likely get the best of JaVale’s team, and it will be because of Haywood. Why? Well, despite not being the biggest fan of Haywood’s robotic moves while he was in D.C., I did admire his ability to communicate with teammates as a defensive anchor in the paint. JaVale, on the other hand, is having none of that; I recall seeing him communicate on defense two, maybe three times in my life. Epic Vale will get a couple highlight dunks versus the old Mavs, but his team won’t make winning basketball plays.
In early mid-April (the 12th to be exact), when asked as part of an ESPN.com 5-on-5 roundtable which NBA star would have his legacy enhanced the most in the 2011 Playoffs, I wrote:
“The health of Andrew Bynum won’t affect Dirk Nowitzki’s hunger, but Nowitzki’s stomach did just growl. One could argue that Dirk’s legacy has the deepest hole from which to climb. Since blowing a 2-0 series lead on Miami in the 2006 Finals, the Mavericks have been bounced in the first round of the playoffs in three of the past four seasons. A championship isn’t wholly necessary to repair Dirk’s playoff legacy, but if Dallas fails to make the Finals, he may have to live with the label of a regular-season MVP who can’t come through in the postseason.”
Now, I’m not here to exactly toot my own horn as a prognosticator of all things basketball — seeing as I predicted last year’s Wizards to achieve 34 wins (only off by 11 wins), and the bastardly 2009-10 Wizards to achieve 55 wins (yes, I was off by a whole 29 wins here… like I said, “bastardly”) — however, in the same ESPN poll, in reponse to a query on the most surprising thing that would happen in the Western Conference playoffs, I wrote:
“It won’t be surprising when each of the top four seeds in the West move into the second round with relative ease. Nor will it be surprising when the conference semifinals and finals all get pushed to seven games. What will be surprising is when the Dallas Mavericks come out on top in the West and Mark Cuban holds a party for all his friends in the media.”
["What he did? Told them he cut his eye ... in sparring." -Wu-Tang Clan, Bells of War]
I kept telling myself, even Tweeting, when Miami was looking like unstoppable beasts for all but about seven minutes of NBA Finals game two, “Is Dallas the type of team you don’t want to let hang around?”
Of course they are. The Mavs are a unit well-versed in veteran composure, lest they would have had a seven game series with the Oklahoma City Thunder. But Miami isn’t Oklahoma, in so many senses.
Late in the game, after countless amazing dunks with little defensive resistance, Miami finally pulled away and took an 88-73 lead on a Dwayne Wade three. After nailing the shot near Dallas’ bench, Wade held his follow through and slowly walked toward his own bench, as Mavs coach Rick Carlisle had called a timeout. LeBron came over to give Wade celebratory chest jabs.
At that point, we all thought it was just about over… and I’m taking the entire series, not just the game. I wasn’t quite traveling toward the doomsday scenario of the Heat shutting down league competition (lockout and team parity be damned) with unforeseen future domination, but figured that they were the scariest, most unimaginable basketball animals alive and the Mavericks were simply prey in their territory.
What if I told you that two seven-footers battled this summer for a chance to play center for Team USA at the FIBA World Basketball Championships in Turkey? That the older one coming off surgery made the team, while the younger, healthier one was cut? Those same two players met earlier this year, and the one who got cut from Team USA was again dominated by the older, wiser center. Would it be a surprise if I told you that these same two centers squared off Saturday night, and again the younger center came up short, partially because the older one beat him at his own game in running up and down the court, catching alley-oops and making highlight dunks?
This is the story of Tyson Chandler’s dominance over JaVale McGee.
Chandler came into Saturday’s game against the Wizards averaging 10.7 points an 9.5 rebounds and proceeded to score a season-high 23 points to go along with his 13 rebounds. He also had a key offensive rebound and put back over McGee with 1:36 left in the game that put a stop to a furious Wizards’ comeback run and gave the Mavericks the lead for good. In contrast, McGee, who had a monster game the night before against the Miami Heat with 18 points and 17 rebounds, had just six points to go with his 11 rebounds against Dallas. To make matters worse, most of Chandler’s dunks came as a result of McGee’s defensive negligence. McGee often got caught watching the ball while Chandler consistently and easily rolled to the basket.
It late in the third quarter against the Dallas Mavericks and Washington made a quick 7-0 run sparked by a John Wall layup, a Kevin Seraphin offensive rebound put-back and a Mo Evans three from the corner. The Wizards cut Dallas’ once comfortable lead to just four points at 76-72 and then got Jason Terry to miss a three with 30 seconds left in the period. But on Washington’s next possession, Wall turned the ball over and the Mavericks went breaking in the other direction with a seemingly easy opportunity. The old Wizards might have just let Shawn Marion get the bucket, spawned by their often seen habit of displaying a willingness to lay down for a superior opponent. Not newcomer Evans though.
Mo Evans has made a name for himself as a tough role player for playoff teams in Sacramento, Detroit, Los Angeles (for the Lakers, obviously), Orlando and Atlanta over the previous two seasons. He played for Wizards coach Flip Saunders on the 2005-06 Pistons team and as an undrafted rookie with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2004-05.
As Marion glided down the court, the third quarter clock ticking with less than five seconds left, Evans tracked him down and wrapped him up. In the NBA of the past, such a foul was meant to not let the other team get something easy. They were a message sent to not take a team lightly, and in the Wizards’ case, that they weren’t just to be looked at as a bad, young, inexperienced squad.
[Brendan Haywood has a lot of reasons to smile now, even if he is just getting 17 minutes off the bench, and sometimes struggling, for the Dallas Mavericks. Winning and a playoff future helps a lot.]
[Andray Blatche, on the other hand, is going through a lot of personal struggles, mostly on the court which has bleed into off-the-court moments, which are magnified by losing. Blatche has missed the last two games because of what's being noted as a hip injury and was unable to face Haywood on the court on Saturday night.]
Brendan Haywood walked into the Wizards locker room to see some familiar faces. Most of them weren’t Wizards players. He greeted a couple team personnel of various sorts and then looked across the room to where his locker used to be.
“It’s a little different being in the visitor’s locker room,” Haywood told me from the locker room of the Washington Mystics, where the road team is hosted in the Verizon Center, before he later made his way over to his former haunt. “But the team has changed so much that it’s not as big of a culture shock as you might think because there’s only three guys on that team that I even played with. So that makes it a little bit, I guess, ‘easier’.”
Andray Blatche does some good things, he does some terrible things … on the basketball court and off. He also has mounting armies of detractors and slightly less factions of defenders, who usually elect to stand on the tippy-toe of one leg in their staunch defense.
I suppose that as long as Andray Blatche is around doing Andray Blatche things, people will around to criticize and point those things out, myself included. Although, admittedly, I should be more fair in pointing out the positive things he does, i.e., I probably should not have taken a shot at him in a post about Darrell Walker’s rebounding ability. Oh well. We want Blatche to succeed, we really do, but he seems to try hard at not making that want possible through not always trying hard … you know what I mean?
His positives get over-shadowed by his negatives, by far. But that’s the bed he makes … he’s not the next Gilbert Arenas, but he is. Only Blatche can shut his critics up, not the critics themselves nor his defenders. These are the facts, just like it’s a fact that many other NBA players do not respect Blatche. Taken from something TAI’s Rashad Mobley wrote after the Wizards lost to the Chicago Bulls in Washington on Dec. 22:
“But the strongest indictment of the Blatche’s play on this night did not come from any writer, blogger or coach, but from the other locker room. As Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau finished his postgame comments and the media filtered into the visiting quarters, there was a conversation between two Bulls players about the play of Blatche. One player observed that he played with “no feeling” during the game, and the other player said, matter-of-fact, that Blatche has always played that way throughout his career.
One player involved in that conversation left the locker room before I could follow up with him, the other declined to elaborate any further on the record. Still, their feelings about Blatche’s lack of effort in defeat were crystal clear.”
Blatche has made Wizards fans gasp at his play plenty of times … but isn’t it about time someone from the opposing bench gasps, and not laughs, at Andray? I think so. Let’s go to the video tape … keep your eye on the Mavericks bench and your ears in tune to what the last suited gentlemen to the left is doing, the one right next to balding Brian Cardinal.
When the name Denny Green is mentioned, the first image that comes to mind is the one you see above, and with good reason. He’s flustered, he’s angry, he’s mumbling, and after 40 seconds or so, he stomps away from the podium. But five years before that outburst, Green had every reason to be just as angry when he was fired by the Minnesota Vikings, despite leading them to the brink of the Super Bowl just three years earlier. However, at his I-just-got-fired press conference, Green displayed nothing but class (with a splash of third person):
“If you’re looking for Denny Green, look on the high road, because that is where I’ll be.”
The same concept applies when examining the Washington Wizards 24th straight road loss to the Dallas Mavericks last night. It is easy, and dare I say lazy, to focus on the list of errors that led to their 102-92 defeat. Everyone saw their 61.3-percent free throw percentage (Dallas shot 67.6-percent), the poor shooting nights for Andray Blatche and Nick Young (a combined 10-37), and the lack of a consistent go-to guy in the fourth quarter. Those shortcomings, and others very similar to them, have been present throughout this road losing streak.
That being said, there were plenty of positives to take away from last night’s loss, and if they are bottled up and carried into tonight’s game in New Orleans against the Hornets, perhaps the Wizards can get a win before they get loss number 25. So join me on the high road as we examine a few positives a bit closer.
Overall, the Wizards looked impressive en route to an “it’s just the preseason” 97-94 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night (although they almost gave the game away). Here’s who looked good, bad and okay in yays, nays and mehs.
John Wall. 21 points, nine assists, two turnovers and four steals in about 38 minutes. I guess it will do, statistically.
[Rodrigue Beaubois stands annoyed after another foul was called on him.]
Before the game I ran my mouth off to just about anyone who would listen at UNLV’s Cox Pavilion that I was intrigued by the Roddy-Wall match-up, clearly, a Samhan-McGee ‘opposites attract’ battle, and finally, perhaps Hamady N’diaye versus Moussa Seck in a Senegalese throw down.
Well, Beaubois couldn’t do anything but foul Wall and was switched off him, the newly acquired Ian Mahinmi started for Dallas and mostly guarded JaVale, and Seck didn’t even see the court. Damn the summer league (just kidding, I love you).
Two things are below: 1) quick post-game chats with John Wall, Rodrigue Beaubois and Dominique Jones in video form; and 2) the second piece by Arish Narayen, a contributor to Truth About It. Arish previously broke down the Wizards’ small forward situation. Here he takes a look at summer league game three against the Mavericks.
Mike Prada of Bullets Forever writes “the” definitive piece on Caron Butler’s 2009-10 season, but with some historical perspective as well. Below I’ve put a great quote from the article, but the whole thing, “Caron Butler was a big part of the problem with the 2009/10 Wizards,” is much longer and is really a must-read.
So what’s the theme of Caron Butler’s season? It’s very hard to function when you’re dogged by resentment and dreams of personal success. Butler has moved on to Dallas, where he’s now shooting more than Dirk Nowitzki and generally wasting possessions like he did in DC. His game has declined with age, sure, much like other 29-year olds who have been as injury-prone as him.
But this is not your typical decline. Much like Kevin Garnett, Butler has declined while kicking and screaming about the wonder days that were. He’s the last person to accept the fact that he isn’t the player he once was. He never figured it out in DC and he doesn’t appear to have figured it out in Dallas. Worse, his decline was accelerated by lingering resentment of his co-star that only grew when that co-star started missing games. That co-star is now on a different team, but Butler still stubbornly pushes on, trying to show he deserved his past status.
And really, this is a story about how precious one’s state of mind is in this game. Butler went from being one of the league’s most unselfish and professional players to one with too big an opinion of himself that resented his teammates. It was a dramatic shift and it couldn’t have happened to a more unexpected guy. If it can happen to Butler, it can happen to anyone.
Doing some spring cleaning while watching the NBA playoffs on Sunday, I found myself ripping off covers of old ESPN The Magazines and trashing the rest, but not before quickly flipping through to make sure nothing was keep-able.
Times were different in December 2007. Well, not so much for Wizards fans. The turmoil was just getting started with the news that Gilbert Arenas would be having a second surgery on his knee just two weeks old. That December 3rd edition of ESPN The Magazine ironically had part of an NBA advertisement featuring a picture of Arenas and the words, “Where I’m back happens.”
In that same edition, which had Terrell Owens giving Tony Romo ‘bunny ears’ on the cover (Jason Witten was in the picture too), was the above ‘Got Milk?’ advertisement featuring two former Dallas Mavericks, coach Avery Johnson and player Josh Howard.
December 2007 represented some of the last days of NBA harmony for each Howard and Johnson. The Mavericks as a one-seed lost to the eight-seed Warriors the previous Spring, an ’06-07 season where Howard also represented the Mavs in the NBA All-Star game. But from there, it would go further downhill.
The Mavs finished ’07-08 as a seven-seed in the West, losing to the New Orleans Hornets in the first round. Johnson was fired days later. Howard would subsequently go through a tumultuous six-month span in 2008, including some off-court incidents that severely damaged his public image.
{flickr/Keith Allison}
I’ve written about Caron Butler and Josh Howard being different players off the court. But what about on the court? To get the best perspective, I turned to Rob Mahoney of the ESPN TrueHoop Network Dallas Mavericks blog, The Two Man Game. In addition to his Mavs blog, Rob does great work all over the internet, including his contributions to Hardwood Paroxysm and NBC’s Pro Basketball Talk.
Below is the question I asked Rob about Howard and his answer, and then my response to his question about Butler.
Tell me about Josh Howard. I know about all of his off-court stuff. I know about some of his “can’t control what the ball do” statements regarding on-court stuff. I know about a debate between you and Mike Fisher of DallasBasketball.com over whether Cuban and the Mavs were coddling/babying Howard too much. Any other reasons why Howard fell so far from grace in Dallas? Did you get any indication that he was a disturbance in the locker room? Or can his down year mostly be attributed to injury issues? The Wizards likely see J-Ho as just an expiring contract, but he certainly will play. How healthy is he now? How motivated do you think he will be to contribute to his new, yet very, very bad, team?
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