Ok, so we’ve scanned JaVale McGee’s barcode tat and concluded that on offense, when he tries to do things himself, he fares poorly. But when he plays with teammates, he excels. I’m slightly simplifying … yet combining both stats and my personal observations from watching him all year and coming to a more than reasonable conclusion.

Now, let’s scan again to see what we come up with for McGee from a defensive perspective.

It’s no secret that JaVale needs to gain strength. Some of that will come if he puts in the work. Some of that will come naturally as he fills into his long frame. He also needs to learn more discipline in realizing that he can play better defense AND still be an intimidating shot blocker while not being so ready to leave his feet.

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After Tuesday’s game against the Rockets, James Singleton said, “After every game I go home and watch film. I look at more of the negatives than the positives because the positives are going to happen. But the negatives you want to keep to a small minimum.”

And while there isn’t any adjusting I can personally do for this Washington Wizards basketball team, these screen-shot posts tend to focus on the negatives for the same reason outlined by Singleton. The positives are going to happen because that’s what the Wizards are trying to do. I want to know when they weren’t trying. And away we go…

“This” guy.

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[Editor's Note: Rashad Mobley has reported on the Wizards with media credentials since the 2008-09 season for Hoops Addict. He occasionally contributes to Truth About It.net, providing excellent analysis and a different perspective from his up-close coverage of the team.]

Less than 24 hours after he arrived in Washington D.C., newly-acquired Washington Wizards forward Al Thornton held court in front of the locker previously occupied by DeShawn Stevenson.  He had just led his team in scoring with 21 points on 7-of-12 shooting, and the Wizards defeated the playoff-bound Denver Nuggets.  Under normal circumstances, the members of the media would be focusing on how he was able to score so easily, or how hectic things had been for him recently.

But that wasn’t completely the case.

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The Wizards headed into the All-Star break with a close loss in Charlotte on Tuesday, ultimately thanks to a tough game-winning shot by Raymond Felton that put the Bobcats up 94-92 with 1.6 seconds left. Losing should come as no surprise. After all, the Wizards are 17-33. But hey, commend the team for appearing to try and for playing a decent Charlotte team down to the wire on their home court, where they are now 19-6.

The Wizards did some good things in the game. But since it was a loss, it’s probably more telling to concentrate on the bad things they did, which, when added up, contributed more to them losing than any of the good things contributed to them coming close to winning … if any of that makes sense. Hence, let’s take a look as some stories and screen shots highlighting instances where things went wrong.

A Butler That Is A Matador

Whether you play in the NBA or just at your local court, when you get the ball stolen from you, your pride is hurt. And you want to redeem yourself. Some don’t even try and simply commit a frustration foul. Some gamble like a hero for an almost unattainable steal. Some just bite the bullet and play good defense, knowing their time for redemption will come with hard work.

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Ok, maybe “argue” is a strong word. Perhaps it was a disagreement … a contention … a discussion … a conversation. Whatever it was, Brendan Haywood and Antawn Jamison certainly weren’t on the same page regarding defense for a moment toward the end of the second quarter against the Cavs on Wednesday.

I couldn’t quite hear all of the audio that goes with the scene above, I just know it began with a quizzical point by Jamison followed by Haywood putting his hands in the air in a defense manner and saying “I don’t know,” several times before getting his ‘I DO know’ point across. The players then moved on with the basketball game.

Now, I don’t profess to know much about the scheming and assignments in Flip Saunders’ defense. So, let’s take a screen-shot look at the play in question.

The Wizards seem to be in a match-up containment zone looking thing. Boykins is playing in the passing lane, facing West, but not up on him. Haywood steps out, seemingly to contain West. Read more »

After Saturday’s Spurs game, reader Joe Sill emailed me some praise about Nick Young. And with perfect timing, Young put together a very solid 21 point effort on 9-14 FGs last night in a win against the 76ers, his plus-15 second best to that of Gilbert Arenas. Young came off the bench in the first half, started the second half in place of Andray Blatche, and overall did some nice things defensively.

Below is what Joe wrote about Nick and emailed to me this past Sunday.

The Milwaukee Bucks game seems like it was ages ago. And when deciding which aspect of the game to break down, I was conflicted at first. Should it be what happened after Gilbert Arenas went down at the 7:12 mark in the fourth quarter, specifically, the 9-0 run that occurred in the two minutes after that?

Naw, why focus on the positive? This team will only improve if they continue to recognize and remember what went wrong. And with the Wizards, there’s usually a lot to choose from. What obviously came to mind was the 32 points scored by Michael Redd, his first 30+ point effort since January 16, 2009.

If I posed to question to you, ‘Who was responsible for letting Redd have his way on the offensive end, including him getting to the free-throw line so much, where he went 15-15?,’ you would probably say, ‘Randy Foye.’ And I would say, ‘You are a correct, astute observer of the Wizards, sir.’

Everyone is certainly happy that Foye has recently arisen from the depths or irrelevancy … probably not enough for Ernie Grunfeld to retain him after the season … but there’s a lot of season left and victories in the small battles are worth feeling good about. Still, Foye is a poor perimeter defender, and the Wizards have a plethora of inefficient perimeter defenders.

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Why is Gilbert Arenas always so ready to give up a foul after he or his team commits a turnover?

Why is Caron Butler always shuffling/switching his pivot foot when he catches the ball, leading to a travel?

Why are the Wizards entrenched in bad communication, often running into each other on pick and roll defense?

This team is surrounded by a lot of questions, these are just some examples. The quandary of this bad Washington Wizards team won’t simply be resolved by ‘when Mike Miller becomes healthy’, ‘when Gilbert Arenas gets his mentality back’ or ‘when Flip Saunders is able to reign in his players to properly run his offense’.

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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

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{flickr/Keith Allison}

The Wizards aren’t particularly bad at defense, but are much further from being particularly good. They rank 20th in the league at Defensive Efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions). At least they don’t seem as bad at defending as in the past, but clearly there’s room for improvement.

What makes this 20th ranking “not as bad” (I suppose) is that defense is not something you can’t definitively point to and say, “That’s why the Wizards are bad.” Yep, our ol’ friend defense can rest a little now that he’s out of the limelight. For a change, he can do some finger-pointing … because there are several reasons why the Wizards are 5-10.

One reason that’s been often talked about is the offensive discord of the two main stars, Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler. Mike Prada has a piece about the statistical ills of Arenas and Butler posted on Bullets Forever. He writes:

The problem is that the two most important parts are underperforming, significantly.  Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler have each been a shell of themselves all month, and that’s all you need to know about the Wizards this season.  It’s like saying all parts of your car are working fine … except the engine and the brakes.  If your engine and your brakes aren’t working, chances are your car is screwed.  If your two best players aren’t performing, then you’re toast as a basketball team.

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