The position of team captain was an unstable one last year, especially after the trade winds when Earl Boykins and Mike Miller were pegged as the team leaders/representatives with the referees.
Slightly different story for 2010-11 …
On Monday afternoon, when I asked Flip Saunders who had arisen to fill the team captain position(s) this year, he sounded pretty confident that 20-year old John Wall and soon-to-be 30-year old Kirk Hinrich would be his men.
“Right now we’ve gone with Hinich and Wall. Those are the two guys, at this point, that have shown leadership through camp. So that’s where we’re at right now,” said the coach.
And about Arenas? …
“We just haven’t really talked,” said Saunders. “Those two guys have been our two most vocal guys and our two guys that have shown leadership.”
Once, when asked about what his team would look like in the coming season, whether it would be more offensively minded, and how it would keep up the intensity on the defensive end, Flip Saunders said:
Well, defensively, the team always takes the personality of their players. The players we have here … are very defensive oriented. The strength of this team from a defensive aspect – how hard they play and how aggressively they play won’t change. What will change is the changing defenses we’ll use, being able to change the tempo of the game will full-court pressure, half-court traps and defenses. Offensively, like our defense, we will always stay aggressive. I always want my teams to attack, and so we will look to push the ball more and score more out of our fast break.
And on whether he would try to evolve a player into a superstar or continue with the teamwork mentality:
In Minnesota, even though we had a great player in Garnett, the team was built on team play. I look for this team to continue that. This team will move the basketball, become a high-assist, low-turnover team playing a very aggressive style.
This was in the summer of 2005, before Saunders’ Detroit Pistons finished with the best record in the NBA at 64-18, and before they lost to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.
I’ve taken a bunch of pictures while at summer league. The more the merrier is what I say. And I’ll have more to come soon, but the one below is my favorite so far. It was taken just after the Wizards played their second game against the Clippers. The photo is a little blurry because it was taken with more motion (from me and the subjects) than I’d planned for, but I think it turned out just fine. Notice the serious looks on the faces of Flip Saunders on the left and Sam Cassell to the barely right, as if “it’s just summer league.” And then notice how John Wall is just enjoying life.
“Having been from Cleveland and everything we’ve gone through, you’d like to see your hometown do well, so I’m disappointed from that standpoint.”
-Flip Saunders
Yep, ol’ Flip is from Cleveland. But you probably already knew that. The high school All-American and 1973 Ohio Class A Player of the Year averaged 32 points per game during his senior year at Cuyahoga Heights, a school located in the burbs of the Mistake By The Lake.
Actually, my bad. I shouldn’t make fun of Cleveland. Even though Cavs fans lined up by the miles to witness and laugh at the Wizards after the Arenas gun fiasco and the rest of the implosion (including gladly taking the Gentleman Jamison), I cannot laugh at them at this moment. I feel very, very bad for those guys. And with that I say, ‘Join me people of Cleveland, in your distaste for Lebron.’
One quick question … who’s now more indefensible, LeBron or DeShawn Stevenson?
What? Too soon?
Meh, here’s video of Flip Saunders talking about Cleveland and the whole James ordeal.
While Ted Leonsis was getting all the attention today, and deservedly so, there’s also a team being built. Flip Saunders usually isn’t made available to the media before or after pre-draft workouts, so today’s press conference was a good chance to catch up with Saunders and get his thoughts on the process leading up to June 24th.
I asked Flip, with John Wall reportedly set to workout for the Wizards on June 17th, if they’ve scheduled Evan Turner or any other top prospect. So far, the Wizards have hosted more on-the-cusp players who might be available at 30 and 35 or go undrafted.
Saunders deferred to Milt Newton, vice president of player personnel, but later indicated that the Wizards have talked to Turner’s people. The coach also said the Wizards would probably have seven more days of pre-draft workouts with five or six guys each day.
On the process of trying to get players to come workout, Saunders said:
“Some of it’s not of our choosing. Players don’t have to come in if they don’t want to. Some players, either through word of mouth or their agent, don’t think they’re going to have an opportunity. And I’m not talking about the No. 1 pick, we’ve had guys who we’d like to look at, at maybe No. 30, that we can’t get in because they don’t think they’re going to be there.
Most NBA coaches probably still get out on the court to shoot a couple buckets every now and then. Not to say they go out of their way, but there’s always time before or after a practice, or after working out NBA draft hopefuls. And some, a select few, might even try a behind-the-back, through-the-legs layup, which we wouldn’t mind seeing, even if they missed.
Flip Saunders, Cuyahoga Heights’ Finest, did just that after Wednesday’s Wizards pre-draft workout, something only 50% of the head coaches in the NBA Finals can do — well, I’m making an assumption based on Phil Jackson’s two hip replacement surgeries and his giant sideline chair.
Flip may struggle with trick shots, but he hasn’t lost the shooting touch that once made him Ohio’s Class-A High School Player of the Year and a pretty good player at the University of Minnesota. Let’s watch the coach in action …
For the record, someone asked Flip if he was going to finish on a miss. He just kinda shrugged his shoulders, laughed it off and said something I couldn’t exactly hear.
Some are saying that John Wall in a Wizards uniform should mean the end of Gilbert Arena. They assume the two are incapable of co-existing.
Matt Moore of Pro Basketball Talk and Hardwood Paroxysm makes a solid argument using statistics. On PBT Moore cites Arenas’ high usage rate, and on HP he uses Synergy Sports to outline the types of solo offensive plays involving Arenas last season. Both pieces highlight valid concerns that a Wall-Arenas backcourt will not work because they both need the ball in their hands.
Moore also alludes that the Wizards’ locker room is likely still poisoned and assumes there’s little chance Arenas will emerge from his mess a man changed for the better … and that this would obviously be a bad situation to bring Wall into.
“…rest assured that the Wizards will work harder than ever to find a trade for Arenas. It won’t be easy with the $80 million left on Arenas’ contract; they’ll have to take back someone else’s issues. Philadelphia’s Elton Brand, perhaps? Nevertheless, the Wizards will give Wall a locker on one side of the room with Arenas completely across the way. Truth be told, there will be tension between the old and new guard until Arenas is moved.”
I recently received a copy of “The Business of Happiness: 6 Secrets to Extraordinary Success in Life and Work,” by Ted Leonsis, the soon-to-be full owner of the Washington Wizards. I’ve yet to delve into reading, but I get the premise: true success is making money from doing something you enjoy while allowing for yourself and those around you (family, friends and employees/co-workers) to be happy. Doesn’t sound like the easiest task in the world given the constraints of our society today, but that’s why Leonsis wrote the book, to help others understand what he has learned.
“The Business of Happiness” could also apply to the upcoming free-agency of Shaun Livingston. It would certainly make Wizards fans and Flip Saunders happy if Ernie Grunfeld found a way to retain the revitalized guard at a fair price. And it goes unquestioned that Livingston’s basketball presence would also be good for business. But it will ultimately be Shaun’s decision to make, what really matters is his business of happiness.
The guy obviously wants, and needs, to get paid. When you’ve been through a devastating injury like Livingston has, you want some career security, especially when the 24-year old’s athletic skills will continue to diminish with age. But before we get into the balance of playing basketball as a profession and making as much money as possible while putting yourself in a situation to succeed, let’s rewind to look at the player-coach relationship that developed between Livingston and Saunders toward the end of the season.
The Wizards never really had a chance against the Utah Jazz Saturday night. The hope for victory was akin to a 15-seed wanting to beat a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament, especially since both Al Thornton and Randy Foye didn’t play because of injury.
This team just doesn’t have the talent to compete right now. They are not tanking. They are out there with the desire to work together to win. That is, I don’t get the impression that guys are playing for themselves so much, unlike before the big trades.
The players are just trying to learn and Flip Saunders is just trying to teach. Speaking of, before the game Saunders said that he put in a new offense a couple days ago; an offense with the intent to get more cutting opportunities for perimeter players and to get the big men working closer to the basket.
“The offense we ran, the first unit we had out there played pretty well with it. We had a lot of open shots and moved the ball well, had a lot of assists,” said Saunders after his team went down 103-87 to Utah, dropping their record to 21-51. “We turned to our second unit, we have too many role players playing. Now some of those role players have to be thrust where they have to become main scorers and they’re not comfortable as far as doing that.”
Although the Wizards got expectantly man-handled by the Jazz, the game also represented just the thirteenth time in 72 games that Washington totaled over 20 assists while having 12 or less turnovers.
Before tonight’s Wizards-Jazz game, Flip Saunders came out to talk to the media reminiscent of Johnny Cash. The coach was dressed to the nines in all black, well, until he put on his contrasting gray sport coat on for the game. One thing you can say, this season has certainly been a Ring of Fire for Saunders.
New Offense
Since the last Wizards home game against Charlotte, and the Andray Blatche affair, Blatche, to the extent that I’ve noticed, has made more of an effort to operate closer to the basket on offense, something Coach Saunders has implored him to do since early January, at least. I asked Flip about this before the game.
“We instituted/kinda put in a new offense that would make it more conducive for some of our bigger players to stay more around the basket and try to give our perimeter people more cutting opportunities, taking pressure off Andray around the basket where there wouldn’t be as many trap type situations,” said the coach, also mentioning that this new(ish) offense was instituted two days ago.
Believe it or not, Flip Saunders is a relieved man. Out the door are the failed expectations of the previously constructed team. Now he can get back to what he likes to do, teaching.
Watch the Wizards coach on the sidelines now. He’s taking time to talk to his young players immediately after subbing them out the game. He’s pointing and instructing, imploring his students to do the same with each other. It’s not like Flip wasn’t giving it his coaching all before, it’s just that now he doesn’t have to stand by while the fruits of his labor go untrusted by inflexible veterans whose play insisted they knew better.
“Well, I could always apply for a job as an air traffic controller,” said Saunders when asked how his in-game teaching has increased after the Wizards’ flurry of recent trades. Since, his team has gone 3-1, defeating the Chicago Bulls 101-95 on Monday night. “As a coach, that’s what you kind of enjoy. You live for those types of things, especially when you have a group that we have. They want to learn. So when you tell them something, they’re trusting. When you get your players to trust what you’re doing, what happens is they do it a lot more aggressively and you usually have a little better outcome.”
You wouldn’t immediately know it, but that’s a pretty damning statement about the past regime of players. When Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, and even Gilbert Arenas for a brief time were the offensive cogs, lack of trust, in terms of the system and each other, was the prevalent theme as to why a team with high pre-season expectations just wasn’t clicking. “Selfish basketball,” is the idea team president Ernie Grunfeld has opted for in several recent public statements.
This morning I wrote a piece on grading Flip Saunders for ESPN’s Daily Dime; I’ve included it below. I gave Saunders a C-minus up to this point of the season. Now it’s your turn to grade him. Giving the coach an ‘A’ is not an option, as should be the case.
Grading Flip Saunders
This piece originally appeared on the February 11, 2010 of ESPN’s Daily Dime.,
In his Wednesday Per Diem, John Hollinger listed the Wizards as one of the NBA season’s biggest disappointments, scathingly calling them out individually and collectively. Hollinger pulled no punches, denoting some as selfish, some as clueless, and even dubbing worthless, Fabricio Oberto, a seemingly innocent bystander of Washington’s unimaginable season.
A framed picture of Gilbert Arenas making a goofy face, surely the reason why Antawn Jamison is laughing, still hangs outside of the entrance to the training room from the Wizards’ locker room.
Flip Saunders, 600 and counting …
Before asking Flip Saunders the first question at Saturday’s post-game presser, I congratulated the coach on his 600th NBA career win. He begrudgingly acknowledged the feat by saying, “It just shows that I’ve been in the league a long time.”
“It’s scary because we’re not that far away, yet we are far away,” said Saunders after the victory over Sacramento. You have to feel for the coach. He certainly thought he was getting into a better situation in Washington, and surely didn’t think it would take 39 games to achieve the 13 wins he needed to get to 600.
Before they lost to the Thunder and before Flip Saunders got extremely perturbed, bumping a 40-game evaluation period down to 30 games when it was originally 20 games, I asked various Wizards what was their favorite present that they gave someone else for Christmas/the holidays. Several of them, such as Dominic McGuire, Fabricio Oberto, Mike James, Mike Miller, JaVale McGee, Nick Young, Andray Blatche, Caron Butler, and Gilbert Arenas answered.
It’s just Wizards being Wizards y’all.
At 10-20, with more than a record’s reason to be distraught, i.e., read this piece on Hardwood Paroxysm by Matt Moore, people ask me if it’s hard covering the team. I say …
1) I’ll always love the Wizards.
2) For the reason(s) below, being around this team will continue to be fun. {And we must remember, even though they get paid a lot^4 more money than you and me, they are people too. Not basketball playing robots. That being said, I wish the Wizards would start earning their goddamn salary. (So does Flip Saunders, more from Thursday’s practice to come.)}
There were several interesting quotes from the Wizards about themselves in Michael Lee’s report from Minneapolis on Wizards Insider. I’m unsure if it’s more frustrating that they actually realize what they’re doing wrong. Let’s first read a quote from Flip Saunders:
“Guys have to be disciplined. They have to be willing to turn down a shot at time. Tonight, we had no shot discipline. Tonight, it was, ‘I haven’t taken a shot, so I’m going to shoot it.’ when you do that, you shoot 38 percent from the field.”
A reoccurring theme … the players not trusting, or deviating from, Saunders’ offense. Lets see what Antawn Jamison had to say:
“We played selfish basketball at times. On the road, you can’t do that. I don’t care who you’re playing against.”
I’d also like to add that you can’t do that at home either, but yes, another reoccurring theme. Saunders has put such selfishness more nicely before, calling it ‘hero basketball’.
players and to get the big men working closer to the basket.
