Posts for category ‘Indiana Pacers’

{Immediately after giving him pre-game a fist-bump, Flip Saunders gave his embattled 23-year old forward a pat on the backside.}

How about we talk about some basketball for a change? I mean, that is why we all are here, right? Seems like nothing but bad, non-basketball court related Wizards news to talk about lately. Well, aside from the impending Ted Leonsis takeover. But let’s get back on the court and talk some roundball!

Oh wait … the Wizards are in the midst of a 13-game losing streak, the worst in franchise history and the third time such a streak has occurred.

Dan Steinberg put out a great account of the previous 13-game losing streak on the DC Sports Bog, my favorite is loss number five,  which involved a personal 11-2 run by the Miami Heat’s Khalid Reeves. My favorite loss from this current 13-game losing streak would have to be loss number three against the Celtics in Boston … you know, the JaVale McGee ‘Fish Out of Water’ game.

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The below piece originally appeared in ESPN’s NBA Daily Dime on March 25, 2010. Click the link for the full version available on ESPN.com.

{Flip Saunders and Andray Blatche exchange a fist-bump prior to Wednesday’s game against the Indiana Pacers.}

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Andray Blatche has had quite a past 36 hours. He went from NBA Most Improved Player candidate, well, at least according to Tuesday’s pre-game fliers handed out by the Wizards’ marketing team, to only playing seven minutes that night against Charlotte and sulking on the bench, to being accused by Flip Saunders of not wanting to play nor be coached, to hitting the D.C. sports media circuit on Wednesday, defending himself and calling his coach’s charges a bold-faced lie, to starting last night in Indiana, leading his team in scoring with 21 points in a 99-82 loss to the Pacers.

Yep, quite an eventful 36.

More curious to most is not how Blatche responded on the court after such a tumultuous run, but how he was not suspended for the game against Indiana after his prior actions. Whether Blatche really refused to go back into Tuesday’s game against the Bobcats as his coach originally indicated remains a “he said, he said” situation. But the fact which Blatche cannot contest is that when his coaches tried to talk to him, he refused and planted himself at the end of the bench.

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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.

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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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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

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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).

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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.

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It’s baffling how for the second game in a row the Wizards came out flat and lacking energy. You’d think that with the sour taste of a 19-win season still fresh, this team would play like they have something to prove. Guess not. Against the Pacers, the poor effort continued for the duration of the game as the Wizards fell 102-86.

So what is the reason? Is it still a matter of everyone getting used to their roles and flow in a new offensive system? Is it still a “process”?

The effort part is clearly on the players, evident by the strewn candy dishes and honeydew melon that resulted from Antawn Jamison’s post game tirade.

Flip Saunders seemed to be as confused about how to maneuver his team as anyone (which immediately conjured up images of Charlie in “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” in my mind — just see seconds 15-18 in the clip below).

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Caron will have his work cut out for him in trying to guard Danny Granger tonight. And the best way to combat a guy averaging 23 points per game (tied for 16th in the NBA)? Attack, attack, and attack him on offense.

Granger has been mad lately. He evidently stormed off without talking to the media after the Pacers lost to the Nuggets on Tuesday. The next night, he came back and scored 21 points on 7-18 from the field in win against the Knicks.

But things still aren’t all that great for last year’s Most Improved Player. He’s been struggling with an injury to his right heel (bone bruise), and some say he hasn’t been able to get good lift on his jumper … this is evident by his 40.3% from the field and a True Shooting Percentage (TS%) of .534 in four games this season.

Caron Butler, as we know, isn’t faring much better on offense. He’s shooting 39.6% from the field (.473 TS%). He missed the Wizards’ home opener against the Nets (and most of the previous game in Atlanta) because of a bruised knee-cap, but his struggles aren’t believed to be of a physical derivation.

So what’s the deal with Tuff Juice? Why has he been getting caught “watching the show,” as he says?

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I mentioned the Bullets Forever idea of trading Mike James and Javaris Crittenton to Indiana for Travis Diener and Jeff Foster in the previous post, ‘Finding A Big Man For The Washington Wizards’ … which could quite possibly the first ‘two white men for two black men trade’ in the NBA in decades, if not ever.

Naturally, I wanted to get the opinion of a Pacers fan-blogger on the potential deal. Tom Lewis of Indy Cornrows was kind enough to weigh-in via email:

[The] proposed trade definitely makes sense from an emotionless nuts and bolts perspective. I do think the Pacers are willing to move Foster and with Mike James involved the team could have additional cap room next summer. Plus, as an added bonus, assuming Jarrett Jack does not re-sign and the team keeps A.J. Price in play, James may be a good mentor for the rook since both hail from Amityville, NY.

The Diener/Crittenton parts appear to be a wash. Diener is in the last year of his deal and Crittenton has a team option next summer. Crittenton has some known flaws, namely his ability to shoot the three and too many turnovers which are two areas Jim O’Brien values highly which he proved last season by moving T.J. Ford out of the starting lineup. The physical upside to Crittenton’s game would be worth the gamble though since the team could let him go after the season, not a bad worst-case scenario.

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I’m a huge Antawn Jamison fan. He’s a classy dude, I’ve nicknamed him ‘The Gentlemen’ (hasn’t caught on), and the women folk say he’s got eyebrows for days.

Jamison is the current patriarchal cornerstone of the franchise. This year’s team MVP? Unquestionably. He possesses the never-quit attitude that should be infecting the locker room via leadership by example … Jamison is quite the opposite of past clubhouse cancers, like Christian Laettner.

But sometimes, everyone needs to be questioned, Jamison being no exception.

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