On January 28, Bradley Beal struggled in a home game against the Sacramento Kings. He played 24 minutes and went 2-for-6 from the field. His sprained wrist was bothering him, a lot. After that night, Beal missed the next five games while recovering from injury.

Jordan Crawford was given a chance to step up against Sacramento, and in the subsequent thee-game road trip: Philadelphia, Memphis and San Antonio. Instead, the Wizards lost all four games (in which Garrett Temple started at the 2, not Jordan Crawford). During the losing streak, Crawford played 73 total minutes, went 8-for-27 from the field, 2-for-9 from beyond the arc, and 3-for-3 from the charity stripe. He scored 21 total points, dished out four assists, and committed seven turnovers.

Now, Jordan Crawford is a Washington Wizards outcast. How did it happen so fast? 

Crawford played extremely limited minutes in the two games after the Wizards returned to D.C. from San Antonio—five minutes in a win over the Clippers and six minutes in a win over the Knicks. He didn’t play at all in a February 8 home win over Brooklyn nor in a subsequent road win in Milwaukee. He couldn’t even get off the bench during a pitiful pre-All-Star break loss in Detroit, when the Wizards desperately needed scoring. And Crawford certainly didn’t play in the first game post-break, a pitiful loss against the Raptors at home. Didn’t act like he wanted to play.

Read more »

[via instagram/jcs_stelo]

12/1/12 – 12/31/12 20 6 5

— Jordan Crawford (@jcraw55) February 17, 2013

Read more »

h/t @jose3030

DeAndre Jordan’s bricked free throw versus the Lakers last Thursday night caused the following reactions from current and former members of the Wizards:

The worse free throw EVER

— Trevor Booker (@35_Fitz) February 15, 2013

D’Andre Jordan free throw he just missed might be Top 5 worst free throw miss EVER in NBA history #SMH

Read more »

“I’m somebody that likes to have my own style, and I call it ‘coolin’ ‘ when I’m doing what I do. I make it work.”

—John Wall, Feb. Interview with Sole Collector

[via Instagram/John_Wall]

Sort of halfway through kind of three seasons*, how is John Wall doing?

[*153 out of 199 possible games, one season being a 66-game,
lockout-shortened season in which Wall played in all 66.]

Read more »

picture by Adam McGinnis

It’s a label that no NBA player wants to see next to his name: DNP – Coach’s Decision. Washington Wizards forward Chris Singleton has found himself with that designation 15 times already this season. The second-year player appeared in each of Washington’s first 24 games—even starting eight times—until a home loss against Detroit Pistons on December 22, 2012. Over the Wizards’ next 21 games, he saw action in six of them for 30 total minutes.

In the six weeks since his bench status began, many Wizards observers have wondered what Singleton did to earn a stay in Randy Wittman’s dog house. I joked during the Wizards’ blowout win over Minnesota on January 25 that if it were a high school game, Singleton’s friends would start chants to put him in—he played three minutes of garbage time that evening. With Jan Vesely struggling to make an impact and Shelvin Mack being waived twice, Singleton’s demotion has highlighted the struggles of Ernie Grunfeld’s 2011 draft class. It’s an indictment of management when major pieces of the team’s youth movement might need to be scrapped in such a brief time. John Wall’s January 12 return has coincided with the Wizards finding success. The rotation became set and Singleton was still the odd man out. So we thought.

The Opportunity

Washington was riding a three-game losing streak and taking a pummeling by the Spurs in San Antonio on February 2. Singleton entered the contest with 1:17 left in second quarter, with Wizards being doubled up 48-24, and immediately missed a 20-foot shot. He began the second half on the bench. Normally, that might have been it for him.

Read more »

Boo this man?

As many (wicked) pixels about Andray Blatche that I have written and produced, I wasn’t exactly comfortable with hearing him booed Friday night as the Wizards handled the Brooklyn Nets in every way possible on the basketball court. And I was especially uneasy about the “An-dray Sucks!” chants at the end of the game. Just a little. It was all too evident from my position behind the television screen. Imagine if the Verizon Center were more fully attended. (If you can believe team-reported attendance figures—the biggest farce in professional sports—the VC was 96.6 percent full on Friday night.)

But of course, there I was. Happy to see “Baltche” miss dunks, even if the carnage did make me want to avert my eyes. Almost. There I was, content to see Blatche miss free throws (four in a row at one point late in the third quarter). There’s just something about Blatche being Blatche. Still, it’s hard to digest the comfort food via the guy who, almost purposely, never fulfilled his potential doing the same deeds as a Wizard.

The topic of booing Blatche became fodder for Saturday morning conversation with the future wifey. I suddenly found myself on the side of defending the boos.

“It’s sports.” “It comes with the territory of getting paid millions.” “Life—competition—needs villains.”

Read more »

“Yea, I got the braces done too … this season, everything is new. Everything is going to be fresh. Everything is going to be more exciting. You know, it will be good this year.”
—Andray Blatche, September 2009

[Don't call us, we won't call you. - photo via Adam McGinnis]

Under Avery Johnson’s coaching, Brooklyn stood at 14-14. Since he was fired in late-December, they are 15-6 under new coach P.J. Carlesimo, but they have lost four of their last seven—two on the road to Memphis and Houston and two at home to Orlando and the L.A. Lakers. Currently tied with the Bulls for the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference, Brooklyn can’t afford to falter against the Wizards tonight… before facing San Antonio, before going on the road to play the Pacers on Monday, before a hot Denver Nuggets team comes to the BK next Wednesday, and before the league heads into the All-Star break after that.

The Prince of Party has played a slightly diminished role under new leadership, removing the luster from those ready to anoint Blatche as the NBA’s Most Improved Player a quarter into the season. In his 21 games during the Carlesimo era, Blatche is playing 3.4 less minutes, taking 1.9 less shots, pulling down 1.1 less rebounds, and scoring 2.4 less points. All negligible, perhaps.

In consideration of the entire season, Blatche has spent 956 minutes on the court for the Nets over 49 games, and 1,421 minutes off the court. When Blatche rides the bench, Brooklyn shoots the ball 2.7 percent better, tallies 3.1 more assists, turns the ball over 1.5 times less, commits 2.5 less fouls, and scores four points more per 48 minutes.

Read more »

[Ed. Note: Lukas Kuba is TAI's Czech correspondent for
everything Czech/Jan Vesely/Tomas Satoransky-related. —Kyle W.]

Vesely’s baby sister, biggest Wizards fan. How could anybody hate on Honza? (pic via Jan Vesely’s Instagram)

“Honza had a few challenges in front of him before. Whether in his sporting or personal life. He did overcome them all and I believe he’ll cope with this one successfully, too.”
—Jan Vesely’s Dad, Jan Sr.

In late June of 2011, captivated and transfixed by the whole Jan Vesely “Dunking Ninja” a k a “The Flying Czech” a k a “Blake-Griffin-Is-The-American-Jan-Vesely” buzz/euphoria both in the Czech Republic and in the Serbian capital of Belgrade (not to mention among the Wizards faithful), I embarked on a little foolish journey—I decided to revive my dead blog with a translated post of an interview Vesely gave to the Czech media, semi-hoping someone would read it and say “Good job man, I enjoyed this.” By the dawn of the morning in Washington, D.C., the DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg unearthed the post and wrote about it, saying “… and with the Wizards now putting much stock in their newest first-round pick, Jan Vesely, someone’s gonna have to start monitoring the Czech media. The natural outlet would seem to be the Luke Mellow basketball blog.”

Read more »

[Editor's note: This is Mohamed Abdihakim's debut for TAI. Mohamed blogs at TheHoopDoctors.com and is an editor at Hoops-Nation.com. He is currently working toward a multimedia journalism degree from Florida Atlantic University. —Kyle W.]

82games.com has made available a certain simplified metric.

Belying otherwise extensive research, “Simple Rating” (SR) provides a relatively digestible look into a player’s value on the court versus their positional counterpart. The values used in this rating are Production—”a variant of John Hollinger’s PER”—and a plus/minus unit.

Read more »

It’s as if everything was set up just so that Steve Buckhantz could “Amen” Jordan Crawford… bless him. And that’s exactly what happened in the post-game after Steezus dropped the gift (and GIFs) of a buzzer-beating road win against Portland.

First, you had Crawford scoring 10 points over the first five and a half minutes of the fourth quarter (he had zero in 10 minutes of run entering the period). Then he missed a layup… and then a 3-pointer. Mike Prada of Bullets Forever tweeted: “There’s no rule that says you have to keep in the guy who scored 10 points earlier in the quarter. I would take Crawford out.”

And surely not many could argue. Especially after Crawford was the one responsible for giving Wes Matthews a good look from deep to tie the game at 95 with eight seconds left. And with a chance to win, the Wizards originally looked to get the ball to Nene in the post, it seemed, but the Blazers clogged up the play, had a foul to give and used it.

With just over three seconds left after the stoppage, there was no time to chuck the ball to Brazil in the post. Instead, this happened from Detroit:

Read more »