ShareBullets… a run-down of commentary on recent Wizards subjects, and links…

Kobe on the Rebuild in Washington.

The below video is a bit old… it’s from the Los Angeles Lakers locker room after they lost to the Wizards in D.C. on March 7 (The Lakers said WHAT?); Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher speak in the video, sort of. Kobe tries his best to keep his answers to one word (he’s even asked by if his post-game media session in Washington is the most “Belichick” he’s ever been), Gasol says the loss was “embarrassing,” and Fisher, playing in his final loss as a Laker, says, “I’ve been around long enough to realize that you can’t allow yourself to be defined by the changing opinions of the critics or media personal that cover our game.”

The most pertinent question for Wizards fans, however, is when Kobe’s asked what needs to happen in Washington to get the franchise to the point of respectability. “Got to make the right decisions,” said Kobe plainly. “You got to make the right decisions from a management standpoint, the players you bring in here. That’s all it is, just making the right choices.” With calls for Ernie Grunfeld’s job reaching the generic sports column platform of the Washington Post, you have to wonder how the current team president’s track record of decision-making has been evaluated by current team ownership.

Nene Positivity.

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[Remember planking? Or is G-Wiz just dead on Ted Leonsis' desk?]

Here at the 2012 NBA All-Star break, exactly halfway through Ted Leonsis’ three-year rebuilding plan, it’s hard to think about the future of the Washington Wizards without contemplating how they got here. Before this season, Leonsis stated that he wanted to rip the rear-view mirrors off his Ferrari of a franchise and only look forward. The glaring metaphorical omissions by the owner being, a) he may have made modifications to the car, but he didn’t change the driver, team president Ernie Grunfeld, and b) no race car driver would ever compete without a way to see behind them, else they put themselves in an unnecessarily dangerous situation. And we wonder why the Wizards are where they are now.

Teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers and Utah Jazz have been broken down and are now stocked with better future talent than the Wizards. The Cavaliers only got a trade exception, a couple future first-round picks and a couple second-round picks from Miami in return for LeBron James. But the key to their current situation was sending Mo Williams and Jamario Moon to the Los Angeles Clippers for Baron Davis and a 2011 first round pick. That pick turned out to be the first overall selection, Kyrie Irving. Combined with Cleveland’s fourth pick, Tristan Thompson, and whatever player development they have working in their favor (really, look at Cleveland’s roster and tell me it’s more talented than the Wizards), the Cavaliers have achieved post-LeBron promise faster than anyone expected.

The Jazz were able to parlay Deron Williams off on Jay-Z and the Russians for a bounty of prospects — Derrick Favors and two first-round picks. One of those picks netted Utah Enes Kanter third overall in last year’s draft, and they used their own ninth pick to select Gordon Hayward in 2010. Utah also simply had a better core of players and better player development in place. They found Paul Millsap with the 47th overall pick in 2006. Al Jefferson came from Minnesota in a July 2010 exchange for Kosta Koufos, a first-round pick that turned out to be Donatas Motiejunas, and another future first-rounder. In rebuilding past the Deron Williams-Andrei Kirilenko-Mehmet Okur-Carlos Boozer core that was swept by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2010 Western Conference semi-finals, Utah put better veterans in place to support the young core now in development.

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The Washington Wizards talk about fourth quarter full-court pressure defense against Chicago, which helped make the 10 point loss a little more interesting, to say the least…

If anything, Randy Wittman has proven that he’s no Flip Saunders, past his own claims of the two being “polar opposites.” No, it’s not about wins and losses (beating the Bobcats twice? please), at least for the rest of this season. Yes, outcome is important and positive outcomes are nice, but ask a fan about winning or losing, and the Wizards can’t win. From moral victories to lottery losses to scoreboard reward, not many can be satisfied in this current state of four victories and 17 losses.

Wittman is willing to try more new things, starting Jan Vesely at the four over Andray Blatche for example. Or, down 78-63 to the Chicago Bulls on Monday night with nearly a quarter left to play, throwing a full court press after a Chicago timeout allowing Tom Thibodeau to insert M.V.P. point guard Derrick Rose back into the game. It’s not like Saunders didn’t reach deep into his bag of gimmicks, responsiveness from his players was clearly the issue.

“I was a little hesitant to really do what we did there in the fourth quarter,” said coach Randy Wittman at the end of the night, “because… [chuckles]… we hadn’t worked on it, but I said, ‘Let’s go, guys, we got one chance here to make this a ball game.’”

Washington responded immediately — with a unit of John Wall, Jordan Crawford, Nick Young, Trevor Booker, and JaVale McGee – racing to a 15-8 run in fewer than four minutes. Thanks to the pressure, the Wizards trimmed their deficit to eight points. A Nick Young three-pointer capped the comeback, with Wittman afterward stomping his feet all over the hardwood floor to remind Young to not bask in his offense, but rather to find the shooters and pressure as necessary. Chicago answered by finally breaking Washington’s full-court defense with ease, ending the Wizards run with a Carlos Boozer dunk, holding their lead at 88-78.

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[Flip Saunders attempts to coach up his team in his last home game with the Wizards.]

Flip Saunders was relieved of his duties as head coach of the Washington Wizards today. He departs D.C. with a record of 51-130 over two full seasons and about a fourth of this lockout-shortened season. Assistant Randy Wittman will take over as head coach, the team has announced, and assistants Don Zierden, Sam Cassell, Ryan Saunders and Gene Banks will remain. TAI’s Adam McGinnis, Rashad Mobley and Kyle Weidie answer three questions related to the firing. Let it begin…

#1) Was it fair to Saunders to fire him?

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[Andray Blatche takes a pre-game shot before facing the Celtics. - photo: K. Weidie]

Before today’s game, I asked Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers about what differences he’s seen in this Wizards team now from when they played the Celtics on New Year’s Day in Washington and the next day in Boston:

“The last three games they’ve play with a better spirit, quite honestly. You watch them and sometimes it just jumps off the screen. You can watch teams and their body language is better, they’re playing the right way, they’re running, they’re playing with a spirit, they’re playing with each other. It’s obvious over the last three games, watching them play. They’re moving the ball… They were the King of the Ball Stoppers.

“You know, this is the way Flip has always coached, and you can see it now. They’re actually listening and doing what probably — I know — he’s asked them to do since he’s been here. I don’t know what has prompted it, but they’re doing it.”

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“I was tired of looking at that sh*t.”

That was Flip Saunders’ surly response to why he yanked all five of his starters two minutes into the second half of the Washington Wizards’ 25-point blowout preseason loss to the Philadelphia 76ers last Friday night.

Saunders was highly disappointed in the effort of the first unit by their insufficient ball movement, lack of trust in one another and overall selfish play.

“This is a team game, and it is not about individuals … it is the five players that play the best together and that is your best team, not the five most talented player. If you don’t play and you’re not giving effort as a team, you are not going to play, no matter who it is.”

Flip’s remedy for self-centered play: Read more »

Or rather, “Film doesn’t lie,” but you get it…

“Ball Don’t Lie!,” goes the famous saying, extended into pixels forever thanks to Rasheed Wallace. It’s entirely possible that Wallace, when he was a member of the Detroit Pistons, picked up the phrase from his coach, Flip Saunders. Wallace, however, was also said to use it as a member of the Portland Trailblazers. So maybe Flip learned it from watching him. And who knows where Rasheed got it from.

There’s a YouTube video of Wallace saying it during a Pistons-Milwaukee Bucks game after an Andrew Bogut missed free-throw. Ironically, there’s also footage of Saunders, as Pistons coach, saying “Ball don’t lie,” after a Gilbert Arenas missed technical free-throw for the Washington Wizards. Little did Flip know then how much he’d later be involved with Gilbert. But the ball, according to Saunders, isn’t the only think that does not lie. Game film doesn’t lie either.

On Saturday afternoon, after an embarrassing home loss to the Philadelphia 76ers in their first preseason game on Friday, the Wizards returned to the scene of the crime. First up, a lengthy film session to review the 103-78 defeat.

“When you watch film, film doesn’t lie,” said Saunders. “You can see in the film who’s doing the right things, who’s doing the wrong things.”

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[What does John Wall smell? - photo: K. Weidie]

Media members tend to attach themselves to keywords or catch phrases and then shape narratives around them. Guilty as charged. The Washington Wizards franchise has especially provided an abundance of excellent catch phrases over the years.

Recently, you have “pixels” via the web tech-savvy Ted Leonsis (and now, likely “erudite“). From Flip Saunders, we’ve had “Style over substance” as a JaVale McGee descriptor. Going back further, Gilbert Arenas helped popularize the term, “Swag.” Now most feel that word is overused, how oddly fitting.

“Just like Groundhog Day,” Antawn Jamison used to say. From “Get buckets son!,” via Oleksiy Pecherov to “I Love This Game!,” the NBA’s 90s motto that Gheorghe Muresan famously said in broken English over the television airwaves on draft night 1993, some phrases have been more relevant than others. And I’m failing to mention dozens of them, as they pertain to the Wizards.

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Andray Blatche pounded his chest as he strutted off the practice court at training camp Wednesday evening, mean mugging and dripping with sweat.

“That’s one, that’s one, Dray,” shouted assistant coach Gene Banks from under one of the main baskets. “You’ve got one more!”

Banks was overseeing a heavyweight battle between Blatche and second-year bruiser Kevin Seraphin, and tried to persuade him to run it back for a best-of-three series. Blatche, unconvinced, waved a flippant hand in the direction of his coach before proclaiming, “I won. I just won. Gosh!”

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At the conclusion of an afternoon session on day five of training camp, Washington Wizards assistant coach Sam Cassell cracked smiles while rebounding for John Wall, Jordan Crawford and Shelvin Mack as they performed a shooting drill. Cassell is about to begin his third season on the bench for the Wizards. Forever known for his personality, he doled out positive instruction to the young guards, sharing stories with Wall about a certain game in his playing career where he “killed it” and got the win. Cassell also proclaimed Crawford as the funniest dude he knew, the camaraderie among the trio being rather overt.

The three-time world champion with 15 NBA seasons under his belt is essential to the development of both guards. He’s constantly teaching the young Wizards moves and positioning. Even though Flip Saunders had this to say after practice,:

“Sam does a good job because he has good knowledge as far as played the position. One thing that’s a little bit different is that Sam played a lot different than these guys. And sometimes you have to talk to Sam because the things he wants them to do, as far as shoot mid-range shots and those type of things, that’s not what their game is. Sam’s speed has definitely never been close to those guys. So that’s one thing we gotta watch out a little bit. But he’s got a good knowledge of what to look for.”

Either way, certainly the athletic can learn something from the tactics of the non-athletic. Cassell has also enjoyed past friendly battles of one-on-one with the likes of John Wall, Nick Young and JaVale McGee. Something left in the tank is sometimes best spent on education.

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