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“We can’t reserve ourselves on defense. We gotta reserve ourselves on offense and give 110% on defense.
“Right now we stink … and we’re showing it.
The duo of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol were too much for the Wizards to handle. They combined for 43 points and 30 rebounds.
Washington doesn’t have a guy who can take up space in the paint, and that hurts them on both offense and defense. Brendan Haywood has size, but is not agile. Antawn Jamison put up a good fight against Randolph the Bull, but just doesn’t have the size.
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.”
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.
I seriously contemplated whether I should ever watch the Wizards-Suns game. It’s not like I didn’t know the 121-95 outcome or was unable to witness the Wizards constructing a Brick City that would make Redman proud. Instead of dedicating my Saturday night life to the Wizards at home, I ventured out in the D.C. snow to meet some friends at a bar for drinks, darts, and sports on TVs. Between the activities, I couldn’t concentrate on watching the Wizards much, but the futility was made crystal clear in the glances I was able to get.
This team has no moxie. With the persistent problem back-to-back games pose, there’s ever-increasing skepticism and little hope that they will ever change course for the better. There are a ton of excuses for why this team is falling way short of expectations, a lot of them seem to stem on more time and patience. But how do you get a team to play with energy and focus like they care?
So, I put my blues collection on shuffle and spent the better part of my Sunday watching the Wizards-Suns with focus … and boy did I learn a lot about this team. I was able to capture the essence of the game in the nine frames below, but I’ll have much more to come in the future about the less desirable aspects of the Flip Saunders’ team.
[Editor's Note: Andy Orfalea is a Wizards fan all the way out in California, but attended school back East where he majored in English at Boston College. He attended Friday night's Wizards game in Golden State, his account is below.]
I knew it. I knew the Wizards just needed my presence to turn this thing around. Watching from the top level at the Oracle, I didn’t like what I saw upon entering. Andray Blatche was f&%$ing around in warmups, something I’ve noticed about him since he was drafted. Javale Mcgee was chucking the bull off the backboard, Gilbert was throwing up brick after brick. As usual, the only two Wizards who appeared aware of their current six game losing streak were Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler. After Blatche botched a left hander in lay-up lines, Caron walked up and smacked him in the head. The leaders of the team won this game tonight. After the opening tip, the team played hard and with a sense of urgency. Two things that are all they really need.
Playing hard is something I attribute to one big man in the middle. Brendan Haywood has amazingly worked himself into a position where I was actually calling for him at the end of the game. Blatche was playing down the stretch and when the Warriors cut it to three, Flip finally decided this was an important game and inserted Haywood. B-Hay, the most recent blogosphere victim, provided much needed inside toughness for the Wizards. Almost before the fireworks of others, I really have to give him his props.
Now, an important point in recapping the game. Let me describe a little scene after the game in the halls of the Oracle. I walked out of our section with my Caron Butler Wizards #3 jersey, clapping it up. I also had my Redskins hat on, keep in mind they somehow beat the Raiders on Sunday. Anyways, as I clapped it up a Warriors fan said, “Hey man you got a lot of nerve wearing all that Washington sh*t.” I didn’t say anything back because I was so joyed over the victory, but it did pop into my mind to say “Hey man, you have a lot of nerve wearing that Warriors gear because that’s one of the worst teams I’ve ever seen play.”
Time for a win folks. I’ll be on ESPN’s Daily Dime Live around game time to discuss. Got a good feeling about this one.
If the Wiz lose by four points or less again, they’ll surpass the 76-77 Suns with the most consecutive losses within that margin. The spread is Golden State by 2.5.
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
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
{flickr/Keith Allison}
I saw it coming. Most probably did. In August, Brendan Haywood understandably and predictably caught some heat when he associated (via his blog and a subsequent radio interview) an irrelevant act by Stephon Marbury with being gay.
And last Friday, he wrote this:
All I’m saying is that Elin better be glad she’s married to Tiger Woods instead of Chris Brown or this whole story could’ve been reported differently!
When: Tues., May 21 - 7:30 pm
Where: Lou's City Bar - Columbia Heights, D.C.
Across The ESPN TrueHoop Network