John Wall, Flip Saunders, Andray Blatche, Nick Young, Trevor Booker and Carmelo Anthony speak on it from the locker room after Friday’s Wizards-Knicks game…
On a night when their most experienced player looked lost and confused, the Wizards nearly rode the infectious energy of two of their least experienced players to the first win of the season. Trevor Booker and Chris Singleton were drafted in the past two Junes to provide hustle and defense for a team deficient in those areas, and they both made a case for more playing time in the Wizards’ 99-96 loss on Friday to the New York Knicks.
[The DC Council -- After each Wizards game: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the bench, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is over the table. Game 7 contributors: Rashad Mobley, John Converse Townsend and Kyle Weidie.]
Score
Washington Wizards 96 vs. New York Knicks 99 [box score]
As I left today’s All-Star practice media session, one of the workers at the Los Angeles Convention Center asked me what it was like to be on the practice floor with all the players and media. I pondered for a minute, and then I told him to imagine what it’s like when a men’s college basketball team wins the NCAA tournament, and people frantically run on the floor. Then I told him to imagine that he had to look for 24 people in that frantic crowd, while trying to get audio, video and whatever else was needed.
His one-word response? “Damn.”
Despite the madhouse that was today’s post-practice media session, there were uplifting and useful moments to be had. The morning started with Justin Friedlander dunking home his 63,000th shot to raise brain tumor awareness. Justin was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor called an optic nerve glioma back in 2009, and he vowed to shoot 63,000 shots — one for everyone diagnosed with a primary brain tumor per year. Justin, who hails from Rockville, Maryland, visited the Verizon Center last year prior to the Wizards/Pacers game, so it was nice to see him complete his journey. All the coaches and players from both the East and West All-Star squads shook his hand, and signed a t-shirt for him. Very moving stuff.
Next, the East and West All-Stars conducted the kind of practice that even Allen Iverson would not turn down. Gregg Popovich, who was mic’d up during the entire session, walked through some very remedial plays he planned on running in tomorrow night’s All-Star game, and then he just relaxed and watched like every other fan. At one point he ran up to Blake Griffin and said, “I’m a huge fan of yours!” Griffin just laughed and said thank you.
Doc Rivers, who was also mic’d up, made a point of telling the crowd he added some Miami Heat plays to the offense in preparation for the game. When the East and West teams were settling in on their respective sides of the court, Rivers saw fit to crack a joke as well. Read more »
The Wizards have struggled this year, no question about it. The team has won just 13 games and is still hopelessly searching for its first road win. Their next opportunity for that elusive victory away from home comes on Sunday, February 13 versus the woeful Cleveland Cavaliers — a team nursing a 24-game losing streak.
Back on October 20, 2010, the crew at Truth About It.net gave their “crystal ball visions” of the Wizards’ regular season record for 2010-11. Here is what they looked like:
Kyle Weidie – 34 wins
Rashad Mobley – 30 wins
Adam McGinnis – 40 wins
John Townsend – 40 wins
Arish Narayen – 41 wins
Beckley Mason – 36 wins
I might choose to pass on the Buffalo wings and beer for the Super Bowl, instead opting to find a spot on my couch with an extra helping of Washington Wizards crow. This team is headed nowhere fast this season … but regular season performance in one year isn’t necessarily predictive of success and achievement in the next.
On the lighter side, here are the ten biggest single-season turnarounds in NBA history:
Back on November 24 of last year, my Truth About It colleague Kyle Weidie posed a question to site readers: “Who Will Give The Washington Wizards Their First Road Win?” At the time, the Wizards were 0-6 away from home, but their slow start could easily be attributed to youth, a tough road schedule and the fact that Gilbert Arenas still wasn’t traded.
Two months and an Arenas trade later, the road loss count has ballooned from six to 20, and the cause cannot be easily explained away. Depending on who you ask and when, blame can be placed on anyone from Ernie Grunfeld to Josh Howard’s knee. Still, the fact remains that last night’s second half collapse in Milwaukee left the Wizards with an 0-20 road record to start the season — just nine away from the record held by the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks of 29 consecutive away-from-home losses to start a season.
Before Wizards-Rockets match-up last Wednesday, I informally polled a couple of the more veteran Wizards on A) who has been the toughest guy for them to defend during their time in the league, and B) who in the league sets some of the hardest, toughest screens. Here are their answers:
Al Thornton
Toughest Cover:
“Definitely Kobe, Tracy [McGrady] … a couple years ago, Vince [Carter], there are a lot of guys. Rip [Hamilton], Tayshaun [Prince] …”
I asked Al if any guy really stood out to him:Read more »
I came across this big banner hanging on a building at the northeast corner of 13th and L Streets NW, about nine blocks or so from the Verizon Center. It features “Monumental Action” and the Verizon Center website URL followed by Alex Ovechkin, Andray Blatche, Crystal Langhorne, Beyoncé Knowles (I believe), and who appears to be Chris Wright of the Georgetown Hoyas. The logo of the Ted Leonsis-led group, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, is featured in the lower right-hand corner. I’m not sure what other monumental banners are around the city (or DMV area), or how long this has been up (the Monumental logo was released on July 16), but I am curious to see if Blatche will allow himself to be the Wizards representative of Monumental Sports in the future.
Preparation “H”
Michael Lee reports that it’s unlikely the Wizards will sign 2010 second round draft pick (56th overall) Hamady N’diaye, rather likely opting to let him develop in Europe.
[Wizards Insider]
I had a feeling something like this was coming, as N’diaye remained unsigned, and it was previously reported that an Italian team had interest in him. The Wizards will still hold N’diaye’s rights for the future, but now, since it looks like Kevin Seraphin will need a fair bit of time to develop (and he isn’t going to the D-League — link below), it makes sense for Hamady to get more experience overseas.
Plus, if you count the qualifying offer the Wizards currently have extended to Cartier Martin (via Sham Sports), there are 13 players on the roster. Ernie Grunfeld, known for liking flexibility, probably considers the last two spots too valuable to be used up on developing N’diaye in the D-League (remember, if you sign a player and send him to the D-League, he still counts against the max NBA roster size of 15).
[Florida Ave. Grill - Florida Ave. & 11th St. NW - Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]
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(*) Josh Howard is the subject of a recent post by Zac Crain on Free Darko. Interesting stuff. If I can get the gist: Michael Finley kinda caught basketball cancer from Michael Jordan, and in turn gave that cancer to Josh Howard whereas Howard went from doing the little things to settling for fade-away jumpers. Reminds me of Caron Butler, a little. My take: if defense is preached first, and Howard listens, he can return to a solid all-around player. Oh, and if his knee gets better.
(*) Trevor Booker, after the Las Vegas summer league, participated in the development camp of Denver Nuggets assistant coach Tim Grgurich, as reported by the Washington Post’s Michael Lee. Grgurich was an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks during Ernie Grunfeld’s tenure as their GM.
(*) Al Thornton had a quick Q&A with WashingtonWizards.com … he’s working on his ball handling this summer. Good, he needs to. For some reason I get the intuition that Thornton is this generation’s Harvey Grant, but beefier.
My latest piece for SB Nation DC is called, “Steve Francis Doesn’t Even Own The D.C. Courts. Just Ask Curt Smith.” I probably was a little harsh on Francis, could be dubbed a hater. I’ll be that. His career fizzled because he couldn’t adapt his immense talent to play a winning brand of basketball as a point guard leader. Then, he comes out of the woodwork claiming he’s the best D.C. has had to offer since Len Bias. People are going to take issue with that, and one of them happened to be me. Oh well … it is what it is. Go read.
Seeing A Red Future
Ted Leonsis has essentially told everyone to chill out about changing the team name from Wizards … he’s a new owner, he has a lot to accomplish, that process takes a couple years to accomplish anyway (and it must be approved by other NBA owners). But Leonsis does like red, so one might expect a change in the team colors sooner than later.
While Dwyane Wade is living it up on South Beach, probably wondering like Shaq and Bubs how the Heat managed to win that ’06 title while they were all partying their STDs off …
While LeBron is trying to determine which city will most make him a global icon (for the record, it’s NYC #1, Brooklyn #2 and D.C. #3) …
While Joe Johnson is dribbling around at age 30, preparing to be the pre-1999 Susan Lucci of free-agency …
Don’t forget, Carmelo Anthony is a celebrity too. Just because he won’t be a free-agent until summer ’011, don’t you dare forget. And guys, can’t he at least come and hang out with the Quartet Council Meeting of Big Free Agents (not including Dirk Nowitzki)?
[Editor's Note:Rashad Mobley has reported on the Wizards with media credentials since the 2008-09 season for Hoops Addict. He occasionally contributes to Truth About It.net, providing excellent analysis and a different perspective from his up-close coverage of the team.]
Less than 24 hours after he arrived in Washington D.C., newly-acquired Washington Wizards forward Al Thornton held court in front of the locker previously occupied by DeShawn Stevenson. He had just led his team in scoring with 21 points on 7-of-12 shooting, and the Wizards defeated the playoff-bound Denver Nuggets. Under normal circumstances, the members of the media would be focusing on how he was able to score so easily, or how hectic things had been for him recently.
But that wasn’t completely the case.
In addition to the aforementioned 21 points, Thornton had four blocked shots, played tight defense on Carmelo Anthony, and it was seemingly contagious, as the Wizards held the Nuggets to just 15 fourth quarter points.
Ok, it was just one game … two games counting the win against Minnesota. With a 107-97 win over the Denver Nuggets, the Wizards have won two games in a row for just the sixth time all year (three has yet to be accomplished). Is it a reason to think this team just might do something crazy and sneak into the playoffs? Absolutely not. Is it a reason to get excited? A resounding yes.
Energy, effort, hustle and hunger were the themes tossed around the Verizon Center Friday night, the obvious reason why Wizards fans, even those who came to see Baltimore’s Carmelo Anthony, stood up and cheered for a brand of basketball that’s rarely been seen this season, if at all.
“I told guys at shoot-around, ‘We gotta play like a pack of mad dogs,’ and that’s how we played tonight,” said Flip Saunders after the game. The new guys, Josh Howard, Al Thornton and James Singleton set the example and led the way. “Thornton at 6’7″ can play like 6’10″ rebounding-wise, and Josh can play bigger, and of course Singleton. Those are energy guys,” the coach continued.
Thornton can score too, netting 17 of his 21 points in the second half. He arrived in D.C. at 2 am on Friday, and wasn’t able to participate in that morning’s shoot-around, but dug deep and found a way to play some damn good defense against Anthony. “Once Carmelo gets in a groove and gets in jab steps going, he’s very hard to guard. So, I just tried to get in him and frustrate him a little bit and make him take off-balanced shots,” Thornton said. Melo had 23 points in the game, but only five in the second half and zero in the fourth quarter. He shot 1-10 in the second half.
Yes, the Nuggets had to be tired in the second leg of a back-to-back where Anthony had hit a jumper in LeBron’s face to win the game Thursday night in Cleveland. But I’ll also remind you that Denver has the second best record in the Western Conference and these are the Washington Wizards. When asked if all of the new pieces were an advantage because opponents don’t exactly know how to prepare for these new Wizards, Saunders said, “Well, the disadvantage would be that we have a lot of new pieces and we don’t know how to prepare for ourselves.”
When I first saw the above video of Brendan Haywood training, I thought, ‘Hey, he and JaVale McGee both like to workout to the mellow sounds of Drake, Lil’ Wayne, and Trey Songzzzzzz just wanting to be successful’. Don’t believe me? Just watch … (well, until some facist decided to disable the audio on McGee’s workout vid because they probably believe in protecting the money going towards more Lil’ Weezy face tats and Drake eyebrow waxings more than they believe in an open source world … oh well).
Then I watched Haywood’s Workout Part II: Jump Shots Juice from Concentrate …. and said, ‘Hey, I recognize that workout guy, he’s The Hoops Whisperer’.
The Hoops Whisperer aka Idan Ravin is a guy based out of Washington, DC who used to be a lawyer, but is now a famed NBA basketball trainer, a job he just kinda fell into. Oh yea, he also runs ethnic dating sites such as Ethiopian Personals and Eligible Greeks in his spare time. No really, he does … go check a pretty good Wall Street Journal profile on Ravin. Too bad Oleksiy Pecherov is gone, maybe Ravin could have hooked him up via a future venture called ‘Ukrainian Ill Na Na’ dot com.
Tonight, Butler, along with Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Delonte West, and Michael Beasley (all dubbed as Caron’s “friends” as he is the headliner), will be hosting, depending on which flier you look at, a Worldwide Tour or National Tour at Bed Nightclub in South Beach Miami.
If I didn’t know better, Mr. Butler might be angling for a future career in politics.
On this night of Cinco de Mayo, the Denver Nuggets square off against the Dallas Mavericks, playing in the second game of their first 2nd round series since ’93-94.
But it was the play of LaPhonso Ellis in game four which allowed Denver a chance to return to Seattle and win game five. Ellis dropped 27 points and 17 rebounds on the squad formerly known as the Sonics. Both those numbers remain playoff highs for Ellis. Of course, he only played in 16 career playoff games, 12 coming that year with Denver, and four coming in ’00-01 with Minnesota.
You want more? Well, that night, and today, Cinco de Mayo, happens to be LaPhonso Ellis’ birthday.
So, in a random tribute to Ellis, who shares a b-day with Harold “Baby Jordan FAIL” Miner, and former Wizards training camp/pre-season participant, DerMarr Johnson, I present a YouTube clip of a LaPhonso Ellis monster block.
