Posts tagged ‘channing frye’

{Steve Nash all alone. - K. Weidie}

The last game was played in Milwaukee, and this one was played in the friendly confines of the Verizon Center.  The Bucks were missing three starters, and the Suns had a healthy roster at their disposal.  The Wizards are a putrid 0-20 on the road, and they went into last night’s contest with 12-8 home record–including four straight wins at home.  You get the point here, there were plenty of differences between last night’s game against Phoenix and Wednesday night’s game against Milwaukee.  Still, it played out exactly the same.

In both games, the Wizards played flawless first quarter basketball, only to see their hard work come unraveled in each quarter after that, leading to a double digit loss.

The Wizards shot 53-percent in the first quarter, and they were mainly led by Nick Young (11 points) and Andray Blatche (10 points).  John Wall did not do much damage scoring-wise (two points), but he managed to dish out a whopping nine assists, before he was subbed out for Kirk Hinrich with 3:49 left in the period.

Meanwhile the Suns only shot 34-percent in the first, they committed nine turnovers, and they lacked any sort of energy and rhythm.  During one stretch, when the scored was tied at 14, the Suns turned the ball over twice, and had a shot blocked by JaVale McGee the next time down the floor. The Wizards turned that into into 11 consecutive points (and five assists by Wall).  The score after one in Washington was 33-22.  The score after one quarter in Milwaukee was 27-19.

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Well, the Wizards certainly played better against the Suns than they did against Indiana last Friday. But this time, they simply lost to a better team. It’s another day, another loss … the Wizards’ fourth in a row with their record now standing at 2-5. One would hope that this doesn’t become routine, but that didn’t keep members of the media from groaning “feels like last year” as they made their way to the media room to wait for Flip Saunders’ press conference.

Of course, I wasn’t operating under an “official” media capacity last season, but I can imagine letting out a sigh, shrugging my shoulders, and wondering what to ask Saunders as I did on Sunday. But this isn’t like last year. There isn’t a sense that losing is inevitable. This team conveys a strong belief that everything will come together with time, health … and more trust on offense.

The Wizards started against Phoenix not necessarily lacking energy, but were plagued by defensive mismatch problems  … a theme that’s not unique to this one game. While Fabricio Oberto concentrated on Amar’e Stoudemire, Brendan Haywood had to worry about Channing Frye and his three-point shooting, spreading the court ways. Frye finished 4-8 from deep.

Haywood seemed to have trouble moving his feet fast enough to cover all the offensive looks from the Suns. At times, the spinning and turning Haywood was doing on defense looked to be some sort of interpretive dance in the paint. The Wizards center was curiously limited to 11 and a half minutes in the first half, but finished the game as a rebounding (10) and shot blocking (5) presence in his 32 total minutes.

Many of the issues can also be attributed how tough it is to guard Steve Nash. Often, it wasn’t the guy setting the screen and rolling who caused trouble for the Wizards. Rather, it was the secondary cutter who broke free as the Washington help defense became focused on Nash and the screener. Nash finished with 17 assists, two more than the Wizards’ team total … which became a primary topic of discussion after the game.

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We’ve heard it from Ernie Grunfeld before, most recently in an interview by Mike Prada of Bullets Forever.

We were the first to make a move, so everybody’s following us (chuckles).

True, the Wizards were the first to strike when they landed Mike Miller and Randy Foye. But it’s hard to laugh, or continue to pridefully boast about the move, when the cream of the Eastern Conference crop keeps passing the Wizards by.

Let’s quickly go through what the top three teams in the East (Orlando, Cleveland and Boston), have done this off-season.

Orlando:

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Mike Jones of the Washington Times reports that, according the league sources, Ernie Grunfeld has four players targeted near the center of his dart board: Rasho Nesterovic, Channing Frye, Jason Collins and Jamaal Magloire.

While none of these big men are the ‘sexy’ pick fans desire, each might be serviceable for the current amount of minutes Grunfeld is pigeon-holing the potential addition into. And each, according to Jones, might have to settle for the veteran’s minimum in the current economic environment.

Of course, with whispers of Nesterovic returning to Europe, I would not be surprised if he spurned the NBA to play for more money overseas. Nonetheless, Jones is usually spot-on with his reporting, so there’s a fair chance one of these guys will be joining the Wizards in the future. Let’s learn a little bit about each:

Rasho Nesterovic

I was on a break outside the other day, catching some fresh Penn Quarter air, taking a stroll around Freedom Plaza, when this little kid came up to me, and said, “Hey Mister … don’t you know that the Wizards need another big man? Haywood, Jamison, Blatche, McGee, and McGuire aren’t going to cut it.”

“Easy lil’ fella,” I told him. “We’ll keep looking around to see if we can add someone else, but we feel comfortable about what we have currently and the depth of our ballclub.”

The kid then kicked me in the shin and ran away.

I suddenly woke up from my slumber and realized those weren’t my words, those were Ernie Grunfeld’s words. I had a mission …

can big gheorghe muresan get on the horn and find the wizards a big man?

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