[D.C. Council: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the subs, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is on the table. Game No. 47, Washington Wizards vs Los Angeles Clippers; contributors: Kyle Weidie and Adam McGinnis from the Verizon Center, Conor Dirks from the road.]

Why not start with… Chris Paul vs. the Wizards Girls? 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.

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[D.C. Council: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the subs, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is on the table. Game No. 38, Washington Wizards at Los Angeles Clippers; contributor: Conor Dirks, Adam Rubin (making his TAI debut), and Kyle Weidie from behind the television screen.]

Thumbs Up Trevor Booker. Read more »

[D.C. Council: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the subs, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is on the table. Game No. 36, Washington Wizards at Sacramento Kings; contributors: John Converse Townsend, Rashad Mobley and Kyle Weidie from the East Coast.]

Bradley Beal’s career-high 26. Read more »

“The 5 and 4 is pretty much interchangeable in the NBA. A post player is a post player, and as far as the roles of 4 and 5, they’re becoming more hazy anyway. To me, 4 and 5 is who you guard … who’s going to guard the taller guy that game.

“Even within a game, you cross-match sometimes, so it really doesn’t matter.”

—Emeka Okafor from the summer league in Las Vegas

It’s never too early to ask the question. With the rapid development of Kevin Seraphin as a legitimate post scoring threat (defense and rebounding… working on it), and the last two primary trade acquisitions of the Washington Wizards — Nene and Emeka Okafor — which combination of big men will best setup the Wizards (and John Wall) for success?

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[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. Click here for cumulative DC Council 3-star ratings over the course of the season. Game 30 contributors: Adam McGinnis (@AdamMcGinnis), John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend), and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It).

Score

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[Randy Wittman could see it coming.]

When preseason theories spoke of young legs benefiting the Wizards in a lockout-shortened season, my thinking was different. They needed all the training camp and preseason they could get, and the lack of it showed many ways in the season’s early going. Now they are starting to play better, more as a team, sharing the ball, and understanding complete effort. Big road wins in Detroit and Portland gave the young Wizards confidence going into Wednesday’s game with the Clippers. But they endured for just over 32 minutes in Los Angeles until tired legs, and more prevalently, tired minds, took over. The home team on rest with more shooting focus after a tough loss in Dallas, along with the capabilities to get shooters open shots, took the game over Washington by 18 points, 102-84. There were a couple game-deciding moments.

With 3:25 left in the third quarter, John Wall assisted a Nick Young 3-pointer for the third time in less than four minutes. Young hadn’t scored a single point in front of his hometown crowd until that first three; suddenly he had nine points. Steve Buckhantz and Phil Chenier were openly commenting on television how most of Young’s shots looked to be pressing the issue too much, but when Wall started setting him up, it looked like the Wizards would make it a game. The Wizards tied the score at 66 with that third Young three. Within the spurt, Young also had one assist, almost two had JaVale McGee not missed a shot at the rim. Oh what a dream sequence. But then what happened?

Blake Griffin went over McGee’s back for an offensive rebound, came down, gathered himself… monster dunk, 68-66 Clippers. Could the whistle have been blown against Griffin? Possibly. Physicality in the paint can be like refereeing holding in football, it can be called just about every time. The many areas of gray mean more subjectivity comes into the equation. Did McGee even try to box Griffin out? Yes, more so than usual. Other circumstance includes McGee’s lack of help on the defensive boards by the likes of Young, Jordan Crawford and Rashard Lewis.

On the other end, as the Clippers sagged off a Lewis screen for Wall, Kenyon Martin and Chris Paul ended up with a switch, Paul covering Lewis in the paint. In a perfect world Wall hits the wide open shot that Martin left him when he didn’t care to press up, paying attention to Lewis instead. In the Wizards world, McGee waited too long to clear the paint so the Wizards could best iso Lewis against Paul. Then the timing was thrown off when Wall waited too long to pass, and Lewis couldn’t hold a seal. The result was a Wizards turnover, and the Clippers went demoralizing the other way with a Paul alley-oop to Griffin that the athleticism of Wall unsuccessfully tried to get too. John was high but far short. Some photographer has a great one of that play. Washington called timeout but didn’t score for the rest of the period. They went into the fourth quarter down 74-66 thanks to an 8-0 Clippers run.

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When the Washington Wizards allowed the Los Angeles Clippers to come into the Verizon Center on February 4 and absolutely disrespect them by 26 points, it was hardly a shocker. The Wizards were coming off three consecutive losses, the third being a listless performance against lowly Raptors in Toronto. The Clippers, on the other hand, had won four out of five, including two tough victories in Oklahoma City and Denver. Polishing off the Wizards was merely a formality.  However, as these teams face off in the Staples Center this evening, their respective lead-ins are slightly different. The Clippers are still rolling along (despite a tough loss in Dallas on Monday), but they are doing so without Chauncey Billups, who is out for the season with a torn Achilles tendon. The Wizards, meanwhile,  have won two straight road games over Detroit and Portland by at least 15 points–a franchise first.  The one constant has been John Wall, who seems to have learned what Chris Paul already knows:  Switching speeds is more important than just having speed.  Before the Wizards attempt to prove they belong on the same court with the Clippers, Nick Flynt (@clipperblognick) of the True Hoop Network’s ClipperBlog.com, along with Sam Permutt (@sammyvert) and yours truly, Rashad Mobley (@rashad20) of Truth About It, have three questions to answer.

#1) The 17-9 Los Angeles Clippers are playing well because of, or in spite of, Coach Vinny Del Negro?

NICK FLYNT:  I’m leaning on the side of “in spite of.” It’s almost impossible for a coach to screw up with talent like Del Negro has with the Clippers, but the defensive system certainly isn’t making the roster greater than the sum of its parts, and some of the lineups Vinny has rolled out for extended periods have been…unfortunate.

SAM PERMUTT:  Having a beloved floor general who also happens to be one of the best guards in the league leading your team (CP3) undoubtedly makes coaching significantly easier. The same can be said for having freak-athletes who have the desire and focus to work hard every day (Blake and DeAndre) and proven veterans (Chauncey, Caron). In a way, all these positives make Del Negro’s job that much tougher when trying to measure his impact. He’s supposed to win, and it can be credited to the personnel that almost every team in the league (except the Heat) would gladly exchange for. At the end of the day, if Del Negro leads the Clippers deep into the playoffs, he’ll be considered a success.

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Lob City comes to the District tonight… the highest highs and the lowest lows of the Wizards multiplied by the Los Angeles Clippers and divided by a 4-19 record against a 13-7 one. “I told them I’m pulling that cigarette out tonight,” said Wizards coach Randy Wittman before the game, referring to the very poor effort the Wizards gave in a loss to Toronto last night and how his team “fell off the wagon” back to poor habits. The coach is also going with Trevor Booker over Jan Vesely in the Wizards starting lineup. Talking to the Cook Book before the game, his focus will be keeping Blake Griffin away from the basket and on how the Wizards guard pick and rolls (Chris Paul runs a lot of them, Wittman admitted). What’s the key to stopping Paul on the P&Rs? “We got to make sure we stop the ball, make sure he can’t get in the lane. The more he’s in the lane, the more have to collapse, and the more the bigs are going to be open to throw the lob to,” said Booker. For tonight’s 3-on-3 drill we have Kevin Arnovitz (@kevinarnovitz) of ESPN TrueHoop/ClipperBlog, along with TAI’s Rashad Mobley (@Rashad20) and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It). Three questions, three answers starts now…

1) What’s the No. 1 thing Chris Paul has that John Wall doesn’t, but really needs to get?

ARNOVITZ: Vision. When Paul has the ball in the half court, he’s thinking about one thing — where he is relationally to the other shotmakers on the court and those on the defense who can alter those shots. Wall is speedy, but like most people in their early 20s – apologies to Louis CK – he has no idea how to do the job yet. That will change.

MOBLEY: Since this is the Super Bowl weekend, I’ll start with a football analogy. Rookie running backs tend ignore their offensive line and to try to use their God-given athleticism to make a big play.  Seasoned running backs patiently wait for the offensive line to open a hole (they may even rest their hands on the backs of the O-line while the play is unfolding) then they run right through. There’s an impatience to Wall’s game right now that manifests itself via the one-man fast breaks, the rushed jumpers, and the exasperation with his teammates. Chris Paul, with talented teammates in Los Angeles and less talented teammates in New Orleans, is a patient point guard. He lets the game come to him, he sets up teammates, and if he’s needed to do more, he does that too.

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{Wall vs. Paul - photo: K. Weidie}

I’ve been a Philadelphia Eagles for over 25 years. I’ve endured ups, downs, mediocrity and everything else associated with loving a team too much. But because I’ve lived in Washington for most of those years, and NFL League Pass is still a relatively new invention, I’ve seen more way more Redskins games than I have Eagles games — which means I saw plenty of Joe Gibbs in his heyday.

One of the staples of the Gibbs era was his ability to make halftime adjustments based on what the other team was or was not doing. Part of this ability was based on his stellar assistant coaching staff, and part of it was that Gibbs often paid attention to even the smallest of details.

New Orleans Hornets coach Monty Williams is from the Washington D.C. area (Oxon Hill, Maryland to be exact), so maybe he was somehow inspired by Gibbs last night, because his team’s second half play was key to the Hornets’ 92-81 victory.

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