Overall, I was impressed by the Wizards’ performance in Philadelphia on Tuesday night (aside from the ending), especially in response to Flip Saunders openly calling the team out on a disappointing performance in Atlanta on Monday. But …

The Wizards need to improve on defense, right? From watching Tuesday’s game, I was able to make some observations on focus and technique in areas where some individuals can stand to improve. I’ve illustrated these observation in screen shots below.

Caron Butler’s on Defensive Focus

Caron wants to be a better defender? Well, there are some simple things he could be doing that he’s not doing. Let’s illustrate … Read more »

Time and patience are the lessons to take from the first Wizards preseason game. They didn’t look bad on their way to a 101-92 win over Memphis, but they didn’t look particularly good either. But did anyone expect this team with so many newcomers, including a coach, to gel right away? Nope.

On the offensive end, where the Wizards are assumed to be amongst the NBA’s upper echelon, they appeared out of sync at times. Bad spacing and jumping to pass sloppiness reared their heads in spurts, but nothing disconcerting, and mostly occurring when the second unit guys were on the court.

After the game, Brendan Haywood gave the offense a C+, in terms of translating the instruction of training camp to a real game. Haywood said they weren’t smooth and were in the wrong place a lot of times, but that’s understandable because many guys on the team were in the Princeton for five years and they have a long way to go before mastering Flip’s offense.

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{via WashingtonWizards.com}

It started sometime in the hour of three o’clock pm on Thursday when Mike Jones of the Washington Times (@sptswrtrjones) tweeted, “Arenas watched two scrimmages this afternoon. Jogging with a slight hint of a limp.”

Uh oh.

My first intuition was to not push the panic button. If Wizards fans are approaching the 2009-10 season as a whole with guarded optimism, then they’re probably guarding optimism surrounding Arenas’ knee more than Avon Barksdale’s crew guards the stash house.

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1. What is Gilbert Arenas’ target minutes per game?

One of the biggest (yet most entertaining) mistakes the Wizards made after acquiring Arenas was his back to back 40+ minutes per game seasons of 80 starts each. In Jason Kidd’s 19 14 years, he’s only eclipsed 40 mpg in a season once (John Stockton never did). This is the equivalent of when an NFL team gives their running back 400+ carries (think 1998 Jamal Anderson or 2006 Larry Johnson). Naturally Gil’s future looked bleaker than Jay-Z’s sidekick.

If I am Flip Saunders, I target Gilbert to a conservative 30 mpg. I take him out in blowouts. I don’t let him go for 50. I give him the occasional back-to-back off. I massage his feet during timeouts. I massage his feet at his house. I become a certified acupuncturist. I sacrifice woodland creatures to my altar of Nepthys (the Egyptian god of knee ligaments). Lastly, I call in a bomb threat to Barry Farm.

2. Is this the year Andray Blatche makes the leap?

You don’t need a Magic 8-Ball to know this is “very doubtful.”

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flickr/Roadsidepictures

I watched the Wizards take on the Timberwolves and Clippers in the Las Vegas Summer League long ago, but am just getting my notes/observations on those two games posted.

So in the spirit of better late than never, here goes ….

(Note: I still need to get my post up on the Knicks game and hand out the summer league grades … but only to the players who ‘count’ — Blatche, Young, McGee, Crittenton and McGuire.) Read more »

No, this isn't Ernie Grunfeld, it's Keith Sweat (clearly) - flickr/gwen

This Wizards lost their second summer league game against the Nuggets, and as a unit, they did not look good. But Ernie Grunfeld’s not sweating. He’s probably sitting poolside at the Hard Rock, requesting that the waitress blast some Skynard “Simple Man” over the sound system while he snacks on a cucumber and plays it cool in the 108 degree Vegas heat.

But should the Wizards’ Pres. of B-Ball Ops. (GM) be breaking a sweat over what he’s seen so far in Sin City?

On one hand, as we keep telling ourselves, it’s just a summer league game. The roster players out there will be playing vastly different roles come the regular season. They will be asked to do specialized acts and play within themselves, leaving the bulk of the scoring/defensive/creating duties to the ‘big boy’ players.

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I swear I saw this video before … especially since it was filmed in the Wizards locker room when March Madness ’09 was about to commence. But then again, maybe not since the YouTube date says June 22, 2009.

In any case, the highlights include:

• Andray Blatche saying: “I don’t care about no ‘Match Mardness’, okay? I ain’t go to college. I don’t know nothin’ about college, okay?”
• Nick Young wearing a hat you’d usually see on an old lady going to church.
• Caron Butler bagging on Nick Young and USC: “I think Nick the only guy from USC in the league … and he on his way out. Message!”

[video shot by Elie Sechbach for NBA FanHouse]

[h/t: theuconnhuskies.blogspot]

I’m a huge Antawn Jamison fan. He’s a classy dude, I’ve nicknamed him ‘The Gentlemen’ (hasn’t caught on), and the women folk say he’s got eyebrows for days.

Jamison is the current patriarchal cornerstone of the franchise. This year’s team MVP? Unquestionably. He possesses the never-quit attitude that should be infecting the locker room via leadership by example … Jamison is quite the opposite of past clubhouse cancers, like Christian Laettner.

But sometimes, everyone needs to be questioned, Jamison being no exception.

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The 2009 NBA Draft is on June 25th, an important day in so many ways. For one, it’s my birthday….the onset of my last year in my 20s…..but it’s also the day that the Wizards will be selecting Blake Griffin with the #1 overall draft pick (hopefully).

And while Griffin might not be a franchise changer like Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Shaq O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, he certainly isn’t a Kwame Brown or Michael Olowokandi.

Griffin won’t magically propel the Wizards to the cream of the crop, but he can certainly be a key cog on a potential contender while keeping the ‘Zards poised for the future.

June 25th is a pretty big date…potentially (Dikembe Mutombo will also turn 43 in beyond-human years on 6/25)….but May 19th is much more important. That’s when the order of the NBA is decided via a lottery.

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In a season that has shocked and awed….but in a bad way, as if Wizards fans were just your regular, innocent Iraqi civilian……there couldn’t be a better present heading into the off-season than Thursday’s win against the hated Cleveland Cavaliers.

(Well, a little lottery luck, or perhaps a win next Wednesday in Cleveland would be pretty effing gravy too.)

And while the dub can be attributed to an overall great team effort (Jamison being a warrior, Butler spilling Tuff Juice, Arenas creating with his presence, Haywood’s defensive communication, Young’s gutsy late layup, McGuire’s stat stuffing, McGee’s dunks, and Blatche being around and stuff), the consensus on the Bullets Forever game thread was that the game ball would go to my hero, Darius Songaila.

Songaila came up pretty big in the game’s early going, scoring eight points during his first 7:47 in the game (checked in for Haywood at the 2:12 mark of the first quarter).

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