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The Wizards handled, but escaped the Memphis Grizzlies in their fourth summer league game, an 83-77 win. TAI’s Adam McGinnis, Markus Allen, Arish Narayen, and Kyle Weidie take you through The Reaction, but first…
The play of the game: Jeremy Pargo smoothness to Mitchell Watt for the dunk, and-1.
The Wizards are in Tennessee tonight to take on the Memphis Grizzlies, their fifth consecutive game on the road. While Zach Randolph is back in action for the Grizzlies after suffering an MCL injury earlier this year, the Wizards are still without the services of their most recent acquisition, forward/center Nene, who is scheduled to make his official debut in New Jersey this coming Wednesday. Both Washington and Memphis have lost three of their last four games, but with the Memphis still fighting for a playoff spot, expect a focused Grizzlies team to make things difficult for the Wizards at FedEx Forum. For tonight’s 3-on-3 we have Josh Coleman (@3SOB) and Chip Crain (@chipc3) from the TrueHoop Grizzlies blog, 3 Shades of Blue, along with TAI’s John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend). Let’s get into it… Three questions, three answers starts now:
McGee vs. Duncan in the Phone Booth? Not going to happen. [photo: K. Weidie]
Crafty spin moves by Dirk in D.C.? Don’t count on it. [photo: K. Weidie]
The Monday after Thanksgiving, just two days after David Stern and Billy Hunter posed together in the middle of the night indicating that a handshake deal was bringing back in the NBA, I found myself face-to-face with a co-worker. Prior to that deal, this co-worker would pick my brain daily, seeing if I knew when the NBA would resume. I’d refer him to ESPN True Hoop for daily coverage, and I’d do my best to tell him to stay optimistic, but I ultimately I was just as clueless.
EuroBasket 2011 is going on and several current, ex, and loosely connected to the Wizards are involved. Let’s go…
[via EuroBasket 2011 profile]
Here’s the point: LOOK AT THAT BEARD!
Digest it, behold it, listen to it whisper to you.
In terms of D-Song, well, he’s doing D-Song things: He’s ranked second at EuroBasket in fouls with 4.2 per game. Otherwise, he’s shooting 48.7-percent from the field, surely on long pick-and-pop jumpers just inside the three point line. His 3.3 rebound average per 15.2 minutes a game would be 9.9 rebounds per 45.6 minutes. So typical of Darius.
JaVale McGee’s career as a Washington Wizard has been chock full of consistent inconsistency, and head coach Flip Saunders summed it up succinctly after the loss to the Charlotte Bobcats last Friday:
“JaVale has five highlight plays a game, unfortunately there’s about 200 plays in a game, and he’s gotta get more substance than style.”
Both McGee’s style and substance were on display during the Wizards’ 89-86 victory over Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night. Early in the game, McGee did an excellent job of preventing Marc Gasol from getting deep position in the paint, but then at other points, he would incur the wrath of Saunders for being out of position on both offense and defense.
This theme would also rear it’s inconsistent head in the fourth quarter, as my Truth About It colleague, John Townsend beautifully broke down. Even though Kirk Hinrich and Gilbert Arenas were having excellent shooting nights, McGee tried to take the ball to the hoop (via the dribble), was picked by Zach Randolph (not exactly a quick handed, nimble fellow), and Mike Conley picked up the ball and dashed full speed toward his basket. Luckily for the Wizards, McGee was able to zoom from one end of the court to the other and block Conley’s shot, immediately exonerating himself from his earlier sin. Substance and style in less than 30 seconds.
The Washington Wizards found themselves ahead of the Memphis Grizzlies 82-79 with just over three minutes left in the fourth quarter.
The Wizards were on the offensive, but on this particular occasion, they faced a defense playing with a little more attitude. As the shot clock winded wound down — the Wiz just couldn’t find a good look at the basket — the ball found its way into the hands of JaVale McGee. About 20 feet from the basket. Passing the ball back to PG Kirk Hinrich (1) would have been too easy … so with about six seconds left on the shot clock, McGee decided it was “go time.”
McGee (5) tried to lose Zach Randolph (x4) with a hard crossover and a spin move. Z-Bo wouldn’t stand for this and punched the ball out. Mike “Million Dollar Man” Conley (x1) collected the loose ball and took off on the break.
ESPN’s John Hollinger and Chad Ford recently completed the latest edition of their ‘Future Power Rankings.’ (Found here, requires ESPN Insider). Like previous versions, they begin their rankings with the following introduction:
The Future Power Rankings are ESPN Insider’s projection of the on-court success expected for each team during the 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons.
Each of the NBA’s 30 teams received an overall Future Power Rating of 0 to 1,000, based on how well we expect each team to perform in the three seasons following this season.
In determining the Future Power Rating, Hollinger and Ford rated each team in five categories. The sum of those ratings = a team’s Future Power Rating. From the article, here is an explanation of each category: Read more »
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.
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.
{There’s the Wizards home floor … transported all the way from D.C. to VCU’s Siegel Center in Richmond, Virginia}
Currently en route to Richmond for the Wizards’ preseason opener, I’m not exactly sure how I’ll be covering games this season. But for tonight I’m going to update the goings-ons of the game via Twitter, which will also update live in a post on this site (hopefully).
The game will not be televised, but can be heard over the radio on 107.6 The Fan.
When: Tues., May 21 - 7:30 pm
Where: Lou's City Bar - Columbia Heights, D.C.
Across The ESPN TrueHoop Network