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.

Speaking with this co-worker on that Monday morning, the conversation went from the lockout to who the Washington Wizards would play. Being a fan of the Dallas Mavericks, he was excited at the prospect of seeing the NBA champions in Washington on January 10th (per the old schedule). I tried to tell him that the old schedule — even the games from January on — meant nothing with the slate shrinking to 66 games, but he was convinced he would still be able to see his Mavs.

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Some leftover pictures, commentary, and links at the bottom…

Kevin Seraphin.

At some point during the Celtics game, mid-third quarter, John Wall expressed dismay about a questionable call that didn’t go the Wizards’ way … that’s a $50 fine face, perhaps.

On Boston’s subsequent out-of-bounds play, Wall did what he usually does in bouts of heightened emotion, good or bad … he pulled his shorts up.

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From the Wizards’ perspective, you’ll hear sentiment such as, “We just turned into our old selves in the third quarter,” courtesy of Andray Blatche in the quote mix video above. He also said that too many players were trying to put things on their own shoulders and that there were no Kobe Bryants or Dwyane Wades in the locker room.

Regarding the offense, Rashard Lewis said in the first quarter the Wizards moved the ball side to side, but later in the game, they often utilized only half of the baseline to halfcourt plane.

John Wall cited lack of heart and fight … hero ball.

Nick Young said that they have to find ways to get people open, saying Grant Hill was talking to him during the game, telling him that the Suns were reading every play the Wizards called.

JaVale McGee walked out of the training room with just compression shorts and headphones on after the game, jamming to some tunes and asking a member of the media he knew for a box score.

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{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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[As it turns out, Hakim Warrick's monster jam on Yi Jianlian at the end of the first half was a sign for things to come for Washington in the second half.]

There was a battle for momentum toward the end of the second quarter during Sunday night’s Wizards-Suns game. Steve Nash had just penetrated the lane (as he did with ease all night), and dished off to Hakim Warrick (again, as he did all night) for a thunderous slam, and there were just four seconds left on the clock.  John Wall then took the ball, ran down the court and launched a shot from just inside the three-point line.

After Wall’s attempt went in off the glass just before the buzzer, Channing Frye looked in disbelief and then ran towards the locker room.  Wall briefly looked at the crowd, tapped his chest twice, and then he too ran off the court.  His shot had cut the Suns lead to three points, and momentum seemed to be firmly on the Wizards’ side.

In the first 90 seconds or so of the third quarter, it seemed like the Wizards were up to matching the Suns’ intensity.  Jason Richardson and Channing Frye both scored off passes from Nash, but the Wizards countered with scores of their own courtesy of two free throws from Wall and a dunk from Alonzo Gee.  At that point, the Wizards were still within three points.

But then the Steve Nash show really started to kick into full gear. The Wizards could not keep pace and things began to get out of hand. Nash was either scoring or dishing on every basket, and each of Phoenix’s other four starters (Grant Hill, Channing Frye, Richardson and even Earl-freaking-Barron) scored within the first six minutes.

The Wizards weren’t nearly as fluid.  Gee took and missed two three-pointers, which really isn’t his shot, while JaVale McGee and Wall took turns turning the ball over.  Andray Blatche, who started quickly with 12 first quarter points, went almost half of the third quarter before he scored a basket, but at that point, the Wizards were already down 85-73.

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[Steve Nash lures John Wall with a back dribble, then changes pace to attack the open lane while keeping the ball away from JaVale McGee with two hands before sliding in for a layup.]

This Wizards team is hard to dissect, and I don’t mean “take apart,” as Steve Nash did on Sunday evening on his way to captaining his Suns to a 125-108 victory.

The Wizards are hard to dissect in the sense of separating individual parts to determine why the team continues to lose in the worst of ways (and win by the skin of their teeth). Anything and everything could go wrong on a given night.

On offense, in general, the team wastes too many possessions with bad shots. Pretty simple to conclude that they could use a lot more discipline in this regard. On defense, it comes down to focus and will, something several Wizards have major issues with. When you combine the overall effect that has on the team with the stylings of the two-time MVP in Nash, you have a recipe for the Suns to have their way with the Wizards.

Nash was often seen casually strolling through the paint, slicing through defenders as shown in the above GIF on Sunday night. But really, there was nothing casual about it. Well, unless you’re talking about the Wizards’ defense.

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Quinton Ross has a player option for $1,146,337 million next season. I’m sure some Wizards fan out there don’t want him to take it. Get over it. He probably will.

But yea, Ross is bad … well, at least his stats are, which certainly serve as a partial reflection of his abilities as a player, but are incapable of telling the whole story … such as his reputation for being a good defensive player, which can certainly be debated.

Leading up to Saturday’s game against the Jazz, in Ross’ 19 games and 193 minutes with the Wizards he had a PER of -0.3.

On Saturday, taking and making one shot, along with committing a single foul in five minutes of action pushed his PER with the Wizards into positive territory at 0.1.

Bless his heart. But I’d definitely rather Ross than Stevenson. He’s easier to tolerate, if you will … and kinda less hideous to look at.

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Flip Saunders and I may have different perceptions of the Wizards. And for good reason, we are different people. He’s a professional, experienced coach. He sees countless things  I don’t see when observing his team. But I’m stubborn in my opinion that derives from the things I see. Agree to disagree if you will. For instance, let’s look at the quote below from Michael Lee’s story in Monday’s Washington Post:

Despite their 1-3 record, the Wizards (8-17) still believe they made progress on the trip, with Coach Flip Saunders and several of his players commenting on how the team could’ve easily won two more games if a few more breaks had gone their way.

The Wizards have recently patted themselves on the back for not quitting and being in close contests. “Breaks” … sure, Michael Lee’s words, but the franchise has conveyed the ‘if only a couple of plays’ argument, as if some fate has intervened.

I’m under the impression that if the Wizards wanted it a little bit more, especially on defense, if they had just a bit more focus, determination, hustle, you know, all of those intangible sports clichés, then they could have notched a couple more wins.

The perception of the “breaks” not going the Wizards’ way seems odd to me. It’s like saying they lost due to reasons beyond their control … interference from the basketball gods I suppose.

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Why is Gilbert Arenas always so ready to give up a foul after he or his team commits a turnover?

Why is Caron Butler always shuffling/switching his pivot foot when he catches the ball, leading to a travel?

Why are the Wizards entrenched in bad communication, often running into each other on pick and roll defense?

This team is surrounded by a lot of questions, these are just some examples. The quandary of this bad Washington Wizards team won’t simply be resolved by ‘when Mike Miller becomes healthy’, ‘when Gilbert Arenas gets his mentality back’ or ‘when Flip Saunders is able to reign in his players to properly run his offense’.

Running the offense is one glaring problem because this team was supposed to be able to score. Screw the offense for this post, let’s talk defense.

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I seriously contemplated whether I should ever watch the Wizards-Suns game. It’s not like I didn’t know the 121-95 outcome or was unable to witness the Wizards constructing a Brick City that would make Redman proud. Instead of dedicating my Saturday night life to the Wizards at home, I ventured out in the D.C. snow to meet some friends at a bar for drinks, darts, and sports on TVs. Between the activities, I couldn’t concentrate on watching the Wizards much, but the futility was made crystal clear in the glances I was able to get.

This team has no moxie. With the persistent problem back-to-back games pose, there’s ever-increasing skepticism and little hope that they will ever change course for the better. There are a ton of excuses for why this team is falling way short of expectations, a lot of them seem to stem on more time and patience. But how do you get a team to play with energy and focus like they care?

So, I put my blues collection on shuffle and spent the better part of my Sunday watching the Wizards-Suns with focus … and boy did I learn a lot about this team. I was able to capture the essence of the game in the nine frames below, but I’ll have much more to come in the future about the less desirable aspects of the Flip Saunders’ team.

{flickr/Keith Allison}

One thing I didn’t to mention in my post-game write-up … and I’m not sure if it had a proper place there anyway … was the “mood” of Gilbert Arenas after the Suns game.

I’ve only been around the new, media unfriendly Arenas at media day, practices, and home games. And he’s only talked once after a practice (to my knowledge), the first one after he got fined. I also haven’t been to every practice, but his routine usually has been to say, “They said I don’t have to talk to you guys today … only on game nights.”

Most are still getting acclimated to the melancholy, aloof Gilbert Arenas … the one who has become so jaded by the media that he started putting on a rendition of himself that’s a far cry from the entertaining Arenas of old. A seemingly 180-degree turn, but still 100% quirky.

If you ask his teammates, he’s still the same Gilbert. Maybe he’s not pulling the pranks he has in the past, but he’s certainly not putting on a terse facade with them. The media has witnessed Arenas joking around with others, only to see his alter ego take effect when “official” media time commences. I’ve found myself wondering if Arenas’ “act” causes him internal strife, in the sense that it takes energy to suppress part of his being. Or, is the whole charade something he enjoys?

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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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