Don’t let the Washington Wizards fool you on occasion, they are still a highly dysfunctional team. But they are our Wizards, and we wouldn’t have it any other way, right? There are signs of improvement… kind of like running Anacostia River water through a colander. You’re definitely going to filter out a boot, perhaps a used condom or two. No, the water isn’t now drinkable, still very tainted – Washington needs several Brita filters on their roster — but hey, progress.

In Washington’s 111-108 overtime win over the Toronto Raptors on Monday, the starting backcourt of John Wall and Nick Young set the tone — Wall with aggressive drives to the basket, and Young with his excellent ability to make rhythm shots that the offensive system provides for him. The duo combined for 60 points (31 from Wall, 29 from Young). Of course, as he’s apt to do, Young regressed over the course of the game. His points and field goals per quarter: 1st (11 pts, 4-7 FGs); 2nd (7 pts, 3-5 FGs); 3rd (5 pts, 2-6 FGs); 4th (4 pts, 0-1 FGs); OT (3 pts, 0-1 FGs). Toronto adjusted their defense to what Young was doing earlier in the game and he succumbed to it.

Afterward, Randy Wittman didn’t name names (he could’ve been talking about several of his players), but it was clear Young was the main target of his words.

“Do we have things to clean up? Absolutely,” said Wittman. “We still have to realize, when you’re a scorer in this league, and you are scoring, that the other team scouts just like we do. They’re going to get the ball out of your hands, and we have to be willing passers when that happens. That’s a compliment… that’s a compliment. They are doubling you for a reason, and now all we gotta do it make the simple plays,” continued the coach, speaking of how he decided to keep the ball in Wall’s hands toward the end of the game, heaping praise on his point guard for making a simple pass to Trevor Booker out of pick and roll action.

“You’re not going to dribble out of the double team more times than not,” Wittman later reiterated. ”You’ve just got to accept it, move the ball, make plays. Because then, when you do that three or four times early in that fourth quarter, they’re going to say, ‘We can’t double anymore and we got to play our own.’ Now it opens things back up again. We never made that adjustment, I thought, in that fourth quarter.”

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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 24 contributors: Adam McGinnis (@adammcginnis), John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend), and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It).]

Score

Washington Wizards 81 vs Los Angeles Clippers 107 [box score]

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The Washington Wizards are a mess. They can team worse than they are, but the only one is the Charlotte Bobcats. They’ve, in brief times, competed against good teams, but always lose. They’ve given the Oklahoma City Thunder an anomaly to everyone’s surprise. They’ve gotten demoralized by teams very good, good, and mediocre, the LA Clippers working to migrate from good to very good status in their 107-81 blowout win over Randy Wittman’s team on Saturday night.

Washington has youth making lesson-learning mistakes, but they also have youngish mid-range veterans who continue to not “get it.” JaVale McGee, for instance, has more minutes of on-court development over his career than the likes of Ryan Anderson, Serge Ibaka and DeAndre Jordan. Yet those players, picked after McGee’s 18th position in the 2008 draft (21, 24 and 35 respectively), have developed into more indexed team intelligence for their franchises.

Jordan Crawford, age 23, is in the second year of a career that could go in a number of directions. Right now on a team like the Wizards, most of those don’t show a ton of promise, but there are glimmers. Nick Young, age 26, continues to show why he’s just another in a long line of capable NBA scorers who can’t do much else. In his fifth NBA season, he helps his team embody this quote said by Wittman after the loss to the Clippers:

“You have to read the situation and what they’re doing and not just play the play that’s supposed to be… they take this away, we’ve gotta do that. I don’t think we did the second part of it. They took this away and we just went ahead and tried to do it anyway.”

Sounds like mumbo-jumbo, but its essence conveys that the Wizards are still a first offensive option, me-first team; they have those kind of players. These efforts are led by the no longer fresh-faced players brought in by Ernie Grunfeld who were supposed to help establish new traditions — the McGees, Youngs and Andray Blatches of the scene – long before it became a catch-phrase motto for this season under Ted Leonsis.

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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.

WEIDIE: Pace. Watch Chris Paul stop and go, use a screen how he sees fit, get a defender on his back. Paul has developed a killer jumper over his NBA career, but he started as a player who could control a game’s pace, use his quicks deceptively when he needs to, and create passing lanes with the measured ability to see a play unfold. In other words, chill sometimes John Wall.

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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. Game 23 contributors: Adam McGinnis (@adammcginnis), Arish Narayen, and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It).]

Score

Washington Wizards 89 at Toronto Raptors 106 [box score]

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The Washington Wizards talk about fourth quarter full-court pressure defense against Chicago, which helped make the 10 point loss a little more interesting, to say the least…

If anything, Randy Wittman has proven that he’s no Flip Saunders, past his own claims of the two being “polar opposites.” No, it’s not about wins and losses (beating the Bobcats twice? please), at least for the rest of this season. Yes, outcome is important and positive outcomes are nice, but ask a fan about winning or losing, and the Wizards can’t win. From moral victories to lottery losses to scoreboard reward, not many can be satisfied in this current state of four victories and 17 losses.

Wittman is willing to try more new things, starting Jan Vesely at the four over Andray Blatche for example. Or, down 78-63 to the Chicago Bulls on Monday night with nearly a quarter left to play, throwing a full court press after a Chicago timeout allowing Tom Thibodeau to insert M.V.P. point guard Derrick Rose back into the game. It’s not like Saunders didn’t reach deep into his bag of gimmicks, responsiveness from his players was clearly the issue.

“I was a little hesitant to really do what we did there in the fourth quarter,” said coach Randy Wittman at the end of the night, “because… [chuckles]… we hadn’t worked on it, but I said, ‘Let’s go, guys, we got one chance here to make this a ball game.’”

Washington responded immediately — with a unit of John Wall, Jordan Crawford, Nick Young, Trevor Booker, and JaVale McGee – racing to a 15-8 run in fewer than four minutes. Thanks to the pressure, the Wizards trimmed their deficit to eight points. A Nick Young three-pointer capped the comeback, with Wittman afterward stomping his feet all over the hardwood floor to remind Young to not bask in his offense, but rather to find the shooters and pressure as necessary. Chicago answered by finally breaking Washington’s full-court defense with ease, ending the Wizards run with a Carlos Boozer dunk, holding their lead at 88-78.

“Our point guards Shelvin [Mack] and John are picking up 84, 94 feet… Book [Booker] has to ability to really cover a lot of ground, and I thought he did a heckuva job of trying to get the ball out of Rose’s hands early, make [Joakim] Noah and those guys make a play,” said Wittman. “JaVale… there’s a little technique being the last man standing back there with what you have to do. You know… he didn’t know. We haven’t been able to work on it. He came away from the basket a little bit too much — a couple drop-offs to [Carlos] Boozer where you got to make Noah, the 7-foot center, make plays driving down the middle of the floor.”

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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. Game 21 contributors: Markus Allen (@mayminded), John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend), and Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It).]

Score

Washington Wizards 88 at Chicago Bulls 98 [box score]

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Derrick Rose had a tough Sunday against the Miami Heat. His team lost, and he missed two crucial free-throws with his Bulls down one point and 22 seconds left. He missed a potential game-tying jumper with three seconds left too. He took it kind of hard.

“I think of my legacy, I want people to think of me as being a clutch player,” said Rose before facing the Wizards in Washington the next night. “Someone that always comes through a majority of the time when they’re on the court, and yesterday it hurt a little bit, but I know it will help me in the long run.”

Rose was later asked if it’s hard to adjust, coming off a tough 97-93 loss like that on the road in Miami and into a road game the next night in another city.

“Aww hell no. Hell no. It just makes me hungrier, where tonight… I’m going to try to go crazy.”

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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. Game 20 contributors: Adam McGinnis, Rashad Mobley and Kyle Weidie.]

Score

Washington Wizards 102 at Charlotte Bobcats 99 [box score]

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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. Game 19 contributors: Sam Permutt, John Converse Townsend and Kyle Weidie.]

Score

Washington Wizards 76 at Houston Rockets 103 [box score]

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Tonight the Wizards face a Houston Rockets team that they played fairly close about 10 days ago… Washington fell apart toward the end, per usual. But this game is different, new Wizards coach Randy Wittman, that dancing fool (as it IS ‘Dance Party Friday’ on Bullets Forever), will be facing off against friendly foe Kevin McHale. When the Washington Post’s Michael Lee attempted to pry some answers out of McHale about his old chums, Wittman and Flip Saunders, the Rockets coach said, “No thoughts. I’m pretty much not going to answer anything you’re asking on that. That’s usually a hint. If I don’t answer the first question, I’m not answering the second or third.” Then he offered Lee a dap. Whatever is clever… McHale probably just didn’t want to call the Wizards players dumb (since, after all, McGee did try that off-the-backboard dunk B.S. the last time these two teams faced). In any case, the drill is three questions, three answers, featuring TAI’s Rashad Mobley, Sam Permutt and John Converse Townsend. 3-on-3 starts now…

#1) Houston won just five of their first 12 games when they beat Washington on MLK Day, but overall won seven in a row before that streak was snapped by Milwaukee, in Houston, on Wednesday (the Rockets victory over the Wizards was win No. 2 in the streak). They now stand at 10-8, while the Wizards are 3-15, and normally you’d expect Washington to lose this game, but under a new coach, they might be a bit more hungry to get their first road victory. Which team comes out the aggressor?

MOBLEY: The Wizards. Unless you’re the Oklahoma City Thunder, and you’re trying to avenge a loss, no one is going to get up for the Wizards and come out aggressive, so the Rockets will start slow. The Wizards as a whole will be looking to continue their Randy Wittman-inspired momentum previously found against the lowly Bobcats. But more specifically, JaVale McGee SHOULD be motivated because a) he got dunked on by Chandler Parsons’ franks and beans in the last meeting, and b) he performed this ill-advised dunk.

PERMUTT: A coaching change can create a tryout-like atmosphere on a team. Players suddenly have newfound motivation to play unselfishly, to dive on the floor, to show their new leader (and minute distributor) why they belong on the court. Of course, the players are all familiar with Randy Wittman as an assistant. Nonetheless, expect the Wizards to be eager to please their new head coach in his first official game. Wait… the Bobcats are a real team?  That game counted?!? Never mind. But still.

TOWNSEND: It’s hard to imagine this group of Washington Wizards initiating hostilities at home, and even tougher to do so on the road where the team has lost all but three games over the past two seasons (0-7 in 2011-12), so I’ll take the Rockets. Houston should come out hot, looking to defend their court after having their twelve-game home winning streak snapped this week. To make matters even tougher, Rockets players have vowed to shore up defensively after allowing two consecutive 100-point games in the Toyota Center (Houston had held opponents to fewer than 90 points over its first seven home games).

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Advice? “Be yourself,” said Randy Wittman after winning in his Wizards head coaching debut on Wednesday. But did the Wizards players need a new voice? “I’m just here,” said Nick Young, while teammate Andray Blatche’s response was, “I can’t honestly say that we needed a new voice, we just needed… somebody to actually check us like Wittman did.” And the erudite JaVale McGee? “Whatever [Ernie Grunfeld] explained was the reason why he fired Flip, was the reason that he fired Flip.”

The Wizards? They still don’t know what they want, or who they are, or if their new coach is going to slap the proverbial taste of nicotine out their mouths. It’s like the rest of this season is an in-game training camp. The Wizards were already a statistically fast-paced team under Flip Saunders… Screw that, says Randy Wittman (paraphrasing here)… I’m going to run you guys even more. And at that… John Wall, the fastest athlete? Well, I’m going to call him out for conditioning (along with Nick Young) and sub them back into a game really, really late during a blowout. ”Be hard on the leader and the rest will follow,” is presumed to be Wittman’s interim idea, as I wrote on ESPN’s Daily Dime about this latest new change with the Washington franchise.

The Wizards said WHAT? Well, that’s what they said. Randy Wittman, Nick Young, John Wall, Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee and Rashard Lewis speak on it in the video above.

[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. Game 18 contributors: Adam McGinnis, Arish Narayen and Kyle Weidie.]

Score

Washington Wizards 92 vs. Charlotte Bobcats 75 [box score]

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[Boris Diaw... HUNGRY? - photo: A. McGinnis]

Tonight the Washington Wizards officially dive into the Randy Wittman era, aiming to get him a win off the bat against the lowly Charlotte Bobcats. Well, lowly is relative. The Bobcats are 3-14, the Wizards are 3-15. For this 3-on-3 drill, we have John Pettice of BobcatsPlanet.com along with TAI’s Rashad Mobley and John Converse Townsend. Three questions, three answers starts now…

#1) You have to start a new team in India and you get to take four players from the rosters Washington and Charlotte with you. The caveat is that you must choose three players from one team, and only one player from the other team. Who you got and why?

MOBLEY: I’m taking John Wall, because he’s the best point from the two rosters by far. I’m taking Nick Young and JaVale McGee, because I need a scorer and shot blocker respectively, and finally I’m taking Boris Diaw (and a weight specialist) from the Bobcats, because he’s adept at scoring, rebounding and passing.

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The Washington Wizards held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon to announce that assistant Randy Wittman was promoted to replace head coach Flip Saunders, who was relieved of his duties that morning. Team president Ernie Grunfeld was on hand as well to field questions from the media. Wittman will finish out the remaining of the season as the interim head coach, the rest of the coaching staff was retained.

Wittman emphasized his experience being an interim head coach:

“I have coached in this league on a number different teams. It is not an easy transition. I have done this before and I have been on a staff  and taking over in the middle of the season. I know what is about and what change needs happen to try to make this a positive situation … The main thing that I learned the first time that I stepped in — this is even more magnified because of the condensed schedule and playing so many games without practice time — we just got to simplify things … you can’t flood these guys with information overload … just two or three things to concentrate on and take the baby steps after there.”

The removal of Saunders brought a level of personal sadness:

“Is this a happy day? Not by any regard. A good man walked out the door today. It is always hard. I did not come here to Washington to be the head coach. I came here to help him [Saunders] … This is a black mark on all of us, absolutely. Everyone has their own beliefs and philosophies on how to do it. And I think the reason that Flip and I have been successful together throughout the years in the NBA because we are kind of polar opposites. And you have to have a staff that is mixed like that. Strengths and weaknesses of a staff is just as important as strengths and weaknesses of your players.”

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