Another day, another loss for the Washington Wizards, this time 99-94 to the Detroit Pistons… no biggie. At least they keep trying, I think. Here’s the reaction…
MVP.
Greg Monroe had the MVP numbers (18 points and seven rebounds), and Tayshaun Prince (14 points) made pump fakes look like a Picasso against Wizards rookie Chris Singleton. But why not give the MVP to Ben Wallace? Washington coach Randy Wittman tried to play Hack-a-Wallace late in the fourth quarter when the game was close, but Gentle Ben went 5-for-6 from the line (5-for-10 on the night). All Wizards assistant coach Sam Cassell could do was chuckle from the bench.
LVP.
Oh, Jordan. “If you in da D… Slide by the Palace of Auburn Hills tonight!,” Tweeted Jordan Crawford (@Jcraw55) at about 10:30 AM on the morning of Thursday night’s game. Hopefully his friends and family don’t start asking for refunds. A 2-for-13 effort from the field on this night makes him 4-for-25 in his hometown of Detroit on the season. Add Crawford’s 3-for-10 effort last season in Detroit, as a Wizard, and he’s 7-for-35 for his career in Motor City. The ‘check engine’ light is on…
When the Wizards last faced the Pistons in D.C., via TAI’s Adam McGinnis:
This has been quite a week for Coach John Calipari. On Monday night, his Kentucky Wildcats defeated the Kansas Jayhawks to win the NCAA championship. Yesterday, he emphatically declared that Kentucky was the best job in basketball coaching, and he has no intentions of leaving. Today, it was announced that his former All-American point guard (at Memphis), Derrick Rose, may finally play for the Chicago Bulls after nearly a month hiatus. Best of all, tonight Coach Cal can watch two more of his former point guards, John Wall and Brandon Knight, go head-to-head in the Palace of Auburn Hills. Per NBA.com’s David Aldridge, Coach Calipari could be watching his next team play in the Washington Wizards, but now we’re just getting ahead of ourselves. For tonight’s Wizards-Pistons 3-on-3, we have Vincent Goodwill (@vgoodwill) from the Detroit News, Patrick Hayes (@patrick_hayes) from the ESPN True Hoop blog, Piston Powered and Truth About It’s RashadMobley (@rashad20). Three questions, three answers starts now…
#1) Kentucky Coach John Calipari has given no public indication that he’s interested in leaving Kentucky for the NBA, but it would be shocking if he didn’t at least privately consider it. On a related note, it seems as if Anthony Davis will leave and be the consensus No. 1 pick, and barring something historic, the Pistons and the Wizards seem bound for the NBA lottery. Which situation would tempt Coach Calipari more? John Wall, Anthony Davis and the Wizards, or Brandon Knight, Anthony Davis, and the Pistons?
GOODWILL: I would think the Pistons because they seem closer to contention than the Wizards, along with Anthony Davis being the closest thing to a perfect complement to Greg Monroe that the Pistons could ever find. Knight, Monroe, Rodney Stuckey and Jonas Jerebko looks to be a solid foundation compared to Wall, Nene and…exactly. Also, Calipariwasn’t a complete disaster at New Jersey, taking them to the playoffs in 1998 but with full organizational control it was too much to handle. That’s not the case in Detroit, where although Joe Dumars has had some blemishes, he knows how to put together a championship core. Can the same be said for Ernie Grunfeld in D.C.? If he wants personnel control, I’d assume the Wizards would be the better choice. But if it comes down to roster and how close each team is to contending if you add Davis, it’s the Pistons and it’s not close.
HAYES: If we’re just limiting to those two players from each team, it’s definitely Wall-Davis. Knight has shown some flashes of good play, but nothing to suggest he has the franchise player ceiling Wall does. However, the fact that the Pistons have a potential All-Star big in Greg Monroe in the mix too and Cal’s guy, Worldwide Wes, has Detroit ties too, could maybe swing things in the Pistons’ favor. Fortunately, the Pistons seem pretty happy with Lawrence Frank, and they’ve become too cheap to pay coaches who would come with Calipari‘s asking price, so I don’t think they’ll have to worry about this scenario.
Due to work, I caught the last minute or so of Washington’s 97-95 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Monday night, giving me just enough glimpse of a close game that came down to a last second shot, in favor of Rodney Stuckey. And that’s how loss No. 255 during the lifetime of this TruthAboutIt.net Wizards blog (this season being the fifth) went down. TAI’s Rashad Mobley and John Converse Townsend were on-hand at the Verizon Center for his achievement. They now provide their reaction.
[Remember when Gilbert Arenas made one of many returns to the court against the Pistons in March 2009 (one of two appearances for all of the 2008-09 season)? Sure you do.]
The Wizards kick off a five-game road trip in Detroit on this Sunday evening, with stops in Portland, Los Angeles (Clippers), Utah and Phoenix up next. For one, Detroit is Jordan Crawford’s home, so keep an eye on if he’s pressing too much or smelling the popcorn. But also, Washington is seeking their second road win on the season against the 8-20 Pistons to their 5-22 record; a Pistons team that also experienced championship-level success with former (Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Darvin Ham), and future (Mike James, Flip Saunders) Wizards. Furthermore, John Wall and his Kentucky Wildcats freshman point guard successor, Brandon Knight, will face off for the first time. For today’s 3-on-3 we have Dan Feldman (@danfeld11) of the TrueHoop Network’s PistonPowered.com, along with TAI’s Adam McGinnis (@adammcginnis) and Sam Permutt (@sammyvert). Three questions, three answers starts now…
#1) Washington is tied with the Miami Heat in playing at the fifth fastest pace in the NBA (93.3 possessions per 48 minutes); Detroit plays at… the… slow… est… pace… in the league (87.7 possessions per 48). Which team’s style wins out and why?
The Wizards’ loss to the Pistons in Detroit on Sunday was a stinker on a couple levels. I planned to watch at my leisure on DVR delay, so I could chart defense as the game progressed. But at one point late into the evening, and after regulation had ended, I discovered that I hadn’t set it to record for an extended amount of time. In rather anticlimactic fashion, I was resigned to checking the box score to see that the Wizards remained winless on the road on the year at 0-6.
So that was that, never even got to see the overtime. Below, you’ll find a regulation-only defensive chronicle, above that a spreadsheet tallying point responsibilities per possession, and above that, a couple regulation game notes. But first, let’s check Nick Young getting blocked by a 51-year old Tracy McGrady, I wonder if that was special for Nick.
When I was in junior high and behaved in a way that my father deemed incorrect or beneath his standards, he would banish me to my room. He knew how much I loved watching sports (specifically basketball), and that if I were exiled to my television-less room, I’d be crestfallen, dejected and angry — and the first few times it happened, I was all those things and more.
Then one day I discovered the joys of talk radio, and I realized that listening to the Washington Bullets play-by-play was almost as exciting as watching the game on television. I could create my own mental pictures, I could hear the players’ sneakers squeaking through the sub-standard radio speakers, and the announcers seemed to pay more attention to detail than the TV broadcasters. I enjoyed the experience so much that even when I wasn’t punished, I’d watch the game on TV with the volume down while listening to the radio broadcast. In fact, I was so smitten with the radio that I started using that technique to watch football as well.
Somewhere along the way I stopped listening to radio broadcasts during sporting events and just watched them on TV or via the Internet. But last night, for the second time in two weeks, the Washington Wizards (with No. 1 pick John Wall on their roster) weren’t anywhere to be found on television or by streaming bootleg video on the Web. To the radio I went …
A scene from glorious Grand Rapids, MI - {flickr/OZinOH}
Listening to basketball on the radio is hard … damn hard. Hard like drinking warm milk and eating boiled eggs in the hot July sun while getting bit by mosquitoes and suffering from a tequila and red wine hangover.
Ok, well maybe it’s not that bad. Wizards radio guys Glenn Consor and Dave Johnson do a helluva job keeping team faithful updated with developments.
Still, when I hear Consor officially declaring Gilbert Arenas to be “back”, indicating that he hasn’t felt this way about the guard’s preseason cameo appearances up until now, I feel pretty deprived from not being able to see the moving pictures.
