Posts tagged ‘ryan anderson’

Look, Dwight Howard has long known that he does not want to be a member of the Orlando Magic past this season, so does it matter that his current team is in such disarray, losers of four games in a row with Howard calling out his teammates for effort? Probably not. In fact, it likely prompts GM Otis Smith even more to make a move, but it doesn’t make him any less desperate. (Read: this painfully drags on for Orlando up to the March 15 trade deadline… Have a fun next six weeks Magic fans!) So with Baby Dwight wanting a cure-all change of venue, but not able to cure-all as Superman himself, his team takes on the lowly Washington Wizards tonight, with Howard likely preparing to be as proud as a schoolyard bully (Orlando is favored by 10 points). This 3-on-3 drill prior to possibly just one of Howard’s last 23 games in a Magic uniform includes Nate Drexler (@natedrex) of TrueHoop Network blog MagicBasketball.net, along with TAI’s John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend) and yours truly, Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It). Three questions, three answers starts now…

#1) Which stat is more surprising? That the Washington Wizards have a higher offensive rebound rate (ORB%) than the Orlando Magic (0.261 ORB% compared to 0.259 for Orlando; league average is 0.264)?  NOTE: WAS eFG% = 0.442, 29th in NBA; ORL eFG% = 0.495, 9th in NBA)….

OR, that JaVale McGee is shooting worse on free-throws than Dwight Howard? (McGee is at 0.433 this season, 0.600 for his career; Howard is at 0.460 this season, 0.592 for his career.)

DREXLER: This is tough, because neither of these surprise me all that much. I suppose JaVale getting out sniped by Dwight from the charity stripe takes the cake, though. Look, when you have two bigs who shoot 60-percent and below for their careers, no amount of badness should catch you off guard, but McGee is getting close to 30-percent land! The biggest surprise of all is that no matter how hard I try to convince myself that JaVale McGee has star potential it just isn’t so. Guy sure is athletic, though. Why is it that athletic guys can’t shoot free throws?

TOWNSEND: Dwight Howard has always been consistent, if reliably unreliable, from the charity stripe, so I’m more surprised by JaVale McGee’s continued struggles at line. McGee has demonstrated a bit of a weakness for jump shots and perimeter-oriented play, as if he was a two-guard trapped in a 7-footer’s body, making it tough to comprehend how his free-throw percentage has dipped almost 25 points since his rookie season.

Read more »

{Andray Goaltends a Free-Throw, of course.}

Andray Blatche is a human centipede of wicked pixels.

Sure, he does things like goaltend free-throws… a plumb stupid mistake. However, his continued laziness is hard to ignore. It’s also hard to ignore the stated goals of toughness that Ted Leonsis keeps touting during the Wizards’ rebuilding process, and how Blatche is the antithesis of those goals. With a presence so counterintuitive to Leonsis’ vision, Blatche has rendered meaningless previous pixels of support from the franchise owner.

When it comes to Blatche, everyone from team management to coaches is all talk, no action, much like Blatche himself. Until otherwise, they are all peas in a pod, reflected in the murky waters of Blatche’s vastly inconsistent play. But wicked pixels that form words from the typing fingers of someone in the web world only goes so far. Video solidifies these points, so let’s watch some video.

Not sure how long the Wizards will allow John Wall to tolerate someone like Blatche running with him on the break… Or maybe it’s just that Orlando’s Ryan Anderson is a very intimidating guy. Either way, no guy Blatche’s size, no NBA power forward, no man who claims to want the ball more in the paint should ever pull up softly on the break like in the video below. Do you need me to say that this is not tough? Well, it isn’t. This happens in the first minute of last night’s contest.

John Wall gets blocked by Dwight Howard on the break. You know who is there to clean up the mess with a tiny feather? Why, it’s Andray Blatche with a scoop shot around guard Jason Richardson that misses. I’M NBA POWER FORWARD WHO WANT BALL IN PAINT! This happens in the second minute of last night’s contest.

Read more »

By the time the referee threw the ball up to signify the start of the game against the Orlando Magic, the Washington Wizards knew they would be without Rashard Lewis and Nick Young.  Lewis continues to battle knee tendinitis and Young was a late scratch with swelling his knee.  Their absences meant the Wizards had to somehow account for the 30 points they usually bring to the starting lineup.

From scoring the first points of the game on a layup 42 seconds in, John Wall demonstrated that he was in an offensive state of mind and capable of picking up the slack by scoring 13 points in the opening period.  Seemingly all of his baskets on the evening would follow this sequence:  Wall would take the outlet or inbound pass, he would run by the Orlando big men, and then he would outmaneuver the Orlando guards en route to a layup.  He peppered in a couple short jumpers, some free throws, and one three-pointer later in the game, but the majority of his damage was done in the paint.  He finished with 27 points, five rebounds, two steals and just one assist.

It can be argued that Wall, who averages nearly 10 assists a game, wasn’t doing his job as a point guard if he only dished out one dime. False.  Dwight Howard kept pressure on Washington’s big men by often catching the ball deep in the paint (thanks to repeated poor post position from JaVale McGee, lack of strength from Hilton Armstrong or lack of experience from Kevin Seraphin), and forcing them to foul.  Howard went 8-11 from the free-throw line and 12-15 from the field to tally 32 points.

Wall kept pressure on the Orlando defense by repeatedly getting into the lane and ending up with a layup or a trip to the foul line.  So what happened when the Magic actually stopped him and other teammates were forced to step up?

Kirk Hinrich got off to a hot start in the second quarter by scoring eight points, and looked to be headed towards a productive game.  Unfortunately, he only shot the ball nine times and scored just two points after the second quarter.  He did shake the living daylights out of J.J. Redick, forcing him to fall backwards, but he never provided Wall with consistent help.

Read more »

We’ve heard it from Ernie Grunfeld before, most recently in an interview by Mike Prada of Bullets Forever.

We were the first to make a move, so everybody’s following us (chuckles).

True, the Wizards were the first to strike when they landed Mike Miller and Randy Foye. But it’s hard to laugh, or continue to pridefully boast about the move, when the cream of the Eastern Conference crop keeps passing the Wizards by.

Let’s quickly go through what the top three teams in the East (Orlando, Cleveland and Boston), have done this off-season.

Orlando:

Read more »