Posts tagged ‘Utah Jazz’

The Wizards looked primed to follow the script we have seem so many times this season: Take the early lead, suffer through foul trouble, and collapse late in the game. However, this wasn’t the case today. Maybe history was on the Wizards’ side, having now won five of their their last six Martin Luther King Day contests.

And while the Utah Jazz were looking to build on yet another winning streak (3), the Wizards had not won two consecutive games since April 4 and 6 of last year. But the Washington Wizards showed fire, heart, and discipline — characteristics that have long been absent from the Verizon Center.

In fact, and to my great surprise, the Wizards led for 46 minutes and 41 seconds. (The Jazz only found themselves ahead of the Wizards on three occasions, for a combined five points and 1:19 of game time.)

While there were plenty of highlights – including Andray Blatche’s chasedown block on Raja Bell, another classic John Wall to JaVale McGee alley-oop, and even a JaValevator tip slam late — there was one play that really made a world of difference today, and perhaps even for the rest of the season.

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On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2007 Gilbert Arenas hit a game-winner walking away against the Utah Jazz in Washington… barely looked to see if it went in. Tough shot against a tough player in Deron Williams.

Four years later, the consistency of the Utah franchise and a Jerry Sloan-led team continues to carry an air of toughness wherever they go. The Wizards franchise remains in vastly different territory, with a fan base yearning for something they’ve never really known, that same toughness and consistency Utah always conveys.

“This is going to be a great test because this is by far the most physical team that we’ve faced,” said Wizards coach Flip Saunders before this afternoon’s game. “The other teams we’ve faced, Orlando and Miami, they’re good teams and they’re good defensive teams, but they don’t have the physicality of what a Utah has, and they do a lot because they have such great talent — a LeBron James and Dwyane Wade can take the game over — this team has a guy in Deron Williams who can take the game over, and [Al] Jefferson can do some things inside, but they’re so much better as a whole, such a great offensive execution team.”

As much as Sloan exhumes the toughness of his team, his second great point guard, Williams, carries that message while on the court.

“He’s tough, hard-nosed. Offensively, he knows how to run a team, he’s aggressive. He’s one of those guards who will sneak up behind you, set a good screen,” Wizards backup big man Hilton Armstrong told me before the game.

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[a basketball hoop somewhere in Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

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Excuse the comparison to the men’s game and think of the following more as context to what the Washington Mystics have accomplished this season. Through their run, a prevailing storyline has been about someone who hasn’t played at all, all-star Alana Beard. No one expected Washington to do anything after Beard had season-ending surgery on an injured left ankle tendon in April. Instead, the Mystics finished as the first overall seed in the East.

Unfortunately for the growing Mystics fan base, their team lost its opening playoff game against the Atlanta Dream in D.C. on Wednesday night. They’ve long moved past the ‘what if we had Alana’ stage, but for context, perspective, and for the hell of it, let’s find the NBA equivalent of Beard’s statistical production for a better idea of her impact, or lack thereof.

I chose three advanced stat categories to put in the Basketball-Reference.com historical NBA database (and please excuse the refresher course via the Basketball-Reference glossary): Read more »

[Editor's Note: Truth About It.net photographer Adam Douglas once again brings you an excellent edition of "Under The Hoop" -- because Wizards games aren't just about basketball, they're about the whole fan experience, and Adam brings you that experience from up close with pictures and commentary. The below post is from last Saturday's game against the Utah Jazz.]

Andray Blatche knows who might butter his bread at the free throw line.

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I could have taken a number of quotes from the above video of locker room interviews after Saturday night’s loss to the Jazz and turned it into the title of a post.

“Obviously it’s not any fun, you know it’s frustrating.” -Mike Miller

“Well obviously you have fun playing basketball, but you play to win.” -Mike Miller again

“We all have jobs, you know. My job is to play my game and to do my job.” -Andray Blatche

“I don’t feel like the freedom is there to … if I get physical, I don’t get to be able to be physical back, offensively at least.” -JaVale McGee

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The Wizards never really had a chance against the Utah Jazz Saturday night. The hope for victory was akin to a 15-seed wanting to beat a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament, especially since both Al Thornton and Randy Foye didn’t play because of injury.

This team just doesn’t have the talent to compete right now. They are not tanking. They are out there with the desire to work together to win. That is, I don’t get the impression that guys are playing for themselves so much, unlike before the big trades.

The players are just trying to learn and Flip Saunders is just trying to teach. Speaking of, before the game Saunders said that he put in a new offense a couple days ago; an offense with the intent to get more cutting opportunities for perimeter players and to get the big men working closer to the basket.

“The offense we ran, the first unit we had out there played pretty well with it. We had a lot of open shots and moved the ball well, had a lot of assists,” said Saunders after his team went down 103-87 to Utah, dropping their record to 21-51. “We turned to our second unit, we have too many role players playing. Now some of those role players have to be thrust where they have to become main scorers and they’re not comfortable as far as doing that.”

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Before tonight’s Wizards-Jazz game, Flip Saunders came out to talk to the media reminiscent of Johnny Cash.  The coach was dressed to the nines in all black, well, until he put on his contrasting gray sport coat on for the game. One thing you can say, this season has certainly been a Ring of Fire for Saunders.

New Offense

Since the last Wizards home game against Charlotte, and the Andray Blatche affair, Blatche, to the extent that I’ve noticed, has made more of an effort to operate closer to the basket on offense, something Coach Saunders has implored him to do since early January, at least. I asked Flip about this before the game.

“We instituted/kinda put in a new offense that would make it more conducive for some of our bigger players to stay more around the basket and try to give our perimeter people more cutting opportunities, taking pressure off Andray around the basket where there wouldn’t be as many trap type situations,” said the coach, also mentioning that this new(ish) offense was instituted two days ago. Read more »

I started tinkering around with this trade idea last Wednesday, but never followed up with publishing a post. Today, with Yahoo!’s Marc Spears reporting that the Utah Jazz could face a roster shake-up and Mike Jones, of Mike Jones Sports, reporting that multiple Wizards have asked to be traded, i.e., more than just Mike James, it seems like an appropriate time to float this proposal out there. And no, this is not like Bill Simmons’ silly Utah-Washington-Cleveland idea where the Wizards would lose Haywood, Jamison, Butler and James and only get Shaq and Boozer in return … although my idea is almost as drastic.

So here goes …

Utah has the Carlos Boozer issue hanging over their head, the desire to remain cheap, and is a decent team unwilling to take a big step backwards.

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It was like that part in Hoosiers when Coach Norman Dale discretely asked the ref to kick him out of the game so that Shooter the Drunk could take over with a chance at redemption. Last night against the Lakers, there was no drunk, the Jazz just had their final run squashed, and Jerry Sloan asked the ref to kick him out by calling him a mutherfucker. Could Sloan’s coaching career be over? Not like Hoosiers at all.

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A lot of people are drooling over JaVale McGee today (myself included….and justifiably so). The poll on the Wiz-Jazz game blog at Bullets Forever even indicates that McGee should be last night’s player of the game. I will politely disagree. Yes, the Wizards would not have won with game without the young Choppa, but my game MVP is none other than Antawn Jamison.

The Gentleman Jamison spoke words about the attitude in the locker room and backed them up. Statistically, it wasn’t one of his better games….AJ’s stat line actually teeters on mundane (for his standard). But he made his presence felt…..Jamison was all over the court, getting his hands on loose balls, hitting a huge trey, and overall, TCOB.

The Most Important Stat: Sure, the Wizards out-rebounded, out-stole, and out-blocked the Jazz, but getting to the free-throw line was crucial. I noticed that for about 95% of the night, the Wizards refused to settle and were persistent in getting into the paint….which led to the Wiz shooting 40 free-throws. But the key part, unlike in the Milwaukee game, was that Washington took advantage of getting to the line and made their free-throws, sinking 32 to shoot 80%.

A game to build upon? We can only wait and see. (oh yea, this also happened)

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