The message of patience should not be lost from the big picture of this Washington Wizards rebuild. After all, John Wall is a nice piece the franchise is lucky to have. Still, this does not take away from smaller areas of function, or dysfunction, that create understandable impatience. After Miami’s win over Washington on Friday, both LeBron James and Dwayne Wade spoke with John Wall. In the locker rooms afterward the involved parties touched on what arose from that conversation.

“They take his leadership. Even though he’s a young guy, they take his leadership,” said LeBron James. Hopefully this is a concept Wall works on with leadership through body language, in addition to hustle.

Dwyane Wade encouraged Wall to learn from Sam Cassell. “All it takes is one player, and then another player, and then another player. D.C. is an unbelievable city, and obviously they have a young great player in John Wall,” Wade also said. “There’s some other pieces they can build on. So it’s just about being patient, it’s about getting the right opportunity, the right pieces, and it could change around,” said Wade, highlighting the fact that the Wizards franchise could suddenly have great potential fall in place just like it did recently for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Veteran Shane Battier might’ve put it most succinctly, “Take every advantage now of learning, and keep the young core of this team positive. Nothing wrecks a team quicker than bad attitudes.” And presumably the team is working on that as well.

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Look, it’s not *all* about Jeremy Lin, I just wanted to get his name in the post title via #LinsanityPixels. But the video below does feature the Washington Wizards (Randy Wittman, John Wall, Trevor Booker and Mo Evans), along with Lin, talking after Wednesday’s Wizards-Knicks game. These are the things you need to know:

• Randy Wittman doesn’t need to be reminded of the exact number of free-throws the Knicks took in the third quarter, he knows it was a lot.
• Mo Evans mentions sharks.
• Various parties talk about the pick-and-roll: Booker, Wall and Lin.
• Evans says he spoke with John Wall about how what Jeremy Lin and the Knicks did to the Wizards is actually encouraging because they can use John in the same way.
• Wall responds to a query on if his teammates left him high-and-dry on that Jeremy Lin dunk.
• Wittman gets to a breaking-point with the #Linsanity.
• And… an awkward question about Tim Tebow.

The Wizards Said WHAT? Yes they did, it’s all there.

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Home fans didn’t even let Andray Blatche take the floor, miss a long jumper or two, before they started booing him last night. They let loose on him during pre-game introductions and just about whenever he touched the ball in the early going. Blatche missed a 21-foot jumper 22 seconds into the game,  a 19-foot jumper about two minutes later. Relentless. And after a bumbling travelling violation midway through the first quarter, Blatche saw Trevor Booker waiting to check in and started sulking toward the bench. Problem was, Flip Saunders was sending Booker in for McGee instead. Keep playing 7-Day, was the presumed message.

When asked if Blatche earned the “moans and groans” of the crowd, Saunders said, “I’m sure he did, but I give him credit because he played through it.” Sometimes to success, sometimes not. Midway through the second quarter after a steal, Blatche found himself all alone on the break. No off-the-backboard dunking like JaVale McGee, but rather, simply a barely made layup.

“If ‘Dray would have missed that layup…” jokingly chimed in Nick Young several times while Blatche, with an uncontrolled sheepish grin himself, was giving his post game interview with the media, the ability to be laid back about the whole scene thanks to a 105-102 Wizards win.

Blatche didn’t make his first jumper until the third quarter, one that brought the Wizards within six points at 59-53. Fans barely knew how to react… pre-packaged cheers were muted by surprised golf claps. But 7-Day Dray got an ‘atta boy’ from his coach in the way he battled against bruising Thunder big man Kendrick Perkins. No one knows if the boos motivated Blatche to 12 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, four turnovers, two steals, and one block in 34 tough minutes back in the starting lineup. Or maybe it was a Marine.

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The hope is that young Wizards, especially the likes of John Wall, Chris Singleton and Trevor Booker, never get used to losing. That the current doldrums are helping shape their future focus toward doing the little things to win. Of course, in the interim, in the locker room environment after loss eleven in a 12-game old season, defeat seems to be more and more accepted than frustrating.

There’s talk of trust, talk of turnovers, talk of John Wall getting down on himself. “I get down on myself for making a mistake, but I know how to move on to the next thing, just keep playing basketball. It’s just tough when you make three or four in a row,” said Wall after Saturday night’s 103-90 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. What’s unknown at this point is how much Wall openly getting down on himself after mistake one or two affects the rest of his team. Maybe they take cues from him, maybe they are getting down on themselves for their own mistakes.

“He’s our point guard, we gotta feed off of him. He’s the guy that leads this team almost like the captain of a boat. We have to feed off of him, and he has to get everybody involved in the game as well as get himself involved,” said team veteran Rashard Lewis, a guy who could stand to get himself involved as well in hitting open jump shots to help Wall’s cause. Lewis is 6-26 from three-point land this season, a 23.1-percent that’s his career worst, aside from his rookie season when he went 1-6 from deep as a 19-year old. “He’s still a young player learning how to play the game, but at the same time, he’s the floor general,” said Lewis of Wall.

“When you get your butts kicked pretty bad, and we’ve lost a lot, the tendency is sometimes you start feeling sorry for yourself,” said coach Flip Saunders.

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{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.

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The Night After The Wizards 2011-12 Season Opener:

The Day After The Night:

Andray Blatche just can’t help himself, literally, figuratively, and ways in between.

After the Wizards grabbing the mic to announce to a much-less-than-capacity Verizon Center crowd over the P.A. system:

“How y’all doing? This is your captain, Andray Blatche. On behalf of myself, my teammates, the whole Washington Wizards organization, we want to say we strongly appreciate y’all sticking around all summer. It’s been a long summer, and it’s a shortened season, but it’s going to be tough. And we’re going to need you guys, the best fans in the NBA, to be our sixth man. So in other words, let’s get this season started.”

Fairly good intentions (“best fans in the NBA” jokes aside; Blatche gets booed a lot by the paltry home crowds). Look, no one can question that Blatche is trying. He just doesn’t know how to try. So he continues to fall on his face while the franchise constantly running to defend him keeps looking silly in the process. After all, Ted Leonsis has only doled out one multi-year free agent contract in his brief tenure as team owner, to Blatche. This, of course, amongst other positive pixel puffery.

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Merry/happy time of the year for whatever it is that you and friends/family enjoy celebrating/taking part in. Hope all of that is going well. What you will see in this Christmas Day post is scenes from scrimmaging at Wizards practice on Thursday, December 22. Prepare yourself, fans of the team, for an ugly start to the season as a young team looks to progress toward improvement in uncertain times, i.e., enjoy!

What You Will See:

The Wizards making extra passes in the early offense — even JaVale McGee passing out of the post, go figure (I imagine this happens because McGee knows a double team is coming) — and Jordan Crawford ultimately finding Mo Evans in the corner for a jumper.

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Now that NBA the season is upon us, the most oft-considered repercussion of the compacted schedule has been for whom is it an advantage. Fresh legs? Sharp minds? Old teams?

On media day Flip Saunders was asked if a youthful team brings any benefits to a scrambled environment in the aftermath of the 2011 lockout. ”I think if you have youth, you’re going to say yes, and if you have veterans, you’re going to say yes,” he said, implying that you can cook the perspective to whatever degree you like.

As with any NBA season, normal length or not, if a team is hit with the injury bug too harshly or with bad timing, it can significantly affect results. With a slate of 66 games in just 122 days, injuries are now more likely. Neither young nor old are immune. Sure, less aged muscles can recuperate faster, but those benefits are not as effective without proper time to recover.

“We just have to make sure that they can get the proper rest when they’re not playing,” said Saunders, “and so that’s going to be a main focus of what we’ll try to do too.”

“We got to really listen in and focus in on film session and listen to what the coaches are saying because there’s not going to be a lot of time to practice on the floor,” said Rashard Lewis, a veteran of the last NBA lockout, the shortened season afterward being his 1998-99 rookie campaign with the Seattle Supersonics.

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“Know your roll!”

Former Washington Bullet Ledell Eackles, as relayed in :07 Seconds Or Less by Jack McCallum, once wrote, “Know your roll!” on a chalkboard as a member of the Miami Heat, in an attempt to inspire the team. Yes, “roll” and not “role” — the irony easily realized if you know Eackles’ issues with rotundness during his playing days.

But in terms of NBA players “knowing their roles” on the court… What, exactly does that mean? No, really. Because I’ve never quite understood it past being pseudo-code for: ‘Some guys are trying to do things they are not supposed to be doing, nor are capable of doing.’ And maybe that’s enough, although all the talk about knowing roles can still be confusing.

A player knowing his role in basketball makes sense, at one level, as all positions in the game are free-flowing. Sure, you have point guards and centers, but even the lines between those have blurred over time. Basketball is not like baseball where action is often solely focused on one person throwing the ball to a sole person responsible for hitting it; there’s sharing in basketball. Have you been to Lob City yet? (And to a lesser extent, John to JaVale Township?) Nor is basketball like football, where assignments on both offense and defense are specifically outlined. Or even hockey, where one guy’s role is to mind the net, others are more specifically geared toward defense or offense.

Basketball, with its diluted assignments, can thus be confusing when it comes to roles. Positions 1-5 can all score within the offense, or at the drop of a hat with a sudden change in possession. Players do need to know some sort of role for team structure, but even saying that seems overly robotic, and counterintuitive to how fluidly equal the game of basketball is meant to be.

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[Wizards, Wall & Wale... highlights from Fan Fest...]

The hope is that the fun of last Saturday’s Fan Fest at the Verizon Center was not just a reprieve from things to come for the Washington Wizards after Friday night’s debacle against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Tonight, the Wiz Kids will get a chance for preseason redemption in the City of Brotherly Love, as well as in front of a national audience on NBA TV. It might merely be a minor speed bump en route to a shortened 66-game season slate, but when the next game on December 26 counts, it’s not a bump to be taken lightly.

So before people pile on how bad this Wizards team might be, or rather, lack of evident improvement in this season from the last, let’s give John Wall’s bunch a chance to digest Flip Saunders’ harsh words, to think about their film session that didn’t lie, and for the fearless point guard leader himself to stand by his words of inducing better offense and more astute defense.

But aside from franchise development angst, Wizards Fan Fest was a pretty great event. After about 15 minutes of rest after practice, the team took center court in the Phone Booth for an exhibition display. The feature was two 15-minute, running-clock scrimmages — light in their demeanor, as expected — that brought this NBA follower back to summer exhibition basketball action — little defense and dunking galore. (Actually, with exception, Capital Punishment surprisingly melded entertainment and competitiveness.)

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