Martell Webster, in his first year as a member of the Wizards, has had an excellent season and a profound impact on the team. His 3-point shooting and unique style of play has been a great fit, especially with Wall at the helm and Beal with him on the wing. Compare Webster’s pertinent statistics on a month-by-month basis this season:

November: 12 games played, 257 total minutes, 103 total points, 43.8% FG, 41.7% 3P
December: 14 games played, 438 total minutes, 132 total points, 39.4% FG, 40.0% 3P
January: 16 games played, 445 total minutes, 195 total points, 46.3% FG, 41.4% 3P
February: 12 games played, 381 total minutes, 149 total points, 51.5% FG, 56.4% 3P
March: 15 games played, 506 total minutes, 224 total points, 43.7% FG, 39.0% 3P
April: 5 games played, 123 total minutes, 45 total points, 34.1% FG, 25.0% 3P

On the season? 29 minutes per game, 11.4 points per game, 3.9 rebounds per game, 1.9 assists per game, 44.4% FG, 42.2% 3P.

Let’s read between the lines a bit, because numbers enjoy the companionship of context. What is the mark for “excellent” NBA 3-point shooting? That’s debatable, but for argument’s sake, let’s say being one of the top 25 3-point shooters in the NBA. The current 25th best, OJ Mayo, hits 40.6 percent of the time. Webster has been above that mark in three out of the six available months (excluding that lonely October game). Two of those months, January and February 2013, came with heavy minutes from John Wall and Bradley Beal. While Wall’s ability to buttress his teammates’ shooting ability has been well-documented, the less publicized point about Webster’s career year has been how well he and Beal have played together.

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This Wizards team has gone through a lot of adversity this year, some of it unimaginable. Poor them. People are dying around the world and not by choice. These guys get paid to play basketball. Suck it up.

More and more this team is playing like they just don’t care. It’s not the first time this has happened. Probably won’t be the last. But Wednesday night’s game against the New York Knicks seemed like more of a disgrace than efforts we’ve seen before.

I’ve said that Ernie Grunfeld can’t make drastic change fast enough. The associated anxiousness continues to mount by the day and will continue to do so up until the February 18th trade deadline, unless something happens before then.

When it goes down, how will I find out? Twitter? Text? G-Chat? Will Ric Bucher’s shiny doll hair pop up on my HDTV to tell me that it has all come to an end? Will I wake up one morning to find Marc Stein whispering in my ear, “Caron Butler for Marcus Camby and Antawn Jamison for Zydrunas Ilgauskas, both straight up” followed by him punching me in the mouth?

These are the things that haunt my slumber and twist my stomach. And they all feel plausible.

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