Eddie Jordan bought into Gilbert’s tanking theory. Play great basketball for 3 quarters, and put in some scrubs in the 4th and lose the game. I’ve never seen such a good sense of job security.

It’s really sad; I can’t believe this team is 1-9. They seem to be in almost every game, yet they just can’t pull out another victory. Houston is a good team, but they were pretty bad for 3/4 of the game. Very disappointing…

out of many, is point guard.
there was some spirited debate about dixon in the game thread – but there can be no denying that he’s just not an offensive initiator, despite his size. he fools you because he looks like a point guard, but he actually is reminding me of a mini-DeShawn Stevenson, of whom 1 is more than enough, thank you.
the team is so stagnant and/or prone to bad shots that make you say HUH?? even with blatche stepping it up, mcgee progressing, jamison and butler playing well – there is no catalyst. and it shows.
defense, rebounding are both issues, but the fact that there is no one on the roster who can run the team to me is first and foremost the reason why the wiz suck right now.

As I posted before – Eddie needs to cut down the rotation to 8 or 9 guys…
(NOT including Juan Dixon)….

And I’ve changed my mind about Dee Brown. When he is in the game, the Offense moves; the players move; the ball moves. The Offense starts several seconds earlier (since Dee rushes the ball up the court) – giving the Princeton a few more seconds to run – before settling for a jumper or an Iso. Watch the next time Dee is in the game, the Wizards are quickly into their Offense with 20 or 19 seconds left on the shot clock. Those few extra seconds, allow for one more cut, or one more screen or one more back door.

When Dixon is in the game, the ball stops; Dixon dribbles, Dixon dribbles some more…. Players don’t move; the ball is stationary. The Offense starts with about 10 seconds left on the Shot Clock.

I sort of understand playing Songaila in the 4th quarter, since Blatche had 4 fouls and I think McGee had 3 or 4 as well. I think Eddie was trying to buy some time, while Yao Ming was on the bench – but I cannot understand playing Thomas against Yao in the 4th Quarter. With Tomas on Yao, the Wizards had to try to help down low, leaving Houston’s outside shooters open; specifically McGrady. It was a flawed Defensive strategy to put Thomas on Yao Ming late in the game.

rogermasonjrscores29pointstonight

Tomorrow we play the Knicks and they’ll be without a lot of players tomorrow because of their two trades today, so we should have a good chance tomorrow against what should be a skeleton crew.

I’m going to wait until I see the game flow tomorrow and a few other things, but my gut reaction to why the Wizards lost is threefold:

1.) Rebounding has been, and continues to be, a problem. I discussed this a bit in another fanpost at some point, but right now the Wizards don’t have anyone who can rebound consistently outside of Antawn Jamison. McGee still needs development time, Blatche has been too inconsistent this year, Thomas is either done or gets a pass on this year, and none of their guards are up to the task.

2.) Eddie Jordan places too much trust in the wrong players. In general, a coach who trusts his players and puts them in positions to succeed is a good thing. However, both in the past and so far this season, the players he’s trusted have done little-to-nothing to deserve it. Michael Ruffin is the example that everyone here loves/hates to bring up, and this season we’ve seen players like Darius Songaila and, tonight especially, Juan Dixon get much more PT than their play warrants.

3.) The younger players haven’t done enough to earn EJ’s trust. Like most everyone here, Andray Blatche, Nick Young and JaVale McGee excite the hell out of me. I’ve discovered that I get a smile on my face just wartching McGee run up and down the court. I’ll be purchasing a “Monumental Air” shirt at some point. But right now, realistically, it can be tough to argue for a lot of playing time for them. McGee is a talented but still raw rookie who can’t handle legit NBA centers defensively yet. Blatche still has a habit of making questionable decisions with the ball. As well has he played tonight, he still picked up 5 fouls in 20 minutes, as did McGee. Nick Young is emerging as a solid bench scorer, but he’ll still have some rough shooting nights and won’t scare anyone defensively. Dee Brown, who should be taking some of Dixon’s minutes, has earned EJ’s trust enough to start, but he’s not enough of a scorer to see the floor at the end of games.

Add them up, and you get McGee and Blatche sitting late because Jordan didn’t want them to foul out, which leads to Songaila playing too many minutes at the wrong position, which further compounds the problem of not being able to rebound Wizards misses.

As I see it, there aren’t many easy solutions to these problems. 1 and 3 can really only be solved with time (letting McGee develop and waiting for his and Blatche’s rebounding to improve). When those happen, 2 shouldn’t be as much of an issue.

I don’t think the Wizards should throw in the towel on the season (and I also think Arenas’ comments were somewhat overblown, though that’s a separate topic), but as rough as this stretch has been I think it’s been helpful for giving the team and its fans a clear picture of what this roster offers.

I think an even bigger problem than not getting Caron/Jamison the ball down the stretch was our decisions on defense.

Call me crazy, but I’d rather see Yao go one on one than to see the Rockets (McGrady mostly) shoot 4 wide open threes. That will happen when you double Yao. Let McGee/Blatche get his 6th foul.

IN ALL HONESTY, I didn’t even think the Wiz would be within 15 of this team the entire game… Didn’t think it would be close. But they surprise you, then let you down. I’m happy with how well they played the entire game. And hopefully they can learn some lessons about decision-making down the stretch.

Once again we learn that the Wiz make awful decisions down the stretch, both offensively and defensively.

GET JAMISON THE FREAKING BALL.

In the NBA, there are clubs that when they are failing, get out there and make serious roster and personnel changes. Those are the competitive clubs. The teams that at most are out of contention for a year or two, because if their formula isn’t working they work tirelessly to find a new one that will get them back to the league’s elite. Then there are the teams that are content to be perpetual lottery-teams, like the Grizzlies. When they are losing, they sit back and wait because they don’t give one flying fark about the team as long as there is some revenue coming in.
This is a good year for us as Wizards fans to guide our team one way or the other. We are a bad team and if we as fans decide we want to be one of those competitive teams, we need to put pressure on the organization to shake things up and quit sitting on the same roster and same coach and expecting different results.