He may speak his mind – but you never heard that comment BEFORE he signed that big contract…

I expected a little better execution than I saw, though I figured they would lose this one. This will certainly be fodder for the Eddie Jordan defenders, like those group of fans you heard and Charles Barkley.

Personally, I think that if Eddie was still the coach the Wizards would have lost this game by 25 instead of 15, and would have gone 1-12 instead of 2-11. I think the most telling sound bite was from Gilbert Arenas:

We all played well for Eddie, you know, um, most of us feel Eddie didn’t deserve it because he did take us to the promised land four years straight. And, um, you know unfortunately he didn’t have the whole team.

The young guys apparently stopped responding to EJ. Hopefully, they’ll respond better to ET and bounce back. The big test will be against Atlanta on Saturday. Unlike tonight’s game, that game is very winnable, and I’m interested to see what will happen with Blatche. He had a bad game, mostly, I believe, because he could never get into a rhythm due to the foul trouble he kept getting in. It will be interesting to see how much playing time he gets on Saturday. If EJ were still the coach, I could easily predict like 7 minutes as punishment for his poor play.

Matters were made worse because JaVale McGee also got in foul trouble. ET was forced to resort to Etan, but later realized that was a disaster and went with Songaila at center instead. At least ET only put Songaila there as a last resort. This lineup just doesn’t have an answer for a guy like Dwight Howard. Not without Brendan Haywood, that is. Luckily, few teams have such a dominant center like Dwight Howard.

Gilbert sounded like he gave his endorsement to ET, so that’s a good thing. I’m still optimistic that this season can be salvaged. If they can play just one game over .500 for the rest of the season, they would be 37-45, the same record the Atlanta Hawks had last year when they snuck into the playoffs. I think that is very possible. And with a healthy Gilbert and Brendan, they could give the Celtics or Magic (or hopefully not the Cavs) a good run for their money.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, that he must want out. But the other day he said he wants to retire in DC. I wonder if he still feels that way??

I only wish Songaila was three inches taller and about 20 pounds heavier. He could be a capable center if he was.