Wizards lose badly to Pacers: Final wrap

by Mike Prada on Nov 7, 2009 2:58 PM EST in Recaps Comment 7 comments

Darron Cummings - AP

I'm choosing to forget about this game for the most part, only because writing about it will aggravate me so much. We all know why the game was a disaster and why there are so many causes for concern. Please continue to discuss them civilly as you all have.

Instead, I'll try to provide a few reasons for optimism, or at the very least, a few reasons to stave off the "sky is falling" impulse you all have.

We are missing two injured players in Antawn Jamison and Mike Miller. I know, I know, injuries are no excuse when Indiana was also missing Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy and Jeff Foster. For this one game, the injuries mean nothing. But looking long term, at least both of them are expected to be back soon. Once that happens, we should improve.
Indiana's one of those teams that's very difficult to prepare for. They play such an idiosyncratic style (fast-paced, but inefficient on offense, jacking threes from all over) that they often catch better teams on bad nights and beat them. They did beat the Lakers at home last year, for example. Combine that with them not having some key guns, and it actually makes them more difficult to play, if that makes any sense. Now, that's also no excuse for poor preparation, but it's different than losing to a crappy team that's just crappy.
Jamison gave them a real tongue-lashing after the game. Who knows what effect it'll have, but I'm happy to read it for two reasons. One, the team deserved it. Two, he spared nobody -- not veterans, not youngsters, not coaches. Unlike last year, when it seemed like Jamison's messages were directed to one faction of the team, this time he directed it at everybody. That's a good thing.
It is still really, really early in the season. We all had a feeling this team would start slow, and maybe we were just spoiled by the Dallas game. Maybe it will indeed take some time.

I'm telling myself a lot of these things today as I try to justify not flipping out about last night. Hopefully, there's some truth to them.

Four Factors: (Bold=very good | Italics=very bad)

Team	Pace	Off Eff	eFG%	FT/FG	OREB%	TOr
Washington	96	89.6	42.3%	17.9	28.8	19.8
Indiana		106.3	44.1%	31.8	30.4	11.5

Snap reaction: The Wizards sucked on offense all around. Bad shooting, no free throws and an unbelievable amount of unforced turnovers. I'm still trying to figure out which is worse: not getting to the free throw line or committing so many turnovers. The defense wasn't terrible, but Indiana also missed a lot of open looks.

Lineup details, via Popcorn Machine

Highest individual plus/minus: Mike James (+9 in 22:00)
Lowest individual plus/minus: Gilbert Arenas (-24 in 35:06)
Best five-man unit: Gilbert Arenas/Mike James/Randy Foye/Caron Butler/Brendan Haywood (+4 to start the third quarter)
Worst five-man unit: Gilbert Arenas/Randy Foye/DeShawn Stevenson/Caron Butler/Fabricio Oberto (-9 for a short stretch in the third quarter)

Snap reaction: Throwing all these stats out. The entire team was too bad to make much of these.

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Comments

Is there any significance in this post being categorized in "Rumors"?

Representing DC with Wizards & Stuff - Truth About It.net and Bullets Forever.

by Truth About It on Nov 7, 2009 4:20 PM EST reply actions 1 recs

Haha

My swag was phenomenal.

by se7en on Nov 7, 2009 4:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Was a mistake

Will fix now.

You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.

by Mike Prada on Nov 7, 2009 5:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Talent

Judging talent is part of the NBA game. The last few games reminded of last year. Remember, we lost 63 for a good reason – lack of talent.

With AJ and MM out, we only have GA, CB, BH, AB and RF as average or above average players. The rest are — at best — spot players. Once you put players like DS, FO, DM, etc. in the game, the defense on the other side of the ball celebrates – and then collaspes on the only threats on the floor.

That causes turnovers and demoralization, which gets interpretated as lack of effort.

Conversely, when GA, RF, MM, AB and BH were on the floor together, the Wiz did well.

Net, net: the Wiz only have 5 players ready for prime time. Flip should be playing them together for 36-38 minutes a game. For the other 10 minutes, we should all just take a potty break.

by Izman on Nov 7, 2009 5:52 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed (Partial repost)

I understand having Blatche come off the bench to get accustomed to that role, but It gives us our best chance of winning if he starts and plays 30 plus minutes. At the end of the day Oberto doesn’t need to catch his rhythm and we never wanted him to play more than 10-15mins. Blatche was going to need to play 20-30 mins on any given night.
Caron and Gil’s game don’t mesh that well alone. Gilbert needs that other starter who can play off him and get easy buckets. Gil gets the ball to Haywood because he makes the right cuts off his action. Blatche will open up the floor for the all the starters. I am kind of surprised that Flip opted to start an out of sync Young over Blatche. Finally, In all honesty, Deshawn isn’t playing as bad as everyone is making it out. I think we can survive until guys start coming back with this lineup.

Gilbert
Deshawn (till Miller returns)
Caron
Blatche (till Jamison returns)
Haywood

That’s a lot of pressure on Foye in the second unit, but all the starters minutes will have to go up so we can maintain. He should still end up with a lot of quality minutes with both Gil and Caron. That lineup has the defense and offense to win some games.

by forthepeople on Nov 7, 2009 8:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

At this point I have to agree

I’m all for role development, but I’m not so interested in a 3-6 record or worse while waiting for Jamison and Miller to come back.

by bronco6778 on Nov 7, 2009 10:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Agree also

The Wizards have started horribly the past 2 games. Teams aren’t even guarding Oberto, so I think starting Blatche is a good idea. With both Jamison and Miller out, Flip needs to tighten the rotation somewhat and give more minutes to the top of the rotation. So I would go one step further and start Foye along with Blatche. For back up point guard, I’d let Mike James have 5 or 6 minutes in the second quarter and depending how the game was going, either play James for about 5 minutes in the second half or stagger the substitutions of Gil and Foye during the second half. Like Izman said, the starters should be ready to go for about 36 to 38 minutes. Shouldn’t be a problem this early in the season.

by hotplate on Nov 8, 2009 8:18 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs