Flip Saunders reaches the breaking point in post-game press conference
by Mike Prada on Dec 29, 2009 10:44 PM EST
in First-hand reporting
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PrintEvery underachieving head coach has that moment, that once press conference where he says "Screw it" and just tees off on his team. Flip Saunders' moment came tonight.
The three-minute press conference was essentially one long epic rant against his own team. Normally guarded and long-winded, this time Saunders was brisk and to the point. He cared not for being diplomatic or for maintaining the type of public calm that usually defines him.
Honestly, just watch it. This is the CSN video, via Wizards Extreme.
Uhh ... yeah.
Perhaps the worst part of this is how Flip said he had the team play zone because they weren't capable of playing man-to-man. He essentially said he could score on every single player on the team one-on-one, and he's 52. I asked several players about Saunders' statement (I mean the 'we can't play man' part, not the 'I can score on everyone' part).
Brendan Haywood: "I think it was a very good observation."
Gilbert Arenas: "He's correct."
Caron Butler, who was very subdued after the game: "I haven't thought about it yet. I have to think about it on the way home and let it digest, but if he feels that way, you got to go with the coach."
Randy Foye: "It is a concern [that we can't play man-to-man]. We've been losing these past three games to teams that I think we should beat."
I got the sense that the players were all bewildered when I mentioned that to them. And why not? How do you respond to something like that, even if it's true?
This ship be sinkin'.
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Wow.
At first I thought this was another satirical post. Flip says he can take any player on, one-on-one, and get around them? That’s a slam. He’s trying to get their blood flowing, we’ll see if it works.
I liked it, too
Especially the gem, “I didn’t come here to make the playoffs, I came here to win a championship.” I like that he’s not looking to use a playoff appearance in a weak conference as a crutch.
by satchmore on Dec 29, 2009 11:10 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
You can definitely understand his frustration.
We all feel his frustration. It seems like he continue to go off on these guys and they just don’t seem to get it. I’m one who has defended the Wizards not blowing this thing up, and riding the course. This team is not the team we thought it was. I feel like an idiot for seriously thinking this team would win 50 games. I hope this rant from Flip may finally ring in the players ear, but I have a feeling it will just be more of the
by SkinsWizStangs on Dec 29, 2009 11:23 PM EST reply actions
They are who we thought they were (defensively)!
AND
as far as the coach goes – to continue the NFL post game quoting – We can build on this!
Yowsers
Arenas plays bad defense and I can almost tolerate that. But it’s Jamison and Butler, who appear to treat that end of the floor like it’s wasted time until they can jack up another shot, who drive me crazy. Foye is too small to be a better than average defensive player, but he’s sure hustling if nothing else.
by JonathanJoseph on Dec 29, 2009 11:35 PM EST reply actions
Trade time
Flip did the right thing by calling the guys out. And Ernie Grunfeld needs to make a move as soon as possible. The “Big Three” should be broken up. They’ve invested a lot of money into Arenas so you can’t move him. But you can move Caron and Jamison, and that should be done. They need younger, faster, tougher and hungrier ball players on the floor. Enough of this nonsense already! Ernie please break this garbage up, even if this teams gets to the playoffs they would never make it out of the second round because of their defense.
by becauseisaident on Dec 29, 2009 11:36 PM EST reply actions
Thank you for quoting
Michael Ray Richardson (?) and way to go Flip.
"Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home." --- Daffy Duck
by George Templeton on Dec 29, 2009 11:47 PM EST reply actions
Somebody please put this team out of their misery.
It’s the humane thing at this point.
by MR on Dec 29, 2009 11:48 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
NEWSFLASH
this team can’t play defense. shocking. (and todd (i mean flip) smells.)
(if we are the simpsons. flip you are the flanders’es)
flip’s a fool. what’s the point of calling them out on it? really, what’s the point? are you going to try to win with this team or are you just going to say f*** them.
if we are going to say F*** them, couldn’t we have done that before we traded away our lottery pick?!?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?
boooooo. flip saunders. boooooooo.
boooooo. ernie grunfeld. booooooooo.
the players are what they are. is this news to anyone? antawn freaking jamison and gilbert freaking arenas? what’d you think you were getting?
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
by DarrellWalkerFan on Dec 30, 2009 1:05 AM EST reply actions
I think you all
Need to chill. I have found the remedy to keep this crap from driving me crazy. It’s easy, really. I just reverted to my old line of thinking with the Wizards. I came up with this after the Memphis loss. I have finally admitted to myself that this just is not a good team. Forget about all the excuses (injuries, acclimation, etc). The bottom line is, this team just isn’t any good. So what I’ve decided to do is watch the games as I did growing up – with little expectation.
I will ALWAYS love watching basketball, and the Wizards will always be the team I root for. Just like the Bullets were when I was a kid. And, back then, I rooted for them KNOWING they weren’t going anywhere. So I have decided to do the same with this current team.
I am tired of screaming at the TV everytime someone settles for a jumpshot, is outworked for a rebound, lunges for their man rather that moving their feet, or commits any other of the mistakes you learn NOT to do in grade school age, rec league basketball. Instead, I have just simply begun tpo watch every game knowing that the team will probably lose, which helps me enjoy the few bright spots that much more.
by CJHutch on Dec 30, 2009 1:49 AM EST via mobile reply actions
I'm going to take your advice and start doing this
I echo everything you said. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
A bit of an oversimplification
but I think for a team to be really good it has to have 3 scorers and 3 defenders on the floor at the same time. I think to be good on both ends of the floor you need atleast 3 people average or better. Of course that means one of your best players has to be good at both ends of the court. It’s tough to think of a recent Championship team that didn’t have one of it’s stars who was a 2 way player. The Wizards don’t have a top guy who can go both ways.
During the Celtics game on Christmas Hubie made a great point that their big 3 all had great careers as top guys and then came together to win and sacrificed their shots and committed themselves to defense. Their big 3 have had better careers as the alpha dog than any of our Big 3 but they were able to moderate their games and now Rondo and them all shoot within 11.0-12.7 shots per game. Can you ever imagine our guys doing that? Gil, Jamison and Caron average 19.2,16.2, and 14.1 shots per game this year and are as committed to defense as ever.
Weird stat I noticed on Pro Basketball reference. In 2004-2005 we had our best run under the Arenas Big 3 era and won 45 games that year and scored 100.5 pgg and gave up 100.8 ppg. This year we are scoring 99.4 and giving up 102.7. Who knows if there is any signifcance to that but it does seem kinda crazy that scoring 1 less point a game and giving up 2 more points has us circling the toilet this year. Then again 3 points is a big deal in alot of NBA games.
If we could somehow add 3.1 points to our total at the end of each game so far we’d be 17-13.
by MR on Dec 30, 2009 5:05 AM EST up reply actions
all those missed FTs would cover that easy....
This is pretty bad, folks…. at least it gave us a chance at writing a headline saying “Flip Flips Out”
it's basically making 1 extra FT a game and making 1 more stop per game
but I don’t know if there is a huge significance to that as our rankings against the league are worse in both categories this year.
by BayAreaBullet on Dec 30, 2009 5:38 AM EST up reply actions
Rants are meaningless (with this team)
Flip needs to take action. The part I liked in the video is where he said that all positions are now open. I’ll believe it when I see it, and will celebrate when I see a starting lineup that doesn’t include at least two of the current starters. Flip can rant about accountability and defense, but Arenas, Jamison and Butler are playing 36, 37 and 38 minutes a game. They’ve called your bluff, Flip.
What move would you make?
I think I would be looking to trade Antawn fairly quickly. I think its time to move Blatche into the starting lineup and let him sink or swim there. It will improve the defense somewhat and maybe Andray will develop some consistency if he knows he’s going to get 25 to 30 minutes every game. I’m also open to trading Butler. Contracts aside, I think Gil is actually the best of the Big 3 and will start putting it all together soon. Well, except for the defense part. But he’s the one I’d keep of the 3.
Been calling for this since the summer
This team needs quick swing passing, good rebounding, and decent defense from the SG spot. Dom can give you those. For the season, Dom has only played 9.4 minutes with our four primary starters. That lineup has a plus/minus of +9.
Agreed 1000% on getting AJ out of the starting lineup. Blatche is no defensive stopper, but it doesn’t take much to top Jamison in that regard. And, per 48 production wise, there’s not much dropoff between Jamison and Blatche. I think AJ would be much more valuable as a 20-25mpg backup 4, where he could abuse other teams’ backups, and wouldn’t be such a huge defensive liability.
I would also insert Nick Young as the starting 2 (he could become the 2-way player BayAreaBullet mentioned), use Foye mostly as the backup point, cut Caron’s minutes and use Miller as the primary backup at 2/3 when he returns, move the dwarf to the end of the bench, set aside 12-15 minutes a night for McGee, and force Critt to go to another doctor.
My rotation would look like this:
PG: Gil 38, Foye 10
SG: NY 28, Miller 10, Foye 10
SF: Butler 25, Miller 18, Jamison 5
PF: Blatche 28, Jamison 20
C: Haywood 36, McGee 12
Well a trade is not going to come overnight
At least I don’t think so anyways. But I’d definitely move Jamison and Butler as soon as a good deal comes around.
For now, if Flip is going to make lineup changes I think he needs to bring Jamison off the bench once Mike Miller comes back. I’d start Oberto for defense and hustle and play him 16-18 minutes a night.
In the end though, I don’t think making lineup changes is going to work because we went through that last year. We just don’t have a championship caliber mindset, or even a playoff caliber mindset and that change needs to start with getting rid of existing personnel for new personnel.
$26 Million
…coming off the books next year, or enough to bag LBJ, Wade, Bosh or whomever.
If you were the new owner - seeing how EG gave a $111 contract to someone with two knee surgeries and a $50M/5 year contract to a 33 year old - would you trust EG with that $26M per year in salaries?
If you were the new owner, would you bother with player development or try to get veteran talent? If player development is important, can EG/Flip deliver?
A quote that says it all...
Antawn Jamison:
“Right now our biggest problem has been the fourth quarter. We haven’t been executing offensively or defensively, so I think I think our offense is kind of leading to us playing bad defense, as far as turning the vball over and taking bad shots. Guys are open, getting what they want to get, kicking it out and we always rotating and off balance and have to do better job of containing.”
Yes, a well played offense will benefit the defense, but Jamison is looking at this backwards. The team needs to figure out how to play better defense. Period. Their offense isn’t the solution. And on the flip side, a better defense will help their offense.
I have a feeling Jamison is looking at it from this perspective because his game is offense, and he is limited on the defensive end. How much can his defense really improve? I don’t know, I don’t watch nearly enough of the games, with a focused eye, to evaluate these things. But that’s my hunch.
God bless Jamison, but it’s clear there needs to be a changing of the guard. Even if they figure out a way to achieve that 3 pt differential mentioned above, they’re still more or less an average team. This team needs a new identity. More or less this has been Jamison’s team for the past half-dozen years. He has set the tone.
He shouldn’t play that role. He would excel more on another team where he’s playing 2nd or 3rd (or 4th) fiddle, where a winning attitude/culture has been established. Frankly he would be better sandwiched between Lebron and Shaq, and I would have no problem with sending him to the Cavs (the Wizards just aren’t good enough to worry about competiting with the upper echelon). There are any number of teams that would be a good fit for him.
If the Wizards need to play better defense they need to figure out what lineup will do that, without completely disabling them on offense. As far as I’m concerned, It’s time to give 7-Day Dray his opportunity at PF. And why McGuire hasn’t been considered for more playing time – when he was the lone bright spot in an otherwise miserable season last year – is beyond me. There were some SGs that he struggled with guarding, but otherwise he brings some intangibles that this team needs.
For Jamison, it doesn't "hurt when teams score" on the Wizards
And that’s exactly the problem, as Flip said. Jamison remembers the good old days, when the Wizards could outscore the Suns in a game of endless fast breaks. “Who needs defense when you can score at will?” Only once the scoring falls off, and the free throw shooting %age drops, you don’t have that crutch to rely upon anymore.
I’d say Jamison is in the “denial” stage (to borrow from MR’s post). Too bad it’s not the “ball denial” stage, they could use some of that.
Couldn't agree more
This is an instance where Jamison’s mentality proves Flip’s point. The cart doesn’t pull the horse, Antawn!
p.s. The team wouldn’t be rotating and off-balance half as much if Jamison would follow his own advice and stop jacking up long shots early in the shot-clock.
100% agree with jones-y's analysis
Right on point.
I'm glad he did this
but talk is cheap. If the team wasn’t motivated enough to play defense beforehand, why would they be now? None of the “Big Three” can play defense, besides maybe going for a few steals now and then. Who exactly is a good enough defender on the perimeter to stop anyone? Then again, it’s one thing to play good defense and another just to leave guys wide open for jump shots. I didn’t get a chance to watch the game, but I did listen to the second half on the way home, and the way the Thunder were scoring in the fourth quarter, I thought the Wizards were playing with only three or four guys.
At some point, something has to give. Oh, and I’m tired of watching Boykins.
thank you
someone else who sort of shares my perspective: it’s a personnel issue. screaming at the players does nothing.
my caveat: why would we base our team concept around things that we don’t have the personnel to do? there is no KG or rasheed or ben wallace here. flip must love making himself miserable. and the fans.
the only thing that would put flip on solid ground here is if EG truly believes our defensive woes aren’t a personnel issue. then flip has to go to extreme measures to try to get the message to ernie. unfortunately i look at this as sabotaging the team we have. you’d think we could have played passable D, outscored people, and lost in the first or second round, and then gone a different direction in the offseason, when we’d still have trade value for our players and a fan base who isn’t disgusted with the product.
both EG and Flip are really stubborn apparently.
by DarrellWalkerFan on Dec 30, 2009 4:09 PM EST up reply actions
Will Flip step down?
I had high hopes, but this season is a train wreck.
Isn’t an outbreak like this, completely dissing his team, one step before resigning? It clearly shows his desperation and won’t help. In pro sports most players don’t care. They’ll be making there $$$ no matter who coaches.
I read here some time ago that he had called the Wizards players the dumbest team basketball-IQ-wise he had ever coached. Although he didn’t say it directly.
So they’re too dumb to play half-court Flip Basketball on the offensive end and we all know they can’t defend. Time to blow up the team or get rid of Flip.
I’m just hoping new ownership will turn the Wizards around like they did with the Caps.
OR: Mike Miller is the missing ingredient! He can move the ball, get some rebounds and hit the three.
Starters: Arenas_Miller_Butler_Blatche_Haywood. Jamison should be a sixth man.
I like the Bullets
we can't get rid of flip
can’t afford to eat the contract we just gave him. he’s in the driving seat.
and he’s right that the team can’t play defense. but did we have to get to this point to figure it out?
by DarrellWalkerFan on Dec 30, 2009 4:11 PM EST up reply actions
Missing ingrediant is size and athleticism
We lack size at the 4 when we play big teams. Am I the only one that thinks rebounding is major concern? Even when the wiz play good defense the other team is grabbing offensive rebounds and scoring with the extra posessions. Antawn can’t keep his man off the boards. I think we need to upgrade with some size at the 4. And no I don’t think the answer is Andray. He’s no rebounding beast out there. He can score from the Post when he has his head in the game, but I think we need someone who can defend and really rebound. I never thought that we would ever play the Grizzlies and think we’d be doomed after seeing them rotate like 3 7 footers, leaving 2 in at the same time. We had no chance that game.
And lastnight, I don’t expect anyone to stop Durant. But we could at least boxout after putting in work on the defensive end.
Using McGee more may be one of flips only tools left that he hasn’t tried extensively.
Caron's reaction
I think he had the best answer (needing time to digest), mostly because he got humbled by Durant.
When we first acquired Butler, he was a bull dog. He drove to the hoop with fire, rebounded like crazy, and added some much-needed toughness. Over the years, either through necessity or choice, he’s become overly reliant on his jump-shot. In 07/08, he reached an apex where he still had toughness and his jump-shot proved deadly. As a result, he helped lead an Arenas-less team to the playoffs and even won a playoff game against the Cavs (on a nasty drive no less). Since then, his toughness has disappeared and his jump-shot plateaued. He’s simply not the same all-star player he once was.
Last night really hammered home his decline. I think he tried to sacrifice some of his offense in an attempt to slow Durant down, but everything proved futile. He had 3 steals, but couldn’t stop his opposing small forward from going off. It wasn’t a case of execution or bad breaks. It was a question of ability. More and more wings are out-playing Caron these days and he’s looking slow and over-matched. So I don’t blame him if he needs time to digest. Realizing your prime is over is not a passing thought. Unfortunately for him and us fans, there’s not much he can do about it.
I agree with this
Caron use to be a little bull, but at 29 he appears to have lost some of that explosive mindset and athleticism. Occasionally we’ve seen it, like that game a few nights back where he dunked it on two guys late in the game. But too often he settles for dancing around outside crossing people left and right with no vertical movement to the hoop, and then shooting a jumper.
funny
I was saying this about Butler in the preseason. He has become a wannabe Rip Hamilton, except his jumper is not as good. Either way, he is no longer “Tough Juice.”
I also remember saying plenty of times how they were settling too much for jumpers. This team needs to be blown up, point blank. Otherwise, we just need to accept that we’re watching a bad team that isn’t going anywhere. Ever.
Yeah
Except Rip Hamilton runs around all over the place, putting opposing defenses off balance and making them tired. Not only is Caron not as good of a shooter, he’s still nowhere near as comfortable on the catch & shoot, and plus Caron isn’t remotely in the same league as Rip at moving off the ball.
If you want to defend Caron, all you’d have to do is to get into a defensive stance, move your feet left and right and let him waste his energy crossing you up left and right before he pulls up for a mid-range J. No wonder dudes like Durant can go off and score at will, since they’re not expending much energy on the defensive end.
blow it up
I was a die-hard supporter of the Big Three, but I now believe they need to blow up the big three and start anew. Keep Arenas, but ship Butler and Jamison out while they are still worth something and get younger, longer, more athletic forwards who are more defensive-minded. For the small foward spot, we need someone who can catch and shoot immediately after Gil dishes the potential dime, not catch and fake…jab step…dribble…fake again…like Bulter does all the time. Plus Butler is overrated as a defender (did you see Durant blow right by him on the baseline in the 4th quarter?). Keep Haywood, McGuire, Blatche, Miller, and Foye. Everyone else is expendable.
Joney's Analysis
Agree with him Blatche and Young need confiendence and minutes and provide toughness. Moving Antwawn and Caron to the bench would re-ignite there pride and force them to learn Flips system.
You cant really bench Gil. First of all he is too important, second does not have a strong backup. Also if you notice Gil is getting more consistent each game
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