Post-game Wizards links from around the Interwebs

He had the best (second?) defense in the NBA doubling him HARD on the perimeter or anytime he touched the ball, and one of those guys was the perennial Defender o the Year. He had no help anywhere so they doubled him without fear. The rest of the team was panicked too. The only guys who kept their cool were KH and Martin. One because he’s the only true vet on the floor and the other because he has nothing to lose. Blatche clearly isn’t in shape physically or mentally from his offseason.

It sucked. But I don’t think he’s garbage. He just can’t be the #1 guy. There has to be pressure on the defense from somewhere else.

are you happy? We lost by less than 10.

even the celtics and the lakers, the best teams last year, put forth some crappy performances throughout the season and the playoffs.

You say this yet you bash Dray for one bad game. Cmon now

as if john wall simply didn’t try hard enough.

I never pinned the blame exclusively on John Wall, and the little bit that I criticized him on had nothing to do with effort. Wall made some mistakes, but he never slumped his shoulders or gave up on plays like I saw many of his teammates do.

anything short of maximum output every night is unacceptable to you.

No, anything other than maximum effort is unacceptable to me. Do good teams have poor effort showings too? Yes, but it is also not acceptable for them to do it, even though they can afford to. I recognize that professional athletes getting paid millions of dollars will still sometimes give up on games, just like professional plumbers may sometimes cut corners and do a less than professional job on someone’s leaky pipe. But if it’s my leaky pipe that got the poor job, then I have a right to complain. Just because something is common doesn’t mean it is acceptable. The Wizards are paid to try hard at their job. To not give maximum effort cheats fans like me, and it is asking a lot to tell us that we should just accept it.

it’s never matchups or simply a poor performance or situation, but those DO happen sometimes, especially when you’re learning.

Bad matchups affects performance, not effort. I criticized the effort. Again, saying something happens commonly does not make it acceptable. If I told you that cheating on a spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend is common, would that make you less angry if your significant other cheated?

and orlando didn’t even give us a chance to outhustle them – they clamped down on us and just crushed us right from the start. it was damn impressive actually.

Even more impressive was how Miami clamped down and crushed them, despite all the rest we gave their starters with our best Washington Generals imitation. The Magic are good, but they’re not that good. I still strongly believe we could have kept the game much closer if the players didn’t act “scared”, like Flip Saunders said they did.