Washington Wizards Breakdown: Wizards are Wall-to-Wall Bad

Are the Washington Wizards really as bad as they looked during their dreadful 112-83 opening game loss to the Orlando Magic?

After inspecting their roster, it turns out that they might be.

The Wizards’ defensive rotations were horrendous against the Magic—and JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche, Hilton Armstrong, and Yi Jianlian have all been disastrously bad individual and team defenders over the course of their short careers. No wonder they offered no resistance to Dwight Howard, or anyone else on the Magic’s roster.

This complete lack of defense extends down to the wings, where Al Thornton and Nick Young were eviscerated by Vince Carter, and were habitually absent in their rotations.

John Wall’s idea of defense strictly involves his hands and not his feet.

Cartier Martin had an up-and-down defensive game, but may have made the only adequate defensive rotation—and wound up stuffing Dwight Howard at the rim for a highlight reel block because of it.

The only Wizard who played acceptable defense on the whole was Kirk Hinrich, but with his teammates botching help assignment after help assignment, his efforts had little impact.

Yes, the Wizards were operating without the services of Gilbert Arenas and Josh Howard, but while Howard is at least an average individual defender, he’s a mistake-prone team defender, while Arenas’ idea of playing defense is to outscore his opponent.

The fact is that the Wizards are constructed to be an inept defensive team, and unless the team—McGee and Blatche particularly—undergoes a communal epiphany, the Wizards will be carved up by the better offenses in the league.

The Wizards’ offense isn’t much better than their defense.

John Wall—6-19 FG, 9 AST, 3 TO—already may be one of the five fastest players (the fastest?) in the game with the ball in his hands, and he was lethal finishing on the break. If the Wizards can play any defense at all, Wall will torture opponents with transition baskets and assists.

However, Wall’s jump shot is broken—3-11 on shots outside the paint. He also tends to overpenetrate, and he didn’t show much creativity in finishing around the basket, allowing his shot to get swatted by Howard three times by going up soft. His assists mostly came in garbage time, or on simple drive-and kicks in early offense with the Magic comfortably ahead.

In other words, Wall has talent but is still a work in progress.

Andray Blatche is a center who thinks he’s a guard, and as such commits horrendous turnovers, like trying to cross over along the baseline and dribbling the ball out of bounds. He’s skilled enough to dominate games against inferior teams if he develops an early rhythm, but the Magic, knowing this, doubled him throughout the first quarter.

Blatche originally responded okay—he was comfortable scanning the double team and making the appropriate cross-court pass to the open player. As the game went on though, and Blatche got more and more frustrated, he launched a number of ill-advised force jobs that had nary a prayer of going in. For the game, Blatche was a quiet 2-9 for six points, with at least four bad shots taken and missed.

Al Thornton has athleticism—4-9 FG, 9 PTS—but he’s a ball stopper with limited range—1 AST, 0 TO, 0-3 3FG.

JaVale McGee runs and jumps like a gazelle but has no idea why he’s supposed to do anything on the court.

Hilton Armstrong would make an excellent fourth string center—0-0 FG, 2 REB, 2 TO, 5 PF.

Yi Jianlian is totally soft and unremarkable in creating his own offense. He needs to shoot well to be a factor, but hasn’t shown any reliability over his career. He can’t handle, or rebound, or pass, so when he performs like he does against the Magic—2-6 FG, 0-1 3FG, 2-6 FT, 6 PTS, he’s totally useless.

Nick Young is another moderately talented wing with poor court vision and a penchant for taking bad shots—1-5 FG, 5 PTS.

Only Hinrich—4-9 FG, 3-6 3FG, 2 AST, 1 TO—and Martin—5-9 FG, 6-6 FT, 17 PTS—performed well on offense.

As a team, the Wizards bigs showed screens and then fanned out looking for long jumpers. None of Washington’s stable of bigs set screens with any degree of sturdiness. Ball reversal and ball movement were ancient myths. The extra pass was eschewed in favor of awkward pull-up jumpers. In essence, the Wizards put on a clinic of bad basketball.

This is damning in the sense that the return of Gilbert Arenas and Josh Howard won’t solve these problems. Arenas would give Washington a bit more scoring punch, but his presence and need to have the ball in his hands would only hinder the development of Wall.

More importantly, sturdy screens, ball movement, playing with eyes up instead of a head down, none of these would be improved by Arenas or Howard.

What the Wizards don’t need is more athleticism, or more talent. They need role players and defenders at every position. Without those components, Washington’s development will be stalled by a brick wall.