Flip Saunders: Andray Blatche taken out because he "didn't want to be coached"

This season is right out of the twilight zone.

What…the…f#$%! And here I think that at least we have our power forward of the future set for next season. He has been playing great. Still young, still has potential to get even better. And now this. WTF!

I dont know if this is related, but it might have been a warning sign…
it can always get worse…

Payday Dray

Candidate for my new favorite player, obviously, now….

When Nick Young is telling you this, red flag.

Meaning: Most Insubordinate Player.

or an “Op-Ed” like Gilbert Arenas did? And say that there are real people who give a shit about this team but are real real close to freaking out if they don’t get their act together? I’d plunk down a few bucks for the space.
Friends, let’s start ourselves a movement!

for the most rag-tag roster I can ever remember for the Wiz

Not (previously) a big Wiz fan, but gotta have some sympathy here. (full disclosure: I DO have Blatche as a late-season genius pickup in a roto league I’m trying to win. Shti.)

Is there some kind of Cursed Franchise of the Year Award I’m unaware of?? And the Wiz felt threatened by the Warriors’ 8-man, half D-league roster?? Coz that’s the only explanation I can think of.

Nice gallows humor up there, guys. And if I were a Wizard player, my blood would freeze if I heard Flip postulate:
“What will they do when things go bad?”

“Ummm…coach? You mean “go bad” from HERE? From this point Damn."

…trying to set a new record for “Fastest Scrub-to-Diva Transition”.

But I think this the unbeatable record is still held by Carlos Arroyo for the Jazz back in ’04 when he came back from a nice game against the US Olympic team as a superstar. That was basically a 0 game transition from “Please pay me to play in the NBA” to “I run the team now.”.

Now I sort of get y Gilbert pooped in Blatches sneakers….excuse me.
You know , in 1978………
Lol
darn!

I’ve been defending Blatche, but I can’t do that here. For the love of Abe Pollin, grow up.

or is Flip Saunders a drama queen? Hardly the firm hand at the helm I thought he was. He slams players in public – not in a constructive way either – it’s almost mean spirited. I’m not saying Blatche was right, and I’m not saying he didn’t deserve to hear what Flip had to say, but Flip uses words with such venom in these press conferences. It’s as if Flip is an insecure teenage girl. For whatever Eddie Jordan lacked in X’s and O’s, he was much more of a nuanced coach when it came to this type of thing. I’ve actually been impressed with Blatche’s attitude the past few weeks. He wasn’t making excuses for losses or blaming his teammates like Butler and Jamison used to do. Even he’s not even close to their level yet, Blatche has been manning up in his interviews, taking blame, not making excuses for the schedule or the double teams, saying they need to get better, etc. Dare I say, he’d sounded like a leader? At this point, I’m more disappointed in Flip than Blatche.

for at least a game. Quitting on your teammates like that is inexcusable.

That being said let’s not overlook Flip’s role in this. He has a bad habit of calling out his players through the media which isn’t going to foster a lot of trust or respect between player and coach. His quote " Coaches aren’t wrong, no matter what." exemplifies an arrogance that has surfaced periodically during the season. There almost certainly is more to this than Dray just deciding to do this out of thin air, he just picked the wrong way of expressing his displeasure.

When Flip was hired I thought it was a coup for the Wizards and was behind the hiring 100 percent. But after less than a full season I’ve done an about-face on him. His increasingly poor rotations and shoddy player management have all but convinced me this is not the guy for this team. I don’t think he has the make-up anymore to take a young, rebuilding team and help them progress(granted that’s not the kind of team he thought he was getting when he signed here).

Plus Flip’s ripping of AB for giving up when you “..have a chance to win a game.” was hypocritical, even if correct, considering he did just about everything in his power to lose that game with a horrible coaching effort., of which he’s had quite a few lately.

Boy does this suck. The one shining light in this season of darkness, and now he does this? Blatche was on his way to becoming a legit NBA star, maybe even a franchise player. But his immaturity showed through, and now we’re even worse off than we thought we were. Here we were thinking at least we had one guy we could potentially build the team around, or at least share the “centerpiece” duties.
So now what do we do? I mean, I say we at least suspend him for the rest of the season. The problem is, how bad does this affect his trade value? Sure, he’s shown that he could potentially all -star material, but nobody can say he’s a proven commodity yet. Which means that, if we were to trade him, we’d get pennies on the dollar. Sound familiar?

I have changed my mind in this case. I changed my mind because maybe AB is not listening to the coach so he may have to put it out there to get his attention. I am hoping that maybe one of the veteran players will talk to AB to help him with his attitude. Furthermore, I like the idea of benching him for insubordinate and it should be done more throughout the ledge to rid the ledge of this type of behavior. I also think that this is more important than winning. The coaches has to nip it in the bud or he losses control of the entire team. This is no different than rising children – they will continue to do things that you allow them to get away with. Flip needs to control the team and players need to do what the coach ask/tell them to do – period!