Washington Wizards Fall To Toronto Raptors: I Blame the 3D Baseboards

Who has “heart” on the Wizards? And who doesn’t?

Say that EG had to do a “trailblazers” style sale of the players on the Wizards, except instead of eliminating those players who had conviction, he had to get rid of those players who lacked “heart.” Who stays and who goes?

I think Booker, Singleton, and Wall are the only players I would keep if I ranked the team by “heart.” The rest of the players, I’m just not sure.

I think the Wizards need to shake-up their starting line-ups and rotations. . I think we should go back to the Singleton-Booker front court we used earlier in the season. I’d like to see Lewis get some minutes at PF. I think Nick Young needs more minutes at the SF position.

he’s lost his touch. this drafting on ‘upside’ has been a complete disaster. the wiz have a roster full of half-talents – mcgee, vesely, seraphin, young, even wall, not to mention the expired, mason, lewis. i’ll give him booker and singleton even.

this can’t be fixed any time soon. dumping mcgee, blatche, and young would be a good start. addition by subtraction.

I think bust is more like it.

…and a million light years from being a good team.

and when will Wall get some pride?

The 3-D, baseboards were pretty awesome. They actually had me fooled for about 5 seconds too — “is that really safe having those things under the basket? Oh, wait . . .” There was also a superfan sitting on the court who was entertaining to watch (e.g. McGee’s 3rd or 4th foul the guy jumped out of his seat, starts pointing in McGee’s direction, and then it looks like he’s shouting something at him; he also helped the ref collect the b-ball after an errant out-of-bounds pass). Needless to say those aspects of the game were more interesting to watch than the Wizards were during the even numbered quarters. The played good for some stretches in the first and 3rd, but they didn’t have the same intensity as some of the more recent games.

Too bad I don’t know how to create a fanshot
Link

No superstars, just a bunch of good players that fit and play well together and are well coached.

Forget the OKC model, that is the model we should mimic: Upgrade the organization internally and spend $60mm on 8-10 good players that complement each other and play hard and spend the final ten million to fill out the roster

When it’s readily apparent? He has games where he seems frozen, but he has other games where he comes out and sets a nice pick, gets a steal, a block, makes a pass better than half the guys on this roster are ever willing to make and an offensive board and then you look and realize he’s been in the game for 3 minutes. I’d really like to send Jan down to the D-League so that he can work on his shot and get consistent minutes. This draft was loaded with ‘projects’ and Vesely has flashed enough skills that I can’t get down on the kid quite yet. Does it help that there isn’t a non-PG drafted #7 through #12 lighting it up? Definitely.
I mean..just check out the Rookie PER rankings. After Kyrie Irving you have Gustavo Ayon, Jon Leur, Marshon Brooks, Nikola Vucevic, Lavoy Allen, Rubio, Enes Kanter, Tobias Harris, Isaiah Thomas, Kawhi Leonard, Kemba Walker, Alec Burks, Derrick Williams, Shelvin Mack, Chandler Parsons, Tristan Thompson, Greg Stiemsma, Josh Harrellson, Ivan Johnson.

Was to not be more aggressive in this offseason. I’d be interested to see where they’d be if they had managed to rope Afflalo, Humphries & Chuck Hayes in while Amnesthesizing Blatche & buying out Lewis. Pretty sure they’d still have money to go after a big FA after a year of playing with that core and seeing what they need. Yes, that would cost a lot of money, and yes Leonsis is a good businessman, but any owner that thinks of his team like an actual business is going to fail. It’s a luxury toy, and you need to upgrade it to impress trophy wives. It isn’t a corner bodega where you agonize about putting the Coke or Pepsi cooler closest to the door (no, i don’t really know where i’m going with that either)

Singleton’s advanced stats are grading out worse than Jan’s so far but everyone seems plenty happy with him.

I think I’m just way more optimistic about the combination of players from the last 2 drafts than other people are. We’re still missing the 2 big pieces that will make the rest of them make sense but Wall, Booker, Crawford, Seraphin, Vesely, Singleton, Mack could be 7 good pieces to a rotation. Just gotta SPLURGE on the right #1 offensive option on the wing and a legit center who isn’t afraid to punch someone in the mouth and get punched back.

He’s worth the 1st in me eye’s, he is the PF we have been lacking since C-Webb and Rasheed. He has a good work ethic, he has leadership intangibles, and most importantly he can put a team on his back with his offensive arsenal, and if McGee is the Center everybody thinks he is those two extremely go together.

We would look more like the end of last year when Dray was “Healthy”, but on a more consistent basis, with a go to guy which in return would open things up for Wall and Nick because Amar’e can hit that 17 ft jumper on consistently and drive to the basket better than Dray. Think how effective that three guard lineup would be offensively Wall, Crawford, Young, Stoudemire, McGee, and another thing Amar’e can space the floor better at the 5 then Dray. All I know is that New York is not going anywhere the way they are currently constructed, so why not make a pitch and show Wall you are committed to winning which in a couple years you will have to prove to him might I remind you.

Unless you really believe that the Wizards are a talented team (amazingly, a few here seem to believe that and think that all that’s needed is a better attitude and coaching), the obvious answer is that we need better players. We do have some talent, of course, but then so does every team. What we don’t have is enough talent, particularly interior defenders and shooters. And the fault for that lies squarely with the man who assembled our talent Ernie Grunfeld. The only tough interior defenders on our roster are Booker and the questionably talented Seraphin. The only player with any elite shooting ability is Young. Ernie will have had nearly three seasons to put together a roster after Gun-gate and there are still gaping holes in the roster.

The question Ted has to answer before this year’s draft is does he believe that Ernie’s the right man to select our third lottery pick in three years. If Ted believes that, thanks to Ernie’s efforts, we’re well on the road to success, then he should reward Ernie with a contract extension and let him have at it. If, however, Ted questions whether Ernie has assembled the correct building blocks to move us ahead, then he should replace Ernie with another GM who has a different philosophy on how to rebuild and no vested interest in protecting any of Ernie’s assembled assets. My own view is that Ernie has done, at best, a mediocre job of rebuilding (to my mind, the Blatche extension and the decision to draft Vesely over Markieff Morris or Kawhi Leonard were blunders; however, the Booker, Singleton and Mack drafts picks were solid). Ted may see it differently.

playing some minutes together is an intriguing idea. Especially when they are playing a shooting guard like Ray Allen who comes off a lot of screens. Right now I think Wall plays SGs better. His on ball D at the top of the key and ability to play the pick and rolls is just terrible. Take him off the PG and let him chase the SG and use his length.

Mack can guard the PG, provide some spot up 3pt shooting, and help keep the half court offense moving.

I’d like to see some small ball with Wall, Mack, Young, Booker, McGee.

The best way to maximize the players on the team is to get them to be the least they can be. Its when they try to do something they become inefficient. I think they should stand in one spot the whole game. The results will be the same and they won’t look so bad losing. That said, today is W day.