With both Antonio Daniels and a dashing Gilbert Arenas sitting this game out, Eddie Jordan threw Roger Mason into the starting lineup for tonight's game against the Sixers and he played well putting up 11 points to go along with 7 rebounds (!!), and 2 assists. If I gave you that stat line without the name, and told you that was coming from the point guard spot, you'd probably think I was talking about Antonio Daniels. That's how good he was tonight. He ran the offense just about as well someone could who's just been thrust into the point guard role with little warning helping lead the Wizards to an 86-80 win.
This would've been so much better had he done this at George Mason last night. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)
Mason wasn't the only one to impress last night. Antawn Jamison was back to his postseason form last night going for 17 points and 8 boards in 21 minutes of play. Blatche continues to show the rest of the NBA what we've been anticipating for the last two years and in the process completely owning Jason Smith who went 0-7 from the field and was left in the dust as Blatche cruised in for this dunk:
Blatche putting the NBA on notice. (AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)
There's not a whole lot to nitpick from tonight's game, the defense did well again holding the Sixers to 37% field goal shooting while shooting a decent 42% without the aforementioned Arenas and Daniels. Brendan Haywood only scored 2 points in 19 minutes, a far cry from his 10 points in 11 against the Mavs but I'll take it because he was still rebounding well and kept Calvin Booth (who was starting for the injured Samuel Dalembert) to a 2 points as well. I'm sure there's probably a few more things I could point out that the Wizards need to improve on, but all in all I think this was a very good win by a short handed team. If you're looking for some actual video highlights from tonight's game (plus a little Easterns commercial action), you're in luck: