I was at the Wizards-Knicks game tonight, thought I'd share a few thoughts from being there live...
-First off, yeah, John Wall is FAST. There were a couple spots tonight where you could see him making rookie mistakes (occasional bad pass, etc), but there were also already a few spots where he just took over the game. 6 assists in the box score is deceptively small as well. He found the open man several times tonight, but the shots just didn't fall.
-Yi's game looked decent, but it was almost all on the perimeter. The Knicks were giving him the open 20-foot jumper, he was taking it, and it rarely fell. If that shot falls, then this team will win a ton of games. If it doesn't, they won't.
-Javale continues to be Javale. His 6 blocks were electric, and his 6 boards came in only about 16 minutes of work. He still made some bonehead mistakes, but the guy is just a gamechanger in those areas where he's committed himself.
-I saw nothing impressive out of Hilton Armstrong. He displayed zero veteran savvy.
-The 4th quarter was basically Nick against the Knicks. Dude is a black hole on offense, and is incapable of creating for others when his shot isn't falling. Just terrible.
-That said, the Wizards had several really strong quarters and left a lineup of Hudson-Young-Martin-Booker-Yi in for most of that final quarter. It's preseason, and Flip clearly preferred seeing what they could do over trying for a meaningless W.
...End of the day, this is a Wizards team with plenty of intriguing talent, but it's also tremendously raw. I expect we're going to see them build and then lose a lot of leads, as teams make mid-game adjustments and the guys just take a little too long to adapt. The best-case scenario is approximately the "Baby Bulls" from a few years ago, or even the 76ers from two years ago. When they win, it'll be because of energy and athleticism rather than finesse and fundamentals.
Still, that'll make for a more interesting year than they've had in quite some time.