Wizards lose to Hawks: Final wrap, where Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee are developing projects

JaVale McGee tends to be a really shy, innocent guy with the cameras on, which stands in stark contrast to his Twitter persona.  He comes across like an innocent kid that is either a) used to people telling him what to do, and/or b) doesn't know any better.  So it's not really surprising to hear him say some nonsensical thing like this:

"I feel like I'm still going to leave my feet sometimes because that's what has people scared to come to the hole half the time. So if I stop doing that then there'd be more scoring. I'd rather just be one foul and I leave my feet all the time and there's five misses than everybody score and just shoot it and not be afraid of me."

Obviously, that's not how defense works.  Leaving your feet is bad because the mere length of your frame is what deters people, not your leaping ability (as Truth About It expertly shows).  The fact that McGee thinks this is troubling, if only because it makes you wonder about his capacity to pick stuff up -- though it should be noted that Andray Blatche was touting McGee's hard work in the gym recently as a key to his improvement. 

Meanwhile, two lockers down, Blatche was in a fairly defensive mood.  He had a good game, but when asked about it, it said it didn't matter because the team lost.  Blatche also had seven turnovers, which was a sign of a team-wide problem tonight that was big enough for Flip Saunders to zip into the press room quickly and give mostly curt answers about how his team was sloppy with the ball.  One reporter in particular tried to prod some answers out of Blatche for his turnover problem, asking if there's anything he's doing in particular to try to work on it.  Blatche kept repeating that he just needed more court time and experience dealing with being a featured guy, his voice sounding more annoyed than usual.  

"I'm not used to getting double-teamed, Blatche said. "That's going to be an issue until...I gotta learn by playing, and it's going to get better. They double-teamed, they rotated, and I'm trying to make plays, and it's just new."     

And this was after a game in which the two combined for 50 points and 19 rebounds while largely outplaying Atlanta's talented front line.  It just goes to show you that these guys have so much natural ability that's only now being harnessed.  They still struggle with such rudimentary concepts of basketball, and yet, they can still be this good without much development.  

It's a pretty nice thing to think about even though the Wizards lost.  Give these guys some better guards and some more attention, and things will be even better.

Four Factors (Bold=very good | Italics=very bad)

Snap reaction: Wait a minute, the Wizards grabbed half of all available offensive rebound chances?  Holy crap!  And ... wow that's bad on the turnovers.