This was probably not part of the blueprint. The Wizards came out flat tonight and were basically run out of the Hawks gym. Before we return to our regularly scheduled calling for heads, lets look at a few points where this all went wrong:
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John Wall played out of control for most of the evening and was visibly frustrated with the refs for not calling contact on his numerous drives to the basket. More worrying, Wall appeared to be benched for for the latter part of the first quarter and for the early part of the second for taking six straight shots without passing the ball. We are only two games into the season, but Wall is demonstrating a worrying propensity to abandon his teammates and attempt to do it all himself.
- Before the season started, I invited everybody to jump on the Andray Blatche bandwagon with me. Blatche then turned around, poured gas on the wagon, and lit a match. Now I'm standing outside a charred ruin looking vaguely confused. Dominique Wilkins said it best in game "how can you want it in the post if you're going to keep shooting soft jumpers?"
- JaVale McGee did JaVale McGee things. However, the good JaVale firmly outweighed the bad JaVale on the evening.
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Nick Young was unconcious for the first part of the game, then froze on the bench, then came back in and continued to score. Whatever Flip Saunders says about "depth charts," it has become fairly obvious that Nick Young is your starting two guard. Jordan Crawford on the other hand, was chucking up terrible 40 footers.
- Chris Singleton needs as much PT as he can handle.
Its game two, so I want to avoid the "sky is falling" commentary. But this team doesn't look motivated on either end of the floor at the moment. There appears to be little to no trust between the starters, the offense is stagnant and the same defensive lapses continue to take place. As John Wall said on repeated occasions last season "we didn't have no heart, we didn't have no fight." Honestly, truer words were never spoken.