GT: Wiz @ Clips, 2/13/08, 10:30 PM EST

[JWizmentality]

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They were outscored 18-11 in a 4 minute span, with the Clippers scoring on every single possession that Haywood was in once he entered in the 4th quarter. This coincided with EJ leaving in Jamison and Songailia in as well with one of them having to guard Corey Maggette.

How many of those were shots in the paint?? Cus I distinctly remember a layup drill and lots of AND 1's when Song was manning the paint in the 4th.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

In the "Now I Understand" category ...

Watching Clippers Live postgame, and Brian Dunleavy explained in his press conference that Chris Kaman lost 15 pounds with the flu and he's not at full strength.

Maybe that explains Songaila's "dominance" over Kaman.

[mkwest]

Congrats on the win guys. Playing the Clips is the best remedy to ending losing streaks. You guys beasted on the offensive boards and ultimately that's what did us in.

[miller31time]

Congrats on the win guys. Playing the Clips is the best remedy to ending losing streaks. You guys beasted on the offensive boards and ultimately that's what did us in.

For two teams missing Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, Elton Brand and Shaun Livingston, this was one hell of a game.

[80sballboy]

Wow, it's about F-ing time. We'll take it. Great game by DMac. You have to get him in the rotation. Though I wish he played smarter at times, Stevenson has so much heart. Probably need to limit his minutes some in the second half.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Al Thornton's a beast. Name a better rookie.

DMac was a beast on the boards, however.

[Kanyewest]

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How many of those were shots in the paint?? Cus I distinctly remember a layup drill and lots of AND 1's when Song was manning the paint in the 4th.

I would say Jamison or Songailia guarding Maggette significant because he had 8 of the 18 points.

[dobrojim]

Love DMAC's power on the boards.

I wouldn't say power

desire, quickness, intuition, quick leaping, good hands...

he's hungry

if he ever gets an O game, he'll be really special

[dobrojim]

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Funny because Chris Kaman hasn't been a factor with Darius Songailia guarding him. And as soon as Haywood enters the game, Chris Kaman gets an offensive rebound for a putback, a steal which leads to a fast break bucket.

you serious?

sure DSong made a couple decent plays (for a change).
Their run stopped or at least slowed down when Wood came
in. He shut down the middle much more so than DSong.

[dobrojim]

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Haywood even hit two clutch FTs (the kind another guy usually misses).

and he hit them at the end of the game, with the game on the line,
after playing way more minutes than usual. Hmmm.

[doclinkin]

Holy Frioles!!! We won despite EJ riding Song's Cock. I turned off the game with 8mins left in the 4th and Wood still wasn't in the game.

Weak...

[dobrojim]

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They were outscored 18-11 in a 4 minute span, with the Clippers scoring on every single possession that Haywood was in once he entered in the 4th quarter. This coincided with EJ leaving in Jamison and Songailia in as well with one of them having to guard Corey Maggette.

you're getting ridiculous

AJ/DSong has to be close to the worst def fwd tandem in the league.
Which is exactly why getting Haywood into the game was critical.

[80sballboy]

Yawn with this whole Haywood stuff. It's getting so freakin' old. The guy has played an excellent first half, he'll get more minutes and that's that. Let's get healthy in the 2nd half and make a run. But this has become a quicker league, with more athletic fours playing center so at times, he does need to sit. Problem is whether you still go with Songaila or use Blatche in that situation. One is turnover prone and the other is just awful. Catch 22.

[JWizmentality]

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Weak...

But...with a stable Blood Pressure. HA!!! Who's weak now??

[Severn Hoos]

Haywood played the entire 3rd quarter. He had already logged 30 minutes by the end of the 3rd. It was reasonable to give him a rest for the first 6 minutes of the 4th. DSong and DMac were playing real well and had built a 1 point lead back up to 5 so EJ kept Wood on the bench a little longer. I don't have a problem with that. He got Wood in when it mattered.

Overall, EJ handled the rotations very well except that he played Daniels 45 minutes. Hard to knock him for that though. Roger Mason had a pretty bad night and picked up 4 fouls in 16 minutes.

Back in the day, I had a running debate (feud) with SD20 about Larry Hughes' defensive abilities. When so many people were playing him up as a defensive stopper (the year he wound up 1st Team All-Defense! ), I saw an undersized (underweight) SG who had trouble matching up with bigger SGs, and while he got a lot of steals, we still seemed to get roasted by opposing SGs.

When I would bring up some (rudimentary) stats about how opposing SGs had torched the Wiz, SD20 would invariably talk about how EJ had played Hughes on another player (the PG or the SF), and while someone else was guarding the opposing SG, that SG then got hot - and as everyone knows, once an NBA player gets hot it's too late to cool him down, so Larry's stats apeared to suffer, even though he really was a top-flight defender.

I take this trip down memory lane because I remember how I used to chuckle about how no matter what happened in a game, SD20 had a ready-made excuse to explain it away as anything but that Larry just wasn't an elite defender. And now I feel myself veering into SD20 territory, because I had a thought about last night's game that's going to sound very much like something he might have said.

To wit: After complaining about Haywood's lack of minutes since, well, pretty much since EJ arrived, I actually thought Brendan played too many minutes last night. Maybe not too many minutes in total, but they weren't very well distributed, IMO.

Looking at the game log, it appears Brendan played the entire 1st quarter, sat the first 5:27 of the 2nd quarter, then played the rest of the half, followed by the entire 3rd quarter. as nate points out, that was 30:33 of the first 36 minutes of game time. And two entire quarters without a break. That's a lot of minutes, particularly consecutive minutes for anyone - let alone a big man - to play.

We've done the rotation game here to death, but I just don't understand what's so hard about a fairly steady, predictable rotation that a player can expect game-to-game. I'd look for patterns in Brendan's play, and use those to maximize his contribution. For example, my guess is that 8 minutes is probably about the longest stretch he should play without a break (with exceptions for end of game situations where there is more play stoppage - oh, never mind, Brendan doesn't play in end-of-game situations... ). A steady diet would be preferable to feast or famine, IMO.

So there's my illogical Haywood defense - first it's too few minutes, then it's too many minuutes. I think I'll go try my porridge now. I hope it's just right.

And as a postscript - a game after being the featured player in the 4th quarter, Nick Young played 2 minutes last night (according to the box score, I don't know if there was another reason for so few minutes). It's hard to expect consistency from players when there is so much inconsistency with playing time.

[queridiculo]

I really had no problem at all with how EJ managed Haywoods minutes last night. Washington had a poor shooting quarter in the 3rd and that's the only thing that kept the game close.

At least this time around we saw d-Song on the court with Haywood to close out the game.

[TheKingOfVa360]

Great win, AJ with the game winning tip in. D-Mac is a beast

[doclinkin]

[quote="Severn Hoos"][/quote]

Nice post.

[fishercob]

Sev, great post.

Eddie's had to scramble so much because of injuries, that it has been hard to establish any kind of set rotation. But when people get healthy, he has to.

I agree with you about BH's minute distribution and agree with Nate's past suggestion of playing him the first 8 mins of the 1Q and 3Q and the last 8 mins of the 2Q and 4Q.

That said, because the defensive dropoff at C is so considerable after Haywood, EJ has to react somewhat to matchups.

I know we have a thread for this somewhere, but once this team is fully healthy, minute distribution will become a that much more complicated -- and important. I suspect that Young and Pecherov are going to see little to no time down the stretch.

[Severn Hoos]

Sev, great post.

Eddie's had to scramble so much because of injuries, that it has been hard to establish any kind of set rotation. But when people get healthy, he has to.

I agree with you about BH's minute distribution and agree with Nate's past suggestion of playing him the first 8 mins of the 1Q and 3Q and the last 8 mins of the 2Q and 4Q.

That said, because the defensive dropoff at C is so considerable after Haywood, EJ has to react somewhat to matchups.

I know we have a thread for this somewhere, but once this team is fully healthy, minute distribution will become a that much more complicated -- and important. I suspect that Young and Pecherov are going to see little to no time down the stretch.

I think hands covered that once in one of his posts, but I don't remember which thread it was in.

Distribution really could become a problem (albeit the kind of problem you'd rather have in finding enough minutes for the players than vice versa). The biggest problem, as I see it, is that several players do much better as starters than they do off the bench. Blatche, Mason, and even Daniels tend to fall into this category. If those three could be proportionally as effective in limited minutes in a bench role, we could have one of the best & deepest benches around when everyone gets healthy. Unfortunately, we have guys like Mason go from scoring 32 points one night as a starter to scoring 3 points on 1-5 FG the next game from the bench.

I took a quick look at the per-minute production of those 3 players when starting vs. from the bench. (Admittedly, each had a small sample size - Mason & Blatche have started just 8 & 9 games respectively, while Daniels has started all but the first 8 games, which were pretty bad for everyone.) here's what I found:

Scoring increase (per-minute, as a % increase as a starter vs. bench):
Mason +29.7%
Blatche +25.1%
Daniels +67.5%

Assists:
Mason +16.0%
Blatche +2.2%
Daniels +20.3%

Rebounds:
Mason +8.5%
Blatche +20.8%
Daniels -12.2% (perhaps b/c he played alongside Gil off the bench, but had to be the true PG as a starter, so he crashed the boards less?)

Turnovers:
Mason +21.6%
Blatche -0.1%
Daniels +67.5% (ouch)

FG%:
Mason +11.4%
Blatche +4.8%
Daniels +20.3% (wow - 48% vs. 28%)

FT%:
Mason -3.8%
Blatche -1.1%
Daniels -0.7%

3PT%:
Mason +8.7%
Blatche N/A
Daniels +3.3%

Interesting - remember these are not raw totals, but per-minute. And the shooting improved across the board, except for at the line (I have no idea why this might be the case). More usage led to more TOs and a higher TO rate for Mason & Daniels (although everyone increased their steals rate as well).

All of the standard statistical disclaimers apply - small sample size, not adjusted for pace, etc. But still, it really does seem like these guys play much better as starters but struggle from the bench. If only they could come in and play in spurts like they do from the bench, we'd be set - but then, I'm starting to think that coming off the bench in the NBA is a very, very unique skillset & mentality, and there just aren't too many guys who can do it well.