Wizards at Blazers 2/14

[dobrojim]

Wittman climbs to 5-7 as Wizards coach. 3-2 over the last 5 games.

Three straight road wins, too.

I don't blame the home fans because I am one of them,
but we've been from Missouri for a while with our team.
Show me. The Wiz need to get some better support at
home by being competitive on the road. That'll get some
attention. Last year's road record was inexcusable.
Great road win against a solid team.

[dobrojim]

do we still get half off pizza for 100 pt+ road wins too?

good question

we blew out the 100 point barrier tonight. Unbelievable.

[dobrojim]

PS - Vesely is playing pretty good as a C

In a way, he plays like Noah. He's versatile even
if he is a 'self check'.

[doclinkin]

Glad to see your coming around on Wall CCJ

In CCJs defense ( and mine ) I think it is Wall that is coming around, not the other way around.

No man, those who were crying 'bust' (and that Jan Vesely is the true franchise player on the squad ) simply have to eat the crow that they judged a young player too soon, and were wrong for doing so.

CCJ --god love'm-- has always been enjoyably (admittedly) upsy-downsy, but gains real appreciation from fellow fans because of his honorable nature and the ability to loudly admit when he was wrong. Others who loudly claim they were always right even when they were overtly wrong, and only dredge up the past to suggest they knew it all along and have been saying forever that whateverwhatever, well they tend not to get the same pass.

John Wall is a remarkably talented player with a good attitude and work ethic drive, desire to win, and intelligence -- whose strongest fault was that he tried to do too much by himself, forcing the issue. Anyone with a modicum of insight would come to understand that given a bit of freedom to play his game to his strengths he would tend to improve over his career, and was not a finished product.

It was also predictable that the removal of a micromanaging head coach with a flawed system would free up John Wall to follow his natural instincts and exploit the strengths of his teammates. The team is more jazz musicians than orchestral string section, Whitman has asked them each to play to their strengths and while he clearly calls plays he's trusting them each to do what they do well, not forcing them all to fit a system that doesn't suit them.

Critics can take their lumps and say, hey, I'm willing to be wrong on this. I spoke too soon. Even while knowing there will be off games where the team still plays young and flustered etc.

[dobrojim]

good stuff Doc - Truly good stuff. HOF right there

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Wittman climbs to 5-7 as Wizards coach. 3-2 over the last 5 games.

TWO straight road wins, too.

I don't blame the home fans because I am one of them,
but we've been from Missouri for a while with our team.
Show me. The Wiz need to get some better support at
home by being competitive on the road. That'll get some
attention. Last year's road record was inexcusable.
Great road win against a solid team.

Fixed.

I think they only have two straight road wins--I had to edit that.

[Jimmy Recard]

Glad to see your coming around on Wall CCJ

In CCJs defense ( and mine ) I think it is Wall that is coming around, not the other way around.

No man, those who were crying 'bust' (and that Jan Vesely is the true franchise player on the squad ) simply have to eat the crow that they judged a young player too soon, and were wrong for doing so.

CCJ --god love'm-- has always been enjoyably (admittedly) upsy-downsy, but gains real appreciation from fellow fans because of his honorable nature and the ability to loudly admit when he was wrong. Others who loudly claim they were always right even when they were overtly wrong, and only dredge up the past to suggest they knew it all along and have been saying forever that whateverwhatever, well they tend not to get the same pass.

John Wall is a remarkably talented player with a good attitude and work ethic drive, desire to win, and intelligence -- whose strongest fault was that he tried to do too much by himself, forcing the issue. Anyone with a modicum of insight would come to understand that given a bit of freedom to play his game to his strengths he would tend to improve over his career, and was not a finished product.

It was also predictable that the removal of a micromanaging head coach with a flawed system would free up John Wall to follow his natural instincts and exploit the strengths of his teammates. The team is more jazz musicians than orchestral string section, Whitman has asked them each to play to their strengths and while he clearly calls plays he's trusting them each to do what they do well, not forcing them all to fit a system that doesn't suit them.

Critics can take their lumps and say, hey, I'm willing to be wrong on this. I spoke too soon. Even while knowing there will be off games where the team still plays young and flustered etc.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Glad to see your coming around on Wall CCJ

In CCJs defense ( and mine ) I think it is Wall that is coming around, not the other way around.

No man, those who were crying 'bust' (and that Jan Vesely is the true franchise player on the squad ) simply have to eat the crow that they judged a young player too soon, and were wrong for doing so.

CCJ --god love'm-- has always been enjoyably (admittedly) upsy-downsy, but gains real appreciation from fellow fans because of his honorable nature and the ability to loudly admit when he was wrong. Others who loudly claim they were always right even when they were overtly wrong, and only dredge up the past to suggest they knew it all along and have been saying forever that whateverwhatever, well they tend not to get the same pass.

John Wall is a remarkably talented player with a good attitude and work ethic drive, desire to win, and intelligence -- whose strongest fault was that he tried to do too much by himself, forcing the issue. Anyone with a modicum of insight would come to understand that given a bit of freedom to play his game to his strengths he would tend to improve over his career, and was not a finished product.

It was also predictable that the removal of a micromanaging head coach with a flawed system would free up John Wall to follow his natural instincts and exploit the strengths of his teammates. The team is more jazz musicians than orchestral string section, Whitman has asked them each to play to their strengths and while he clearly calls plays he's trusting them each to do what they do well, not forcing them all to fit a system that doesn't suit them.

Critics can take their lumps and say, hey, I'm willing to be wrong on this. I spoke too soon. Even while knowing there will be off games where the team still plays young and flustered etc.

+1

2-15 with Flip
5-7 with Wittman

[dobrojim]

Flip did need to go. I don't think he's a bad coach,
but he was stale here. For the time, Witt is doing fine.
We should still go after Joerger in the offseason.

[vossy_3]

Gotta say, i thought vesely was going to really battle through this season after a run of some pretty ordinary games. But this kid has got some serious talent, and is getting better every game. I'm actually amazed at some of the top big men draft picks and how they have picked up the nba game without a pre season or hardly any training during the season (kanter, biyombo, vesely), are all going to be top players in this league.

[Illuminaire]

Ves continues to impress me with his defense and passing. He makes a bad pass here and there, but he also makes a lot of good ones. He clearly understands spacing, and he loves to hit cutters on the move. As long as he has a decent A/TO ratio, I can live with the mistakes.

His rebounding is starting to look up too. That's huge. If he's getting boards, we can play him at the 4/5 and our offense doesn't immediately shut down. Me likee.

[JonathanJoseph]

Well this game was....interesting.

Ironically (or whichever superlative you choose), I found the Detroit win more encouraging than this win as far as boding well for the future. I liked the way the team played vs Det, and Wall in particular, as opposed to tonight where there was as much a perfect storm of Wall/Young/Crawford all shooting out of their minds.

Now, don't mistake what I'm saying. Wall clearly played out of his mind tonight, and anytime any player shoots 10 of 14 there's no real complaint to be made. But Wall's turnovers were down, actually, over the past two games and the assists were also down (even with the help of some really hot shooting) because Wall went back to looking to score first rather than getting his teammates involved first. There were at least a couple of examples where I thought Wall forced shots without moving the ball, but if you are hot you have the green light so tonight that's not a problem. I hope to see that this game is the exception rather than the rule and that we see McGee/Vesely/Booker with 10+ points a game on easy baskets from Wall. As noted, I'd prefer 9 points and 15 assists to 29 points and 8 assists. His teammates won't get hot on their own like this every game. The job of a franchise PG is to make sure his teammates get hot.

But there's no doubt that some kind of lightbulb has gone on over the past few games. Is it a coincidence that Wall's shot has improved dramatically along with his mindset to get his teammates involved moreso than being the world's greatest 1-on-5 player? I bet Flip would say that the basketball gods would say it's no coincidence. Wall has a long, long way to go yet the past few games show that the Wizards may yet have a franchise player, albeit one who had some extreme bumps getting off the ground.

Tough game for Booker.

Rashard Lewis was so bad it's hard to express how bad he was. I got to thinking about Yi's game vs the Lakers (I think) last year where I thought it was impossible for an NBA player to play worse. That's how bad Rashard was. Like he's just collecting the paycheck. Batum got hot because Rashard was so bad.

Love love love Vesely. BBIQ is so high, just needs experience and strength and I'm certain he'll work on some skills. Still think the AK47 comparison works, but I also like others using the Joakim Noah comparison. No coincidence that he's getting minutes at the 5.

Young and Crawford. They were both white hot. I still hate watching both of them and can't wait until they are gone. Will continue to hope that Mack eats into their minutes at the 2.

Agree with whoever posted that McGee is infuriating. He was a dominating presence, yet again, meanwhile he did a number of completely silly and boneheaded things that are unacceptable on a championship caliber team. It's ok when you are tanking a season, but if he's not going to shake these tendencies by now are we really going to commit to him for the long term assuming he will? Haven't we learned that lesson with Blatche/Young? I'd still like to see if we could trade him for a young player and lottery pick.

To be honest, I'm not that surprised that they won. I thought Detroit was more than a fluke. Really curious to see what happens tomorrow when the outside shots aren't falling.

[Dat2U]

HOF material

Slow down son you killin' 'em.

[Ruzious]

Another reason Wall has "improved" is because he's playing with a center who's gone from very undependable to all-star caliber since getting his asthma "fixed". It kinda makes a difference. In the last 3 games, Javale has averaged 21.3 points and 11.7 rebounds while shooting 61% from the floor and 63% from the line. That's after not getting double figures in scoring or rebounding in the previous 5 games.

[Ruzious]

My question is, what's it going to take to sign Batum?

You and me both. I was just imagining what the Wiz would look like with the same roster and just adding Batum and Anthony Davis. Holy bleep.

[nate33]

The Portland announcers commented several times on how the Wizards consistently got easy buckets after timeouts. Randy Whitman is getting it done from the bench.

[fishercob]

I usually don't stay up for the west coast games. Glad I did for this one. Obviously, it was a glorious performance, if not somewhat bizarre.

Yeah, they lost Aldridge early, but Portland is a good team! 7th in SRS, 9th in ORtg, 6th in Drtg with a host of good smart players like Wallace, Camby, Matthews, Baturm, etc. The fact that we won, let alone whipped them, is somewhat astonishing,

What were our TS% and ORtg for this game? Have to be our best since Gil was healthy, no?

Obviously some of what happened is that our guards got crazy hot from the field. Nick was scorching, though most of his looks were pretty decent and in the flow. Crawford took mostly bad shots, they just went in last night. You don't carry stuff like that forward. I'm not saying that to diminish Nick performance; obviously it was wonderful. But we know who Nick is at this point (Crawford too, unfortunately).

But I just loved what Wall, Vesely and Mcgee brought last night. People often use the nebulous, ill-defined "controlling the tempo" to talk about positive point guard play. They usually use it to describe PG's who are very deliberate. Well Wall is starting to control the tempo with his speed. He's got defenses back on their heels when we come down court and he's getting to the basket or finding shooters whose men are off balance.

I loved Vesely's effort last night. He seemed to be everywhere. The loose ball that he won by again diving on the floor and FIGHTING for that led to Nick's three at the top of the key was my favorite play of the year. We all know what he has to improve, but he's really good at things that we haven't had here in so long. He did a better job on the boards too. Really held his own

I want to give a special shout to McGee though. I thought he looked really good in the first half, but his box score stats were unimpressive -- just 2 points and 4 boards. I said to myself at half, "I bet he finishes with a double-double." Sure enough he finished with 18 and 11.

Hopefully the boys got a little rest last night and can bring another good effort tonight. Great win.

[pancakes3]

great win, echo on all the positives that everyone's said, but i can't help shake the feeling that booker injuring aldridge was a dirty and possibly *intentional* and that doesn't sit too well with me.

[Nivek]

Not much defense played in this game. Wiz ortg was 136. Portland's was 119. Crazy. Wiz efg was .656.

Inexplicably, b-r doesn't have the ability to search team games by advanced stats. They have to add that. At any rate, I did a search by FG%. Wiz shot 60% -- 18th best shooting night since b-r's box score collection starts (sometime in the 80s). So, I took the franchise's top 100 FG% games and calculated efg for each. Last night's was #6.

The top 10:

1. 4/10/96 -- @BOS -- .700
2. 10/31/09 -- NJN -- .673
3. 1/14/09 -- @NYK -- .662
4. 3/17/97 -- @SAS -- .660
5. 12/18/02 -- MEM -- .658
6. 2/14/12 -- @POR -- .656
7. 4/4/96 -- @ATL -- .655
8. 3/16/05 -- @ATL -- .653
9. 2/5/93 -- GSW -- .652
10. 1/25/96 -- HOU -- .649

The 1996 team appears 3 times in the top 10. That team (coached by Jim Lynam) went 39-43 and missed the playoffs.

Atlanta makes the only two-time appearance on this list, but a decade apart. Both in Atlanta. Kinda weird to see 6 road games in the top 10 since teams usually perform better at home. Looking at the top 100, there are only 34 road games on the list.

Worst team on that list was the 09 squad that went 26-56 in Flip's first year.

Interesting.

[hands11]

The Wizards are 3-5 without Andre Blatche.

Or is it Wittman ?