Game Thread - Washington Wizards vs Chicago Bulls

[nate33]

i maintain that wall is forcing the issue too much at the rim. his early success has given an undeserved sense of confidence in taking it to the rim. early on in the season, teams were playing him like they played Chris Paul - fouling the heck out of him. now that the scouting report is out: Wall usually takes it to the rim without checking for trailers or kickout men, the transitional help defenders pack the paint and wait for Wall to dribble himself into trouble, rather than spacing out and accounting for other players. as a result, the FTAs for wall have sunk like a rock. wall needs to learn that full speed isn't always the best speed, and that guys like thornton and even arenas will be there on the break and can score buckets easier than he can going 1-on-3.

as for ray allen? gil is not as good off-the-ball and a lot better with the ball in his hands. for as well as Wall has played this season, i'm still more comfortable with arenas making the decisions. the pg duties should really go off of matchups rather than defined roles. if we're playing Miami, wall should handle the rock and abuse arroyo. last night against Chi, arenas should have been the one with the ball so he could attack bogans rather than making wall drive repeatedly on Rose.

I'm not sure I agree with this. First of all, Wall is pretty good at hitting the kickout man. Heck, that probably accounts for more of his assists than anything else. Wall doesn't always make a great dish in traffic to a trailing big, but that's because he doesn't need to. Wall usually finishes himself in traffic. Against Chicago, Wall uncharacteristically missed three layups. Granted, they weren't wide open layups, but they were layups that he generally makes, even at top speed. If he makes those layups like he normally does, he would have finished 10-14 (including two 3-pointers).

It's true that Wall hasn't got to the line much lately. I think part of it is that the team as a whole hasn't drawn many fouls. Wall often parades to the line late in the game when the opposition is in the penalty. That hasn't happened recently.

[20MexicanosIn1Van]

Arenas looks better defensively out there than before; then again it may be just because Wall has been that sub-par- of course that's to be expected since he's a rookie.

BTW, some unusual stats from last night:

John Wall made two 3 pointers, both off assists (1 from Hinrich and 1 from Arenas). If Wall wants to become a great player, he must turn his weaknesses (jump shooting and apparently defense) into strengths. With or without Arenas, he's going to have to learn to knock down open jumpers.

Nick Young also chipped in with 11 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 0 turnovers. Can Young build upon this?

Yup, Nick Young has been playing very well lately for as much flack as he's gotten this season. I think consistent minutes would do him wonders. However, with Gil/Kirk/Wall all getting heavy minutes I don't see it happening.

[closg00]

Arenas looks better defensively out there than before; then again it may be just because Wall has been that sub-par- of course that's to be expected since he's a rookie.

BTW, some unusual stats from last night:

John Wall made two 3 pointers, both off assists (1 from Hinrich and 1 from Arenas). If Wall wants to become a great player, he must turn his weaknesses (jump shooting and apparently defense) into strengths. With or without Arenas, he's going to have to learn to knock down open jumpers.

Nick Young also chipped in with 11 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 0 turnovers. Can Young build upon this?

Yup, Nick Young has been playing very well lately for as much flack as he's gotten this season. I think consistent minutes would do him wonders. However, with Gil/Kirk/Wall all getting heavy minutes I don't see it happening.

Yep, I was frustrated with Nick earlier, but he needs to be unleashed when he's feelin it, sit him when he's off.

No one on this team is attacking the basket except Wall, we had another huge disparity in FT's yesterday. With this team under Flip, it's jump shots or nothing at all.

[Hoopalotta]

No one on this team is attacking the basket except Wall, we had another huge disparity in FT's yesterday. With this team under Flip, it's jump shots or nothing at all.

While we do shoot far too many long 2's, that's not actually true as far as attacking the rim. Last time the data was refreshed, we were 18th in the league in attempts at the rim with 22 shots a game.

The numbers are slightly out of date now, but.....
Dray was putting up 7.1 shots at the rim, second in the NBA
Al puts up 4.3
Wall puts up 4.4
Javale puts up 2.7
Everybody else, not so much
Yi's actually down to 1.1 now after being at 3.3 last year, which is a bigger swing than just the minutes.

When you account for Wall's attempts being most on the break, he's probably 4th on the team in halfcourt inside attempts.

[dobrojim]

our zone sucks

I told you the thing with Gil shooting wasn't his legs,
it was mental. I bet he's nervous playing at home.

depending on the seriousness of the injuries to
Yi and of course to Wall, I was somewhat hopeful
after this loss. But the huge question remains,
will the young guys learn to play effective D.

Dray played like ass, Thornton about the same.

[closg00]

No one on this team is attacking the basket except Wall, we had another huge disparity in FT's yesterday. With this team under Flip, it's jump shots or nothing at all.

While we do shoot far too many long 2's, that's not actually true as far as attacking the rim. Last time the data was refreshed, we were 18th in the league in attempts at the rim with 22 shots a game.

The numbers are slightly out of date now, but.....
Dray was putting up 7.1 shots at the rim, second in the NBA
Al puts up 4.3
Wall puts up 4.4
Javale puts up 2.7
Everybody else, not so much
Yi's actually down to 1.1 now after being at 3.3 last year, which is a bigger swing than just the minutes.

When you account for Wall's attempts being most on the break, he's probably 4th on the team in halfcourt inside attempts.

Interesting stats Hoops, so we are 18th out of 30 on attempts at the rim, I assume that means shot- attempts in close proximity to the rim and not someone driving to the rim for lay-ups or dunks, do they distinguish between the two? Where do we rank in FT attempts vs opponent FT attempts?

Edit: As a team, we are are tied at 26 with Dallas for FTA, near the bottom for-sure when it comes to getting to the FT line.
http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/team/ ... sAttempted

[Hoopalotta]

That's just anything at the rim under any and all contexts with no distinctions as to how anyone got there - postups, transition, er'y thing. We're playing at the 11th fastest pace, so that would skew the percentage off an eansy-teansy bit, maybe we're 19th by percentage or something.

It should be noted that the basic complaint that we shoot too many jumpers is sound as we're leading the league in long 2's attempted.

[tontoz]

The Wizards are 27th in the league in points in the paint

http://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/po ... t-per-game

in spite of being 5th in fast break points.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/fa ... s-per-game

Fast break points count in both categories so i think we can safely assume that the Wizards are last in the league scoring inside in the half court set.

[Hoopalotta]

Here's the Hoopsdata figures on shot locations:

http://hoopdata.com/teamshotlocs.aspx

It has us 18th in attempts and 14th in makes for the 'at the rim' numbers.

tontoz, It looks to me like those "points in the paint" numbers are accounting for the Hoopsdata shots 'inside of 10 feet' combined with the 'at the rim' numbers. As it so happens, the 'Zards are last for makes and attempts inside of 10 feet (26th in .FG% too and that would obviously be excluding anything right at the rim).

Interesting to note who the worst team in the league is for Points in the Paint and attempts at the rim. Miami? Who'd have seen that coming?

[tontoz]

Here's the Hoopsdata figures on shot locations:

http://hoopdata.com/teamshotlocs.aspx

It has us 18th in attempts and 14th in makes for the 'at the rim' numbers.

tontoz, It looks to me like those "points in the paint" numbers are accounting for the Hoopsdata shots 'inside of 10 feet' combined with the 'at the rim' numbers. As it so happens, the 'Zards are last for makes and attempts inside of 10 feet (26th in .FG% too and that would obviously be excluding anything right at the rim).

Interesting to note who the worst team in the league is for Points in the Paint and attempts at the rim. Miami? Who'd have seen that coming?

LOL that is bizarre since Wade and Lebron have always scored a lot in the paint.

Looking at your link i am surprised to find the Hawks leading the league in shooting percentage from 10 feet or less and from 10 to 15 feet. they actually shoot 20% better than the Wizards from 10-15 feet.

[Jimmy Recard]

We need these guys back:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB1Ax0fl2To[/youtube]

Again, Singleton >>> Armstrong

Armstrong really kills that theory that size is important in your frontcourt

[hands11]

General Thoughts:

We are a bad team, playing a good, disciplined Chicago team on the road on the second game of a B2B. This game should have been a blowout, and it probably would have been without Gil's 3 point shooting and a lot of offensive rebounding.

Good game from Flip: doomed from the start, Blatche plays terrible from the beginning, Yi is hurt, Wall goes out temporarily, but the team still played hard. Also, I thought the zone was quite effective. On offense, we struggled. But let's face it--Blatche was completely out of it and Wall is a rookie. If those two don't play well, we aren't scoring in any offense.

Armstrong: he's not good, but this was his best game, and Mcgee is just as bad most of the time. The Neck hate should be exclusively aimed at EG, not Flip, as the guy has nothing to work with.

Booker: looked good. It's obvious the roles Flip is going to play him in, and I think he'll be effective there by year end.

Gil: looked very good. Still can't finish inside but his shot was on and he managed to jumpstart our sputtering offense. He did his damage, however, mostly without Wall on the court. I haven't seen them work well together on the court yet, and I am having trouble imagining how it could work. Gil was playing well because the ball was in his hands and he got into a rhythm.

About the most balance post I have read in pages.

People over react so much.

Also, all the Gil needs to have been starting is getting over played there. He doesn't need to start. He was playing when it made the most sense given everything on the table regarding him and the team. Last I checked he just played 32 minutes and scored 30 pts on 11-22 shooting with 6 rebounds 4 assists 2 steals and finished out the game. These last two games he has played are the best and most complete games he has played in a long time. Maybe, bring him along and playing him off the bench actually contributed to that happening as quickly as it did after he was returning from several years of little play, public nightmare and preseason injuries.

So we lost to a very good team on a back to back on the road with Dray dinged up and under performing and in early foul trouble, AT obviously not recovered from whatever had him leave the previous game and Wall playing on a bad wheel the forth quarter and Yi out the second half with a knee.

I wrote about this pre-game. We can't afford to lose AT right now because we have nothing to replace him with until Howard returns. Nick did well offensively at SF in the minutes he played but has zero FT attempts.

We needed to get more foul calls in the paint and we didn't for various reasons. Wall who usually gets 8-10 attempts a game had 1 attempt last night and 0 the game before that and only 2 before that. So what happened to Wall getting to the line. That is the big story. He has had 7 attempts in the last 4 games.

WIZ FTA vs Bulls
8 FTA to 34. Game over man.

We out rebounded them by 7. We out shot them by 14. We shot a better FG percentage also.

You have to get fouls called for you when you play a team that is that aggressive on D. They had ZERO players and foul trouble so they could just keep applying max pressure without worry. You can't let a team play you that tight on D and also let them in foul trouble. We had two players with 5 fouls and dray on the bench with two in the first half of the first quarter.

[hands11]

i watched the game on WGN HD tonight and Stacey King was just dumbfounded at our offense saying all we do is take jump shots.

its time to tank this season and go for another high lottery pick. Flip and EG have no future here. We seemed to be playing better at then end of last year than the beginning of this season so far

Are you really surprised that is the case ?

We have only 3 players playing who played to end last year and we are only 8 games into the season.

And of those three, Dray who was one of the biggest reasons we played well last year and he is returning from a foot injury that stalled his summer progress. Now he is just trying to get back to where he was, which he mostly has, only he is still injured.

We added three PG to last years team of which is Gil who was our franchise player returning from injuries and a suspension to a team that drafted the #1 pick to his position so he is moved to SG. And even he started the season with new injures and missing the first two games. Even with that, it took him 6 games of rust, 1 game of showing signs and the next game he broke out for 30 pts.

We are rebuilding this with lots of new players and 1 year contracts so we can take a look. We drafted rookies who have hardly played yet and we are still recovering from injuries and have some new ones. And you are surprised our first 8 games we don't look better then the team that played the last ten games last year ? Well we have in places. Not like that team was ringing up the wins. They ended 4-4.

Gil is just getting his mojo back. This thing hasn't even gotten started yet.

We lost to Orlando in the opener. Championship calibrator.
We lost to a 3-0 ATL by 4 who is a solid playoff team
Lost on the road to NY who was 3-2 and to strong for us. Wall had a bad game 9 turnovers
Cle was a tough loss but both Wall and Gil were off and flip blow that one sitting AT - winnable

Then these last two game against Charlotte and Chicago.

Charlotte - Four terrible calls and we loss AT. Wall still not driving. Gil showing signs.
Chicago on the road. - already reviewed. At least Gil broke out.

Its still early. We mostly lost to teams you would think we would loose to this early in the year until players sync, recover from injuries, and rookies learn something. Maybe two we could have won being CLE and Charlotte. If we win those we are 4-4 and people are feeling like we are making progress while getting it together and in the playoff race. Loose them and everyone sucks, EG, Flip, players, etc and we are lotto bound.

The truth is still undiscovered for this year. We are going to just have to wait it out. We have TOR, MEM, DET and Phili over the next five games and three are at home. Only Boston is a tough tough game. This will give us a chance to make up some ground before the next three tougher game. ATL, ORL, and Miami.

But we are clearly missing a stud or twp up front. Dray, Yi, McGee, Armstrong isn't enough to scare anyone. We need the young tougher guys to contribute - Booker and Seraphin That is what we are missing. 6-8 240 athletic and quick and 6-9 275 athletic defender. That is the beef we need.

This team is better than last years team. Just be patient. I don't think people would take.

Liv, Boykins, Fabio, Miller, Singleton, Ross, Mike James, Cedric Jackson

over

Wall, Kirk, Seraphin, J Howard, Booker, Martin, Yi, Armstrong, Hamady

Specially if your rebuilding. Sure we miss Singleton. He was the last piece I wanted to bring back but we keep Booker instead. We are just scratching the surface on what we kept. We didn't make moves to start the season strong, we made them to get better as the year progressed and into the future while investing in some pieces that whos stock could go up.

8 games into a rebuild that will happen over the next 3-4 year is no time to panic or loose faith.