Official Thread -- Wizards at Nets (12/18/13)

[20MexicanosIn1Van]

So should we start Book at the 4 now? We did much better on the glass tonight and Nene makes our bench not look like complete ass

I like this idea. We really need a shot creator off the bench and nene is our second best shot creator.

[tontoz]

Wow i just noticed that we outrebounded them by 19. The Nets had 30 total. Booker and Gortat combined for 23.

Even Seraphin had 5.

[stevemcqueen1]

We should get two wins for that one. Had to beat the refs too.

[fishercob]

BROOOOOOOOOKLYYYYYYYYYYYYN.

Best game of the year. These guys are fun to watch when they're all healthy!

Nothing like sweeping New York to right the ship.

[causticcretin]

It's good to have a win, but I'd be a hypocrite to complain about Garnett never setting a clean pick in his career and other blatant no-calls that impact a game to not say what we all saw:

As awesome as the block was in realtime, the replay shows Wall doing the veteran defender move - go up for the block with the right hand and put your other on the offensive player's hip/shorts and pull down...

Classic Bruce Bowen move.

We see those instances all the time, but generally its Washington on the short end of it so I'll take it for Karma's sake.

A win is a win.

[dandridge 10]

Love Beal's confidence. The kid has balls.

I don't buy Wall late game meltdowns are caused by fatigue. Temple gave him a decent amount of rest tonight. I just think that Wall presses too much as the games get tight. I don't know if its him knowing that he is the max player and must produce or not, but he just doesn't seem to handle pressure moments well at this point in his career. However, he is still young and most importantly, still improving. His jump shot is much better than last year and his 3 point shot has dramatically improved. He will continue to learn and improve.

For now, Beal seems to be our clutch player.

[CntOutSmrtCrazy]

Save the 6 TOs, Wall can still put up a pretty appealing stat line even when completely sucking in the fourth.

21 points (8-17, 3-4 from deep), 6 assists, 4 rebounds, 1 steal, and 1 block... if he can just figure out a better approach to fourth quarters, he'd be fine.

As for the game, awesome to get consecutive road wins for the first time this season, they couldn't have come at a better time. Other than the mentioned Wall 4th quarter struggles I liked what I saw from the squad. Seven players in double figures, Gortat and Booker with 10+ rebounds each (we out rebounded them by 20), another solid night from beyond the arc and the line, the bench with 45 points, Beal with another big shot, Kevin playing solid, and Beal and Nene playing less than 30 minutes each (29 and 23 respectively). Lots to take from this game, all with the refs being craptastic. Need to cut down on the TO's overall (though, quite a few were horrible offensive foul calls by the aforementioned refs) and still need to work better at keeping leads.

Hope they can get another in Boston, but they need to be careful, the Cs are scrappy. Odd 1 p.m. game-time for a Saturday, that's like a playoff start. Anyone know what up with that?

[dandridge 10]

Dang, we outrebounded the Nets by 20? Didn't realize that we did that well on the boards. From stats alone, looks like we won because we rebounded, hit 3 pointers, and got to the line.

[dandridge 10]

Btw, as bad as Wall played on the offensive end in the 4th quarter, he was pretty stellar on the defensive end. Not only were his steal and block big in the last 2 minutes, but he played pretty tough D on Williams all game.

[hands11]

113 pts

Nice

How about that bench.

Temple, Webster, Kevin, Nene

And that's not even including Otto who is just getting started. Or Ves. Or Glen. Or Singleton.

Bench looks better when the team is healthy.

51 rebounds.

[tontoz]

Wall has 19 turnovers in the last 3 games. He needs to clean that up. He jumps to pass too often. Like seeing his commitment to shooting 3s though.

Gortat is 11-35 in the last 3 games.

[Illmatic21]

Love Beal's confidence. The kid has balls.

I don't buy Wall late game meltdowns are caused by fatigue. Temple gave him a decent amount of rest tonight. I just think that Wall presses too much as the games get tight. I don't know if its him knowing that he is the max player and must produce or not, but he just doesn't seem to handle pressure moments well at this point in his career. However, he is still young and most importantly, still improving. His jump shot is much better than last year and his 3 point shot has dramatically improved. He will continue to learn and improve.

For now, Beal seems to be our clutch player.

Yeah it's not fatigue, it's a mental thing.

He needs to realize that he can still be a great player even if isn't a "Mr 4th quarter" type guy. Just focus on making the right play consistently and your team will come out on top more often than not.

[queridiculo]

Here's the thing about John Wall that seemingly gets lost in all of the criticism. The kid is 23 years old!

He came into the league with what was pretty much a completely broken jumper and then battled injuries and had to play in a strike shortened season.

Heading into the 2013/14 season he's essentially played two seasons worth of games.

If you ask me he's living up to the expectations of a number one pick and then some.

He makes everybody on this team better, and is really coming into his own on the defensive end.

Clutch, unclutch, whatever, the kid can freaking play. With a completely healthy Nene this team would be sitting at 14-15 wins right now.

Btw, major kudos to Wittman finding a way to match starters with bench players in the second quarter to give Wall some rest. He still played 38 minutes, but he was far fresher than Deron Williams who was out there for 42 minutes.

Also, major credit to Booker. Poor shooting/finishing tonight, but he just killed the Nets getting one offensive rebound after another. 9 freaking offensive rebounds? That's outstanding.

Props to Seraphin as well. Took only 6 shots in 19 minutes making 3, and got to the line 5 times making 4. That's a pretty damn efficient night for him, especially when you throw in his 5 rebounds.

All around great effort despite a poor shooting night.

[long suffrin' boulez fan]

We should get two wins for that one. Had to beat the refs too.

Refs had dog breath tonight. Just terrible. But really impressive that Bullets fought through it.

When Booker and Temple play as well as they did tonight, we're pretty good.

Loved being up mid 4th while having reasonably low minutes on our players.

[hands11]

11-13

Hanging in there.

at Boston next.

3-0 run ? Stay tuned.

Going to be a fun game. Sully is good. So is Green. Bradely. Kelly O Return of Big Balls Crawford

Going to be an interesting match up.

[tontoz]

Seraphin with 5 rebounds and 5 foul shots in 19 minutes? He has only taken 5 or more foul shots twice in his whole career.

[fishercob]

Wall destroyed Deron Williams. Emasculated him.

[payitforward]

What a nice win! And I'm especially delighted we took the wind out of Brooklyn's sails -- they probably thought they were turning their season around! Not tonight.

What a game Trevor Booker had -- 9 offensive rebounds in 24 minutes! Wow. In fact, it was our offensive rebounding that won us the game: 14 more of them than the Nets, and 14 more shots on basket as a result.

Nice to see a positive outing from Seraphin too -- one of only a very few this year, and it came at a great time!

[hands11]

Wall destroyed Deron Williams. Emasculated him.

5-13 and 13 assists 3 steals.

Emasculated ?

Just glad we won. Nice sweep of NY and BRK and their expensive losing teams.

[queridiculo]

11-13
]
Going to be a fun game. Sully is good. So is Green. Bradely. Kelly O

Going to be an interesting match up.

Washington should beat Bosto handily, that Celtics front court is completely overmatched going up against this group with a somewhat rested Nene.

A loss would be a major disappointment.