The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc

[Going Commando]

We weren't getting inside shots, I don't know if its because of Cleveland's defense or because we weren't in our offense, but we made that first three and got too dependent on it. Maybe that's what happens when you focus all offseason on bringing in "spot up shooter".

Well we were getting a lot of open threes. Most were good shots. The ball was moving and Cleveland was doing a horrible job rotating to the ball for most of the game.

The shooters just missed the damn things, plus you had silliness like Booker being the one spotting up.

Also we had to settle for a lot of threes from burning the shot clock and then we started jacking threes at the end of the game to try and pull off a miracle. The PG play was subpar tonight. It was on the wings and bigs to keep the ball moving, and for the most part, I thought they did a pretty good job here.

[chipwhich]

That was before he decided no stars wanted to play here and gave up. Back when he showed up with a suitcase full of money and stole arenas. Now he settles and apologizes to players for bringing them here. He's become pathetic and his continued employment insults me as a wizards fan.

I have been following this pathetic franchise since the late 70's. Nothing has changed.

I am insulted too.

[Going Commando]

It's pretty crazy watching the Lakers and Mavericks shoot. We look like a college team in comparison. There is just a dearth of offensive talent on our team. Not enough shooters, not enough ability to create space with a dribble or two and get off a shot.

[Hersh]

There is just a dearth of offensive talent on our team. Not enough shooters, not enough ability to create space with a dribble or two and get off a shot.

Everyone knew this going into last season. Did anyone think we had upgraded offensively that much this last off-season?

[Skin'emAlive]

Chip... man i swear like 70% of your posts on this thread are " i have watched this franchise since the 70's " or " for 30+ years " or " Ernie gave us a playoff team for the first time in so many years...". Man, Its been like the same people on this board for years now... We know. haha.. And yes, nothing has changed. Though, i think most of us knew that this team would be no different until the FO changes. And with Wall and Nene out for an extended period of time... the team is probably doomed.

[Destino]

From what I've heard Nene, Wall, and Seraphin should all be back by late November. That only what 12 games? Seraphin and Nene will hopefully be back sooner. This team should be a lot more fun to watch if they bet back to full strength. I mean just ask yourself when the last time most of the starters were proven nba quality veterans?

Wall has never played with a group of guys that aren't trying to prove they belong in the league.

... As I type this d Howard fouls out. Lakerland gonna be angry.

Edited October 31, 2012 by Destino

[Going Commando]

Everyone knew this going into last season. Did anyone think we had upgraded offensively that much this last off-season?

It'll look better when Wall and Nene and Seraphin get back.

Wall is basically 9/10ths of our dribble penetration and he can finish and get to the line.

Nene is one of the only guys with a mid range game and he's elite finishing around the rim. He's got great hands and a nice back to the basket game so he can create shots for himself if you get him the ball in his spots.

And Seraphin is one of the few guys with an elite go to offensive weapon with that nasty hook.

We're really going to feel the loss of those specific shots.

[StillUnknown]

From what I've heard Nene, Wall, and Seraphin should all be back by late November. That only what 12 games? Seraphin and Nene will hopefully be back sooner. This team should be a lot more fun to watch if they bet back to full strength. I mean just ask yourself when the last time most of the starters were proven nba quality veterans?

Wall has never played with a group of guys that aren't trying to prove they belong in the league.

Last time our roster had that many proven nba starters were the pre-gun Gilbert days.

Just a feeling, but I'm not expecting Wall back until January.

[Destino]

Last time our roster had that many proven nba starters were the pre-gun Gilbert days.

Just a feeling, but I'm not expecting Wall back until January.

I think Wall's injury is well understood. Nene's situation concerns me more. If it doesn't fully clear up it will linger all year and any pause in the game, be it a TV timeout or rest, will trigger the pain in his foot.

[StillUnknown]

I think Wall's injury is well understood. Nene's situation concerns me more. If it doesn't fully clear up it will linger all year and any pause in the game, be it a TV timeout or rest, will trigger the pain in his foot.

That's why his injury is so tough, it will be on and off all season. That messes up the chemistry and flow of the team. It would almost be better if he a had a simple broken bone and we knew what the recovery time would be. Hard to predict plantar fasciitis.

Gotta wonder if he would be healthy now if he chose to sit out of the Olympics.

[RonArtest15]

Kyrie Irving is a damn good player. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he averages around 25ppg this season. He can score from anywhere on the floor and at a high % as well. Scoring-wise, I'm going to say that he has the potential to be more dangerous than a fully-healthy Derrick Rose.

That being said, I don't see him as a better PURE PG than John Wall. I know people are hung up on the Wall/Irving debate, but truthfully, they are two ENTIRELY different players. Irving doesn't have as much responsibility (as Wall) as far as facilitating the offense and being the primary ball-handler. It's not a knock on Irving, but both guys bring two different skill sets to their respective teams.

[pjfootballer]

What pissed me off was the last 5 minutes. We were winning the battle in the paint all game long and I think Webster scored a backdown finger roll around the 4:40 mark and then.....Nothing. Nobody going to the block, nobody trying to establish anything inside. Nothing but jumpers. We've been a team that has done nothing but rely on jump shots for the last...I don't know....5 years and guess what? We STINK at jumpers. We do not have one reliable guy to knock down jumpers. So when you aren't hitting your jumpers, get the damn ball inside and at worst, get to the line.

[Rocky21]

OK. Here's what I got.

Barron was fantastic. Active on the glass, moving well without the ball and playing defense.

That ****ing Varejao. We always make him look like an all star. I’ll be glad when he retires.

I can’t believe some of you guys are down on Beal. He is the youngest player to ever start a game in this franchise’s history and it was his first professional basketball game! You don’t think a little time is in order before you start hating on the guy?

That being said - Not gonna beat a lot of teams with Wall and Nene hurt and wearing street clothes.

[Sticksboi05]

Even with Wall and Nene, the fact is Grunfeld sucks, and he along with the medical staff should've been fired the moment Leonsis took over as owner. As long as Grunfeld is GM this franchise will remain irrelevant.

[Going Commando]

Kyrie Irving is a damn good player. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he averages around 25ppg this season. He can score from anywhere on the floor and at a high % as well. Scoring-wise, I'm going to say that he has the potential to be more dangerous than a fully-healthy Derrick Rose.

That being said, I don't see him as a better PURE PG than John Wall. I know people are hung up on the Wall/Irving debate, but truthfully, they are two ENTIRELY different players. Irving doesn't have as much responsibility (as Wall) as far as facilitating the offense and being the primary ball-handler. It's not a knock on Irving, but both guys bring two different skill sets to their respective teams.

They are extremely different. Irving is almost more of a 2 guard truth be told. His team absolutely relies on him for scoring, not passing. Good lord, Anderson Varajao can run point .

The Wizards and Cavs will always use Irving and Wall in entirely different ways throughout their career too. If they're smart that is. Don't put a square peg into a round hole in trying to make Kyrie a passer Cleveland, and don't do the same to Wall by trying to make him a slow it down, half court jump shooting guard.

Physically, I see a lot more similarity between CP3 and Irving than Rose and Irving RA15. Not as strong as CP3 is, but about the same height, and has that similar level of quickness. His scoring array is also really similar to CP3's. CP3 is world's better as a passer and defender and rebounder though. Rose is more physically similar to the John Wall/Russell Westbrook type and his game is a little more inside dominant than Kyrie's, plus he too is a lot better passer than Kyrie.

Kyrie is going to be an amazing scorer his whole career. But I wonder about pairing him with Waiters. I think they should have found more of a facilitator to play in the back court with him. Maybe they can get that at the 3 instead.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Once, I want the Wizards to luck out and draft a stud wing/perimeter type player who can slash, drive, and make plays off the dribble.

The bizarre thing is that is the easiest player in the world to get.

[RonArtest15]

They are extremely different. Irving is almost more of a 2 guard truth be told. His team absolutely relies on him for scoring, not passing. Good lord, Anderson Varajao can run point .

The Wizards and Cavs will always use Irving and Wall in entirely different ways throughout their career too. If they're smart that is. Don't put a square peg into a round hole in trying to make Kyrie a passer Cleveland, and don't do the same to Wall by trying to make him a slow it down, half court jump shooting guard.

Physically, I see a lot more similarity between CP3 and Irving than Rose and Irving RA15. Not as strong as CP3 is, but about the same height, and has that similar level of quickness. His scoring array is also really similar to CP3's. CP3 is world's better as a passer and defender and rebounder though. Rose is more physically similar to the John Wall/Russell Westbrook type and his game is a little more inside dominant than Kyrie's, plus he too is a lot better passer than Kyrie.

Kyrie is going to be an amazing scorer his whole career. But I wonder about pairing him with Waiters. I think they should have found more of a facilitator to play in the back court with him. Maybe they can get that at the 3 instead.

Exactly - and this is what kills me when people get caught up in the scoring that Irving does and say thing like "I'd trade Wall right now for him." They are two COMPLETELY different players. Irving can get buckets - with ease. However, he's not even in the same stratosphere as Wall as far as playmaking is concerned. He has way less responsibility with the ball in his hands than John Wall does. ****, if Irving was here, people would probably be ready to run him out of town for not being as good of a "true" PG as some other guys around the league. When Cleveland gets more pieces, it will be interesting to see how Irving develops as a PG. Right now, I see him mostly as a scoring guard. IMO, I think he compares favorably to Derrick Rose in the scoring department, but I'm not seeing him be on the level of a CP3 in terms of how he'd run an offense. Also, Irving doesn't play a lick of defense. He's only 20, and will get much better as the years go by. He's fun to watch.

[Going Commando]

Exactly - and this is what kills me when people get caught up in the scoring that Irving does and say thing like "I'd trade Wall right now for him." They are two COMPLETELY different players. Irving can get buckets - with ease. However, he's not even in the same stratosphere as Wall as far as playmaking is concerned. He has way less responsibility with the ball in his hands than John Wall does. ****, if Irving was here, people would probably be ready to run him out of town for not being as good of a "true" PG as some other guys around the league. When Cleveland gets more pieces, it will be interesting to see how Irving develops as a PG. Right now, I see him mostly as a scoring guard. IMO, I think he compares favorably to Derrick Rose in the scoring department, but I'm not seeing him be on the level of a CP3 in terms of how he'd run an offense. Also, Irving doesn't play a lick of defense. He's only 20, and will get much better as the years go by. He's fun to watch.

I see Kyrie's defense as more of an issue than his passing personally.

I don't mind a scoring PG because I think they can be a huge threat on offense. Tony Parker is really a scorer at heart and the Spurs never have trouble getting a ton of movement. The Bulls move the ball well, and while Rose is actually a pretty good facilitator for their offense, passing is not his forte. But the Bulls tailored their offense to him to make him effective with the types of passes and decisions he is asked to make and he actually has a really nice pure point rating because of it, even though the burden of scoring is still on him.

I see what you mean about CP3 and Kyrie being different in the way they run their offense. I was more talking about their just raw scoring skills. They've got similar inside/outside tools. CP3 is much more of a passer though, and he'll be the type to spend most of the game taking very few shots, get his teammates involved, and then taking over at the end of games as a scorer. I don't know if Kyrie could do that. But I do know he doesn't have the luxury of trying to do that. His team needs him to score a ton of buckets and take a lot of shots.

Kyrie is already a mavelous scorer and he's going to be a really good player. But he has got to improve defensively. I seriously think it's an issue of not caring. He doesn't fight through screens, he's not cognizant with his rotations, he takes dumb gambles for turnovers now and then but will get burned from it. In general, it looks like he just puts no effort into that side of the court. For him to be a top tier player, he needs to at least be competent and take pride in his defense. The dude has a huge basketball IQ judging from his offensive play, and he understands how scorers operate. He should be better.

[Destino]

Mike Prada, from BulletsForever.com, on Bradley Beal's first game

But a lot of this is on Beal too. He had two chances to go by Waiters and get to the rim on high pick and rolls, and Waiters stripped him both times. He did a lot of standing around in half-court sets instead of running into open space, and while the Wizards' current point guards aren't exactly adept at finding open guys, Beal could have done more to make their lives easier. Beal's defense on Waiters was also very bad, with lots of poor angles on pick and roll coverage and on closeouts, and that has nothing to do with how Wittman uses him.

It's just a bit disheartening because this was the knock on Beal in college. He has such a smooth game that he sometimes fades back when someone comes back at him. That has to change in the NBA, because nobody is going to do him any favors.

And with John Wall and Nene sidelined, there's no better time to go all out than right now.

Thomas Pruit weighs in on game 1

The Wizards' 26 assists on 32 made field goals in last night's 94-84 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers can be interpreted in a few ways. On the one hand, good ball movement is a sign that a team is "playing the right way" and getting as many points as possible off of high-percentage shots and extra passes. At the same time, the team's poor offensive performance in spite of that great ball movement (84 points off of 90 shots and 35 percent shooting from the field) speaks volumes about how bad the Wizards were at creating off of the dribble and attacking Cleveland in one-on-one matchups.

This, of course, is where the Wizards miss their injured players. John Wall, the team's best playmaker, is out for a month. Nene, one of the best passing big men in the league, is day to day. Kevin Seraphin, an emerging post threat who made 47 percent of his shots from 3 to 9 feet last year, is battling a calf injury. In short, Washington has no one to turn to when the offense breaks down right now, forcing players like Trevor Booker and Emeka Okafor to step out of their comfort zones and take the kinds of difficult shots they normally don't attempt.

[Thinking Skins]

Well we were getting a lot of open threes. Most were good shots. The ball was moving and Cleveland was doing a horrible job rotating to the ball for most of the game.

The shooters just missed the damn things, plus you had silliness like Booker being the one spotting up.

Also we had to settle for a lot of threes from burning the shot clock and then we started jacking threes at the end of the game to try and pull off a miracle. The PG play was subpar tonight. It was on the wings and bigs to keep the ball moving, and for the most part, I thought they did a pretty good job here.

I don't know if I agree with this line of thinking. The purpose of having an offense installed is so that we can get a lot of high percentage shots, and when over a third of our shots are going for three pointers, those are not high quality shots, I don't care if you've got Steve Kerr and Marc Price back there, let alone the guys we've got. The ball was getting passed around, but rarely going inside and what was annoying was that its like the offense was designed to look for the open three. There was no penetration until Crawford finally started driving it inside in the third (which led to our run). The threes at the end of the game are understandable to an extent (if you're talking 5 minutes left when it was still close then nah, I disagree), but once it started getting out of hand (under a minute) I was like whatever, its not likely that we'll get an 8 points in 10 seconds run type thing so whatever. But we weren't getting fouled (neither team was in the penalty in any quarter) and we only had 9 free throws by our guards, compared to 13 for Cleveland. Price took 9 of his 13 shots from 3 point range. And only made 2 of them. Beal, Ariza and Webster took half their shots from there. Its just not a formula for success. Its what a team like the Magic did and is that what we're striving to become? And at least they had three point shooters. Heck, if that was the gameplan, why not play Martin? He's the best three point shooter on the team.

[Destino]

No one at ESPN picks Beal as Rookie of the year

Results: Anthony Davis (20 votes), Damian Lillard (11), Andre Drummond (2), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (1), Jared Sullinger (1).

I'll go insane if Drummond ends up being that good.

[BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93]

damn...not one pick.

And it seemed like everyone employed by ESPN had a vote

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

I'll go insane if Drummond ends up being that good.

he had a really good preseason too.

[Going Commando]

No one at ESPN picks Beal as Rookie of the year

Results: Anthony Davis (20 votes), Damian Lillard (11), Andre Drummond (2), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (1), Jared Sullinger (1).

I'll go insane if Drummond ends up being that good.

Davis is going to win it. I'm shocked anyone would pick anyone else. Lillard? Really?

Drummond isn't going to win it and it'll be a while before he's dominant, if ever.

Chuck likes Beal. That good enough for you?

---------- Post added October-31st-2012 at 09:06 PM ----------

I don't know if I agree with this line of thinking. The purpose of having an offense installed is so that we can get a lot of high percentage shots, and when over a third of our shots are going for three pointers, those are not high quality shots, I don't care if you've got Steve Kerr and Marc Price back there, let alone the guys we've got. The ball was getting passed around, but rarely going inside and what was annoying was that its like the offense was designed to look for the open three. There was no penetration until Crawford finally started driving it inside in the third (which led to our run). The threes at the end of the game are understandable to an extent (if you're talking 5 minutes left when it was still close then nah, I disagree), but once it started getting out of hand (under a minute) I was like whatever, its not likely that we'll get an 8 points in 10 seconds run type thing so whatever. But we weren't getting fouled (neither team was in the penalty in any quarter) and we only had 9 free throws by our guards, compared to 13 for Cleveland. Price took 9 of his 13 shots from 3 point range. And only made 2 of them. Beal, Ariza and Webster took half their shots from there. Its just not a formula for success. Its what a team like the Magic did and is that what we're striving to become? And at least they had three point shooters. Heck, if that was the gameplan, why not play Martin? He's the best three point shooter on the team.

I agree with you. Taking so many threes with weak three ball shooters is definitely a problem.

But taking open threes is not a bad shot. It's a really efficient shot, and in fact, the corner three is the most efficient shot in the NBA game.

Our problem wasn't that we were settling for open 3s IMO. The problem was that we weren't good enough to make them like a real NBA team should.

Working the ball inside is going to be difficult for this team without Nene and Seraphin to finish those shots and Wall to make those passes.

It's such a difference in quality of shooting watching us versus almost every other NBA team. We don't make open shots, we look like a college team.

I think we'll be a good defensive team and have pretty good ball movement. I think we'll struggle to make shots and rebound, and as such, we're going to lose a lot of games where we actually play well enough to win.

---------- Post added October-31st-2012 at 09:45 PM ----------

Kawhi Leonard is just killing it. Such an energetic player. In retrospect, San Antonio got him for a song. Gary Neal (which then allowed Dallas to get Darren Collison for a song).

You know, is there any way we could have beaten that offer? We had the 18th pick, it really shouldn't have been that hard IMO.

Kawhi Leonard is now basically what we're hoping Singleton will eventually be. Then again Leonard might be garbage too if he played for us instead of the Spurs.

What have the expectations for Singleton become? When he got him I was excited. I was hoping he'd be a LeBron guarder who was fast enough to guard little guards and strong and long and aggressive enough to guard big forwards.

He's been the most disappointing draft pick of the past three years for me.

[Destino]

Explain to me how Houston, with a **** roster featuring Lin as their best player (lol) gets Harden to sign long term but Grunfeld is telling us no one wants to come here? I swear everyday I hate that ****ing **** a little ****ing more.