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The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc


BRAVEONAWARPATH

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I know it's 2 bad teams we beat but it's great to start winning again. BTW I was at the game on Saturday and I just wanna say the atmosphere at games is great. I've been going to Wizards games for 10 years or so, and I think the atmosphere is really getting good even for regular season games. Typically it's only hype for Playoff games.

Edited by GOSKINS_08
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You really seem to dislike Beal lol

Love him, but his inexplicably bad handles frustrate me to death. If he'd just learn to dribble he'd be so damn good and it makes me want to throw things at the tv.

Otto Porter gets a shade under 11 minutes of action tonight.

the real question is why did Seraphin only get 17 minutes? Give the people what they want Wittman!
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Love Beal, but I'm waiting on him to REALLY make a leap in his development. 

 

Aggressiveness going to the hoop

Creating off the dribble

etc.

 

What he does have going for him is his age.  I have to keep reminding myself that he's ONLY 21.  3rd year pro, with a year of college under his belt, and he's STILL the youngest guy on the roster. 

 

No, he's not Klay Thompson, but I'd like to think that by the time Beal is 25 like Thompson, he'll be the 22-25 ppg scorer that we all envisioned.  That's unless he's traded to Sacto by then for Boogie :)

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I think it's important to put Beal's age into context to appreciate how special he actually is. It's really hard to learn to play wing in today's NBA. It takes the good ones a while to get to an AS caliber level. Longer than PGs apparently, where you've seen a lot more guys with early success lately than at SG or SF.

Here is a comparison of the AS wings drafted since 2008 + Beal in their age 21 season. Except it's age 22 for Butler because he was still at Marquette in his age 21 season.

http://bkref.com/tiny/LiTCO

None of them were All Stars in their age 21 season, and Beal is the only one in his third year. His game compares pretty well to any of them in how complete it is, and DeRozan was the only one playing as many minutes and about as big a role for his team as Beal is.

Beal is truthfully one of the only one and done wings to actually end up being any good in a minute. It's pretty surprising that the only one and done wings to make at least one AS appearance since they instituted the age limit for the 2007 draft are Durant and DeRozan. And DeRozan was a 20 year old rookie. Before them the only one and done wings in the past 15 years to make an AS game were Luol Deng, Melo, and Gerald Wallace. LeBron would be another of course, if he had gone to college for a year. As is, he was a 19 year old rookie anyway. Luol Deng didn't make the AS game until his 8th and 9th seasons. Wallace made his first and only AS appearance in his 9th season.

LeBron made the AS game in his second season when he was 20. Durant made it in his third season when he was 21. Melo made it in his fourth season when he was 22. So basically if Beal makes it in his fourth season at age 22, the only one and dones who will have made it quicker are LeBron and Durant.

I think Beal makes it next season. I think the lightbulb has turned on for him the past month regarding the level of aggression and activity he has to play with and the game is slowing down for him bit by bit. I think he's going through a similar phase of development to where Paul George was at the same age in terms of learning to handle the ball and trigger plays for the offense as well as be the volume scorer. Paul George was an AS in his age 22 season and then made a huge leap in his age 23 season. I think that's what we can realistically expect from Beal.

And really, most one and done wings don't end up being good. OJ Mayo, Eric Gordon, and Tyreke Evans ended up being pretty disappointing. Michael Beasley was a huge bust. Xavier Henry hasn't done anything in the NBA. Avery Bradley is good, but a role player who today isn't as good as Beal is. Austin Rivers was a big bust. Josh Selby and Archie Goodwin and Quincy Miller were three hyped up wings that got exposed before the draft and fell pretty far. None of them have done anything in the NBA. MKG is pretty disappointing. Mo Harkless is alright relative to the expectations he had coming in but he's nowhere near as good as Beal. Shabazz Muhammad got exposed before his draft too, and though he's playing pretty well now, he's not nearly as good as Beal either. He's also a year older than Beal despite getting drafted a year later.

Beal is so far ahead of his peers in the NBA that none of them are actually considered his peers. He's also way ahead of most of the other wings that came into the league around him after two or more years of college, like Terrence Ross, Jeremy Lamb, Ben McLemore, Dion Waiters, Jimmer Fredette, Alec Burks, Evan Turner, Wesley Johnson, and Al Farouq-Aminu.

Really the only other young wings out there drafted since 2010 that are good are Paul George, Klay Thompson, Gordon Hayward, Harrison Barnes, Jimmy Butler, and Kawhi Leonard. Those are roughly his peers, along with whoever ends up being good from the 2014 class. All of them except the 2014 draftees are older than Beal too.

I have a theory for why the bust rate on young wings is pretty high and why all but the generational talents like LeBron and Durant take so long to get good: wings have to score and it's hard to score well in the NBA. Wings have to be able to handle and shoot but also play defense and not stop the ball. Most of the guys that get drafted high can either shoot or dribble but not usually do both at a high level. And most struggle on defense. So most have trouble locking down big roles for good teams over more polished vets. Beal was fortunate to get drafted by a team with a great high usage PG that could minimize his weaknesses handling the ball. And fortunate to get drafted by a team where the competition for SG minutes was light. And even still, he wouldn't be the second most important player on a potential 50 win team at age 21 if he didn't come in as a brilliant shooter with a pretty well rounded game. Beal is special and he's in the right situation to get him to reach his potential.

Edited by stevemcqueen1
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Jorge Castillo
‏@jorgeccastillo
NBA announces John Wall will no longer participate in the skills challenge this weekend. Patrick Beverley is taking his place. #Wizards

 

Jorge Castillo
‏@jorgeccastillo
Wall isn’t hurt (beyond the sprained ankle and headaches he’s been dealing with already). He’s not participating just to rest.

 

Jorge Castillo
‏@jorgeccastillo
Beal won’t play tmrw vs. Raptors. Wittman said his toe is inflamed and he’s going to see another doctor for it.

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UnWise Mike's first ESPN piece is on John Wall

 

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12300588/wizards-guard-john-wall-long-uphill-road-raleigh 

 

 

edit: didn't realize the board autocorrects lol

The District of Columbia, in particular, treasures deeply flawed, angry, successful men who show vulnerability. The more authentic, the less homogenized and pre-packaged, the better.

I know he wasnt trying it, but that sounds like an RG3 diss to me, lol.

DC never really embraced dude like that, like it is with Wall.

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I know he wasnt trying it, but that sounds like an RG3 diss to me, lol.

DC never really embraced dude like that, like it is with Wall.

 

There are a couple of parts in the article that come off at jabs at Griff, other than that, it was a decent read.

Edited by StillUnknown
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Good article but it would have been better without the digs at Obama and RGIII. Pretty sure black Redskins fans and democrats like both of them too. The people that don't like Obama and RGIII are going to be white for the most part. The white people who dislike them because of racial stuff probably can't stand Wall.

The fan base does like that Wall wears his heart on his sleeve but that isn't why it embraced him. It was because the team started winning. Way too many fans were trashing Wall before he made that huge leap in March 2013.

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Also, Wall's personal life and past aren't scrutinized like RGIII's is. It's an NBA player for an irrelevant franchise vs a former Heisman Trophy winning NFL QB of one of the highest profile franchises. I read what RGIII says on instagram to some nobody on the front page of ESPN. I didn't know any of that **** about Wall's past in Raleigh and I've seen almost every game of his career.

And I will say this, RGIII's problem isn't that he is too clean cut or "white." If he had John Wall's personality and past he would be crucified!!! And the NBA fan is much more likely to be younger, black, and urban. But if a lot of that stuff about John's past had been common knowledge and been the stuff that defined him in the public mind early in his career, before he established himself and the team had started winning, it would have been problematic for him. People would have listened to and believed the **** that Colin Cowherd spewed about him.

I also think the Wizards' fan base is a different fan base than the Redskins'. Wizards are pretty much a DC team. They get almost no attention down here in Hampton Roads. The Redskins are a VA and Maryland team too, and the fan base is much much whiter, older, and more suburban/rural. There are a lot of redneck Redskins fans down here and it does not matter how RGIII acts, his having black skin means they were ready to turn on him the first time he got hurt or played poorly. Him being very clean cut and "white" in the way he speaks in public is probably the only reason he even got his foot in the door to begin with. And ****ed if these same people would ever in a million years vote for Obama, whether he was black or white, so that's hardly germane to a discussion about the fan bases embracing black sports stars like Wall and RGIII.

So yeah, I think the RGIII and Obama digs are major flaws in Wise's article. He didn't think those parts through. Frankly, I'm absolutely ****ing sick of people taking shots at RGIII's personality and character.

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Good article but it would have been better without the digs at Obama and RGIII. Pretty sure black Redskins fans and democrats like both of them too. The people that don't like Obama and RGIII are going to be white for the most part. The white people who dislike them because of racial stuff probably can't stand Wall.

a lot do not.

Do not agree on Obama, and am not even sure why he was mentioned in the article, but for RG3 it is not true at all.

My barber, and obviously this is anecdotal, we got into a RG3/Cousins argument last season and he kept rattling off that Cousins was better. And he was better for the team. I kept pointing out that Cousins is a turnover machine and the numbers showed that. Finally I asked, "do you not like RG3?"

He admitted that he just did not like RG3 the person. And I get it. He a bamma and too clean.

The fan base does like that Wall wears his heart on his sleeve but that isn't why it embraced him. It was because the team started winning. Way too many fans were trashing Wall before he made that huge leap in March 2013.

This is probably true. WE a front running city. But Wall's roughness makes him more popular than the Nats players or the Capitals players..

Gil had the same thing going as well.

People would have listened to and believed the **** that Colin Cowherd spewed about him.

They did. A lot of former NBA players got on him. Even columnists around the country. They listened and believed it.
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UnWise Mike was just writing what he knows... negative commentary about the Redskins. Seriously, Griff got crucified for responding cordially to some follower lambasting him over singing some MJ, and it was on the front page of ESPN for 2 days? Get the **** out of here with that garbage. Shame on ESPN for bringing any spotlight to that nonsense. 

 

" But seriously folks. Robert Griffin and President Obama are cornball brothers." - ESPN

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wizards-insider/wp/2015/02/11/heres-what-john-wall-thinks-the-wizards-should-do-with-their-open-roster-spot/

 

 

Here’s what John Wall thinks the Wizards should do with their open roster spot

 

 

But what do the Wizards need, exactly? Point guard John Wall, the franchise cornerstone, offered his take Tuesday.

 

“I think somebody, another guy that can create off the bench,” Wall said. “A guy that can create and put the ball on the floor and make plays for others.

 

That’s probably the only thing we’re missing in the second unit. Andre’s [Miller] probably the best player that suits itself for creating and making plays for somebody in the second unit. I think sometimes we just get stagnant.”

 

Edited by BRAVEONAWARPATH
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