Wizards Overtime and Tuesday Tidbits
Hey everyone SportzWiz checking in. I’m going to dive into the game in a moment but I’m going to provide a quick link to our latest Wizards Overtime with Dave and Glenn. In this segment Dave and Glenn discuss Mike James, Dominic McGuire and the Orlando Magic. Click here to take a look.
Onto the game, another tough fourth quarter for the Wizards, but as always there are positives to take away from every loss.
First, we’ll start with the obvious player of the game, Nick Young. Young has been on fire recently and that continued yesterday. He stepped up and became the Wizards go to guy down the stretch scoring 10 points in a row in the fourth. Nick’s play has a lot to do with his confidence and obviously right now that confidence is very high.
Second, another strong effort from Dom McGuire, 10 boards and 5 assists he also did a nice job keeping Richard Jefferson in check limiting him to 8 points on 3 of 9 shooting.
Lastly, we’ve started mentioning Javaris Crittenton’s name a little more and once again he had a solid performance off the bench, he grabbed five rebounds to go along with four assists and four points and had 0 turnovers. Since the new year when his minutes have increased he has a 18 to 6 assist to turnover ratio. Its a small sample but just to give you an idea only 11 guys in the NBA have an assist to turnover ratio over 3. (included in that list are names like Paul, Calderon, Kidd, Bibby, Billups,)
As always I will be heading down to practice soon and I will let you know what I hear.
INTERIM HEAD COACH ED TAPSCOTT
Posted: January 13th, 2009 under Wizards.
Comments
Comment from Rick
Time January 13, 2009 at 12:30 PM
I think that is unfair to Tapscott. He inherited a bad situation/mentality and didn’t have the benefit of the past seasons to implement a system and go through summer league and training camp. I’m not saying that he is doing a stellar job, on the contrary, I think he should be playing the young guys much more and not running Butler and Jamison ragged.
Overall, I think that the coaching this year has failed to maximize the strengths that we do have healthy. The players have also performed extremely disappointingly, but losing so many close games also shows me that we are being out-coached.
Comment from getabigboyoffense
Time January 13, 2009 at 3:16 PM
Tapscott is now quoting Thomas Paine…”These are the times that try men’s souls”…how about
“A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.”
— Gen. John J. Pershing
The troops are demoralized Tap.
Comment from jeffmalone1990
Time January 13, 2009 at 4:36 PM
getabig-lol, good post
Comment from getabigboyoffense
Time January 13, 2009 at 4:57 PM
Has anyone on the Wiz coaching staff taken notice of how McGee forces teams to change their shots. Against the Bucks in the 2ndQ when the Wiz made that nice run, the Bucks missed about 5-6 shots in a row and on each of the shots McGee was in their shooting arc. If he never blocked a shot in another game, his shot changing ability would be worth playing him 25-30 minutes a game. McGee and Blatche are fun to watch when they are on the court together.
Come on Tap, get with it!
Comment from gbkdc
Time January 13, 2009 at 6:43 PM
Did anyone catch Caron’s post-game interview last night? He is putting the team’s needs in front of his own. I just love that guy. What a selfless thing to do.
Comment from jeffmalone1990
Time January 13, 2009 at 6:47 PM
gbkdc-can you recap the interview I missed it
Comment from gbkdc
Time January 13, 2009 at 7:09 PM
He was talking about playing the two instead of where he is more comfortable, which is the three. And how it’s an adjustment, but he is willing to do it if the team needs him to. He is all about the team.
Comment from dcbutler357
Time January 13, 2009 at 7:12 PM
There will be brighter days ahead….this is a big-time city!!
Comment from getabigboyoffense
Time January 13, 2009 at 9:19 PM
As someone who paid top dollar for his seats at the phonebooth in anticipation of Arenas playing in 2008-2009, I am deeply disappointed and annoyed that it now appears that that might not happen.
Season ticket buyers were led to believe that Gil would be back in early December “September , 2008
Gilbert Arenas confirmed Wednesday that he underwent a surgical procedure this morning that “cleaned out some debris” in his left knee and won’t be ready to play for the Wizards until early December.”
It is a fact of life that most season ticket holders don’t plan to attend all of the home games, but will offer their seats for sale for some games in order to help offset the substantial cost of the season ticket plan. Without Arenas, the value of those tickets has dropped dramatically. The projected return of Arenas by December helped to sell those season tickets. If the Wiz knew that he would not return by then, it borders on fraud.
Dr. Marc Connell performed all of the procedures on Gil’s knee. Is this man so incompotent that he could not provide a realistic prognosis for the recovery of the patient from a rather common procedure?
It all goes back to:
“April 5, 2007 – The Washington Wizards point guard had surgery Thursday for a left knee injury that will sideline him for two to three months. Even the most optimistic scenario has him coming back only if his team manages to make the NBA finals without him.”
THEN, the most ridiculous statement of all:
“Arenas, who signed a six-year, $111 million contract this summer, will miss training camp, the preseason and at least the first month of the regular season.”
I feel sorry for Abe. He get screwed by someone he trusted. It would be a real shame if the Wiz got sued for misrepresentation of product because they sold something that they didn’t have to sell…Gilbert Arenas playing for the Washington Wizards.
BTW…where is “the ascot”? He hasn’t been seen at recent Wiz games. DeShawn and Bredan, although injured, are there. Where is the superstar?
Comment from getabigboyoffense
Time January 13, 2009 at 9:25 PM
Even his teammates don’t know what is going on with Arenas. Asked recently about Gilbert’s whereabouts, AJ responded by saying that he thought “that he was somewhere in the Bat cave planning something with Alfred”. Great line AJ.
Comment from getabigboyoffense
Time January 13, 2009 at 9:28 PM
I think that Agent 0 should use some of the $111,000,000.00 that he got from the Wiz to compensate season ticket holders for their investment for 2008-2009.
Comment from lenman
Time January 13, 2009 at 10:18 PM
Folks are all thinking the same things. I was thinking similar thoughts as getabigboroffense the other day but decided not to post because I was trying to stay positive but this Gilbert nonsense is ridiculous. ESPN did a small piece on the Bulls saying that Kirk Heinrich would probably be moved before the trading deadline. We have got to get a quality point guard for the present as well as the future. I can’t see how anyone can realistically believe that Gilbert Arenas will play out his contract or be a player that can lead his team in the future. That sort of planning is like investing in the Lottery for your Retirement.
This group has got to get guard help via trade (if they can unload perhaps Mike James and Juan Dixon) and perimeter shooting which is our achilles heel.
WE DONT NEED TO DRAFT ANYMORE YOUNG BIG GUYS WITH WHAT WE HAVE NOW. THEY WOULD ONLY RIDE THE BENCH AND FURTHER COMPLICATE A SITUATION THIS GROUP IS NOT EQUIPPED TO MANAGE.
Here are what I was thinking concerning the Arenas Saga.
I have been catching up on the blogs this afternoon and I am just getting the gist of Caron Butler’s comments regarding Gilbert Arenas possibly not returning this season. THIS PETURBS ME off on so many levels I don’t know where to begin.
1. When the organization marketed me for renewal of my season tickets in early spring/summer of last year, the party line was that Arenas was going to be healthy, which was later amended to a December return. I would have never invested this amount of money, If I had any idea of the severity of Arenas’s injury and the possibility he would miss the entire year.
If CHARACTER , COMMITTMENT and CONNECTION is the motto of the franchise, why does or did not someone from the franchise update the season ticketholders as to what the hell was going on.
If the franchise did not know the extent of his injury and this was a function of an unforeseen medical situation, then I can see why COMPETENCE was left out of the motto. Why didn’t the Wizards medical staff have a better handle on his injury prior to his contract being signed?
2. Why did you pay premium money for a player of questionable health, who also forced the franchise to pay premium money for a 32 year old Jump Shooting Power Forward? Arenas should have been offered a Fair incentive laden contract and if he went elsewhere se la vi baby?
Management was grossly incompetent and negligent in this situation and outmaneuvered in a major way by Gilbert and Jamison. I’m not mad at them because they looked out for their best interest as they should have.
When you consider the time Gilbert missed, he will be getting paid about 22.5 million a year . If any of us, as either employees or business people, had engineered a deal like this, we would be either unemployed or out of business.
Quite fankly, Gilbert should volunteerly renegotiate his contract (extending the terms), to give the team flexibility to get and keep players. If these young guys develop, there is no way you will have the money to keep them in a couple of years (add in a Lottery Pick as well).
3. Arenas’s medical situation and the teams lack of shooters/perimeter defenders make It imperative that they find help at both guard spots? You got Mike James, Javaris Crittenton and Juan Dixon who could not start on a regular basis for any other team in the league.
This franchise must face the fact that Arenas may never be what he once was or even a close replica of the player he once was.
4. If Arenas is healthy and playing will not do permanent damage, he should play. He played hardball with the franchise when he demanded the club should sign him and Antwain. Additionally, the team needs to know what it has going into next season. It is irrelevant whether the team has won 7 games or 27 games.
Comment from dcbutler357
Time January 14, 2009 at 8:37 AM
Getabig and Lenman,
This is all about $$ on both ends?
Who catches it at the end (rhetorical)?
What a season.
Write a comment
You need to login to post comments!
Comment from TripleDigits
Time January 13, 2009 at 12:05 PM
I’ve been reading this blog recently and I think some are focusing on the pieces and not the whole…Wise teacher once said to parent: “The situation is this, we have an experienced teacher, one of the best in the world teaching your son, and he performed poorly. Then we brought in a substitute teacher, and your son still did not progress…Neither method worked, I’m trying to tell you (insert parent name here) is that it’s not the teacher, it’s your boy.” Moral of the story is, we simply are not performing REGARDLESS of who coaches the Wiz Kidz