On a lighter note to start, Wizards head coach Flip Saunders said the team is “going total AAU basketball after this, games every day.”
After Washington hosts Houston tonight, they’ll have one day to recuperate before playing on three consecutive nights, then departing the next day for a four-game swing out west that includes visits to Utah, Denver, Portland and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Yikes.
With that in mind, the Wizards re-upped Shaun Livingston for another 10-day contract. They need all the bodies they can get.
“In practice he looks good,” said Saunders. “I wanted to play him in Boston. But we played so well early, and by the time I wanted to play him, I thought it was too late to put him in that kind of situation. Hopefully, we’ll get him some time here. We’ve got a lot of games coming up so we’re going to play a lot of people and just kind of look and see where he’s at. But we think he’s got – he’s shown ability in practice. His teams have been very successful. He’s gotten the ball to people. He’s one of the few guys on the team that we have who can make a play out of nothing, make a play for somebody, and we don’t anybody like that.”
Well, the Wizards do have Randy Foye, but as hard as he’s tried, he just hasn’t been consistent and continues to struggle fitting in with how Saunders’ system works. I asked Saunders what the team needs to do better to get into their sets down the stretch, a reference to the haphazard and jittery play two nights ago in Boston.
“Partly, our point guard, Randy, has to get into the offense quicker,” said Saunders. “If he’s pressured, he’s got to beat his man. From that standpoint, if we can’t, we may have to play two point guards or let Mike [Miller] or someone else handle the ball a little bit more and play Randy off the ball if we have to at times. This is also a process where we’re trying to find out where Randy is, if he’s the guy that can play. His natural position has always been the two. At times he’s shown the ability to be able to play the one, and at times, he’s struggled. You just gotta keep working at it to see where he’s going to be.”
Saunders said a decision hasn’t been made on a long-term offer or not for Livingston, but keep in mind that Foye and Earl Boykins are only signed through the end of year. Foye is a restricted free agent this summer with a team option for $4.8 million next year.
Flip did talk after Sunday’s game to Andray Blatche more about his nose-to-nose battle with Kevin Garnett.
“We talked. We screamed, talked, did a little bit of everything,” said Saunders. “… I’m always going to defend my player, but my argument was that you’ve got to be above those type of things because the intensity you saw the last six minutes and the intensity you saw against Milwaukee, that’s what you see in playoffs for 48 minutes so when you’re going to take that next step, you’ve got to understand, that’s how it’s going to be all the time, and you have to be able to withstand those things. It’s a mental game. You never want to let your opponent feels he’s getting the best of you mentally.”
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