The post-All-Star-break, post-apocalyptic-trade Wizards have settled in, and that doesn’t appear to be a good thing.
On Sunday, Washington took the 2008 NBA champions nearly to the wire – if that’s what you can call 41 of 48 minutes – before folding. Tonight, the Wizards didn’t unfold until it was too late in their loss to the Rockets. (boxscore)
“You think we would start the game the same way, and then to come out here and lay an egg, it’s frustrating, disappointing,” said Al Thorton.
Without trying to break the game down too much, a couple ideas jump out:
If there’s one player on the rise, it’s Shaun Livingston. With the Wizards down, 56-42, early in the third, head coach Flip Saunders officially abandoned Randy Foye and Earl Boykins. Neither played again while Livingston orchestrated a so-called comeback, with 4 points, 5 assists in 20 minutes of playing time, his most with the Wizards and second-most this season.
“I thought he did some good things,” said Saunders. “He got us into an offense. It was the best flow we had in the game during the end of the fourth quarter. It’s the first time he’s played extended minutes. We will see how he reacts tomorrow with his leg, and we will see what we do as far as Thursday.”
I’m not sure how we are supposed to feel about Andray Blatche anymore. In this new Wizards world, his 18 points and 8 rebounds certainly weren’t gawd-awful. But with 9 for 22 shooting and 5 turnovers, there’s still something significant missing, especially when he didn’t play down the stretch and wasn’t involved as the Wizards tried to make a comeback. And his over the shoulder pass straight into the first row in the third quarter was easily the one of the worst plays of the night. Actually, Blatche, Thornton and Livingston botching a fourth-quarter fast break might have been just as bad.
“Coach said it to me on the bench, it was like quicksand,” said Blatche. “I was just trying to fight harder and harder, and made it worse and worse for me. A bad shooting game for me.”
And, about Nick Young’s 18 points, which was more than he’d scored in his last five games. They came during the comeback. But was that really a comeback? Was the result ever in doubt?
The energy is gone, but the Wizards are about to embark on their toughest stretch of the season, with five games in six nights starting Thursday. Here’s how well they’re playing going in: they’ve now gone five straight games without reaching 90 points.
“I’m not going to say energy is more of the struggle with the offense,” said James Singleton. “It’s more mental. You got to go out there with mental toughness, and sometimes we just don’t have it. When the trade happened, came in here, and everybody was on a positive note, and then I guess a couple games after that everybody started to sink down again. I’m going to try to keep the spirit of the locker room up, keep everybody going. Like, even though we might not make the playoffs, I don’t want nobody to think that the season is over already.”
The only way you can tell right now is by looking at the Wizards record. 21 wins and 40 losses equals 61 games. There are 21 still to play.
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