After warning the rookies that they needed to “bring your voices” and handing out the hard hat for the second time in six days of training camp to John Wall, Wizards head coach Flip Saunders appeared rather content with what he’s achieved so far on Wednesday evening, two days before the first preseason game on Friday against Philadelphia and 12 days before Washington opens the regular season against New Jersey.
“I think we made pretty good progress,” Saunders said. “I think the guys are in relatively pretty good shape and have picked things up, continue to play with a great amount of energy and aggressiveness.”
Where Saunders hasn’t spent a lot of time worrying has been around the continued uncertain status of the free agents the Wizards said they were gauging interest in as soon as the lockout gag order was lifted: Nick Young, Mo Evans and Josh Howard.
Young is the first domino of the three, the guy that the Wizards cultivated and want back the most, and the one for whom there is already a one-year, $3.7 million qualifying offer waiting. With every day that passes, it becomes clearer than Young may have to take that offer or whatever long-term deal the Wizards replace it with. The leverage is dwindling. The chance to join the Chicago Bulls was lost on Wednesday when they signed Richard Hamilton.
In the pecking order of available shooting guards, Young is still behind Jamal Crawford and others, but it seems unlikely that any team would present Young an offer sheet that the Wizards couldn’t match and still come in underneath the salary cap of $58 million. That also doesn’t exactly change with Evans or Howard either.
Which begs the question, if the Wizards are intent on bringing either Evans or Howard back, why haven’t they? Certainly there shouldn’t be any need to wait for Young.
There is the question of depth at small forward, however, which the Wizards all of a sudden have with the addition of Chris Singleton and Jan Vesely, who both have played plenty of in that role thus far in camp, along with presumed starter Rashard Lewis and second-year player Trevor Booker, who is back in full practice after a thigh injury suffered in Israel. You want options for guarding the three? The Wizards have them, along with Roger Mason Jr. and Jordan Crawford, who make it pretty easy to forget about the need for one more shooting guard/small forward.
But the need is there, and Evans, for one, proved last year he can fill it. There’s a similar need with the now Chris Paul-ified Los Angeles Clippers. Howard’s interest in Washington has also been portrayed as a fallback position.
The Wizards are clearly invested in the long-term. With one eye on next summer, the other is relishing what is going on inside Verizon Center, where words like “athletic” and “long” are getting bandied about with increasing frequency.
“What you hope you have the ability to put more pressure on the ball because you’re long and cover more, protect the rim more,” Saunders said. “The thing I think I’ve been impressed with is some of our newer guys, Singleton, Vesely, [Ronny] Turiaf, their ability to contain people off the bounce and not give up penetration. I think that’s been a key, long, athletic, cover for mistakes, next steps is when you play against somebody that you don’t know exactly what they’re going to do , and they don’t know exactly what you’re going to do and how you react to that.”
In the meantime, the Wizards and Young continue to play their game of chicken, both prepared to spin the outcome as a victory. Young will trumpet next summer’s free agency should he settle for the QO, and the Wizards will say they’re ready to commit long-term to Young if they’re forced to match. Either way, the team’s free agent targets are falling further behind the rest of the roster by the day.
“Anyone that comes in is going to be behind,” Saunders said. “No matter who you are, you can’t be in a situation where you’ve missed four practices, and come in and you haven’t played organized basketball, really, in almost 10 months, and be able to step right in and compete at the level that some of these guys are. That’s the negative about guys that don’t get here. The positive is that we do have guys that are here, and I think that we feel comfortable with the guys that we have here, that they’re going to be able to step in. It’s not like we’re taking a big, big step back. What you do is you hurt your depth.”
