Wizards head coach Flip Saunders was in epic form on Friday, unleashing a treasure trove of great insight on the Wizards and philosophy with the players heading into his third season in Washington after essentially keeping mum since the end of last season. Yes, he wants to make the playoff, but we’ll let him speak from here. His best answers are ranked, from one asterisk to three:
*Will the lockout hurt or help a young team like the Wizards? “It’s interesting, because you can have an argument for whatever you want to. Veteran teams are going to say that the shortened training camp and the shortened season is a benefit to them because they’ve been together playing, young athletic teams are going to say that the advantage they have is that they’re young and athletic and they have a quicker recovery time.
“Whatever you have, you can make an argument for making that a positive. What it comes down to is that you’re going to have to have a blend of both. There’s going to be times with the shortened season when you’re going to have to utilize the ability to recuperate quickly, which is good for younger athletic teams. But in close games, veteran teams tend to win close games. It makes for an interesting season.
“It’s not like the season where we had 50 games. When you have 66, I think you do have a truer measurement. It’s not quite 82, but it’s definitely better than 60 or 50, that’s for sure.”
What’s your best recollection of the 1999 lockout-shortened season? “My best recollection was the quickness, and how the dynamics of how our team really changed in Minnesota. We were really good out of the blocks, and how quick the trading deadline came. Because of the new CBA we ended up having to trade [Stephon] Marbury, a similar situation of what’s going on with some of the players wanting to move from team to team, and so what happens is that we ended up trading him, and we had a shorted season already, so when you trade him, you only have maybe 20 games left and that 20 games is 50 percent of your season.
“It takes time to get your team back together. The rrading deadline can really have an effect on your team. As a team and an organization, we want to carry through with how we played at the end of last year. We were extremely competitive and very good the last three weeks of the season. It would change some of the things we did at the end of the year when we brought in some of the CBA [NBDL] guys. We want to have a continuation of that. We talked a lot this summer, not knowing what was going to happen, that we would pare down some things.”
*On having so many small forwards: “I look at what position you are by what you can guard, and the guys that we have can guard multiple positions. [Chris] Singleton can guard 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, [Jan] Vesely and [Trevor] Booker can guard different positions. So we don’t have anyone where you can say this is the only position he can guard. We have a lot of flexibility up front. We don’t have a lot of duplicate players. They don’t share the same strengths and weaknesses. As a group they’ll complement each other, and I think that a lot of times they can play together.”
**On John Wall: “He really worked a lot at the end of the year with [assistant coaches] Sam [Cassell] and Ryan [Saunders] before the lockout. His shot improved drastically at that time. I think John, coming in, found it was a lot harder than he thought. He knew he was going to play against great players, but not every night. It’s like an all-star point guard every night, playing against a dominant player. I think that really helped him prepare as far as his focus as far as how hard he worked and the things he did this summer.
“There’s no question he’s got to get better as far as taking care of the basketball. A lot of his turnovers were kind of unforced turnovers, like no one was around him and he got snipered or something and just fell down. He went a little bit too fast sometimes. His maturity, his first year was a great learning experience. He had a great year and I think he’s going to build upon that.
“His success is judged not by his personal success, but by the success of our team. That the thing we stressed to him at the end of the year. I think he stressed that a lot to himself as far as working on the things that he though could make the other guys better.”
***On Andray Blatche: “A lot of people have been very critical of Andray at times, but if you look at him playing in games, he had our best winning percentage when he played. He might not at times have done what you guys wanted him to do or other people, but he was doing things that helped us win as a team.
“He’s had a very good summer. He’s healthy, as healthy as he can be. He’s coming in with the right attitude. I think he’s talked more right now about team success to people than he ever has. As you get older you understand that how you’re valued. You’re judged by how your teams win, not by what you do statistically.
“[Wizards vice president] Tommy [Sheppard] and I went down to visit him right before the lockout when he was in Houston with Josh [Howard]‘s charity event. We had a good talk with him about being a leader. We are young. We have eight guys 23 and under. That’s pretty young. He’s not one of those guys. He’s a veteran player. When you’ve been in the league six years, you don’t have that crutch anymore of saying, ‘I’m a young guy.’ He’s not. I think he understood that people look up to him, and now it’s a point where he has a responsibility not only to himself but to the team and to his contract.
“The one thing KG [Kevin Garnett] always said was when people looked at him, he wanted them to say he lived up to or exceeded his contract. I really believe Andray, how his mind is right now is the most positive it’s been in the time that I’ve been here.”
*On bringing back Nick Young: “Nick was important, as far as what we did, as a team. He’s our best perimeter shooter, consistent shooter, a knock down three-point shooter. I think, as a team, any time you have assets, you always want to try to retain your assets. Because they help you not only with you have, to use them right now, but also the more assets you have, the more flexibility and ability you have to do things with your team down the road.”
*On concerns for rookies facing such a short training camp: “It’s a catch-22 because I don’t have any concerns. I said you can make it whatever you want. I was in the CBA for seven years and our training camps were 14 days. A day prior to the season was when the NBA cut players, so we were trying to get players in. a week before training camp, you’d look at our roster and we probably had five guys on it and were trying to get guys in. and I think sometimes, what a training camp can do for you, especially for these guys is that it becomes so short and so intense that there is no lag time. It will facilitate their improvement, really. There is an advantage of only having a few exhibition games. We really have more concentrated practice time with what we’re doing now than we do, may even over a 22-day training camp… I like the way the training camp is going to be, a shortened training camp and the things we’re going to do because I think it’s going to be more conducive for a young team to really grow in that time.”
**Will players be out of shape? “You’re never in the shape you need to be in, no matter how good a shape you are. No matter how good a shape you are, when a coach gets you, you’re going to say, ‘I’m in about half as good a shape as I should be in.’ That’s how it always is. You have to watch for injuries.”
***What does JaVale McGee have to work on? “Consistency. He has to become more a player of substance than of highlights. He always has his highlights, which he’s going to have because he’s that type of player. But I think he has to continue to be more of substance and growth. But a guy that averages over 10 points, close to 8 rebounds and about 3 blocks a game, he’s putting up numbers and doing that. I believe he made a step last year – we identified a situation [exercise-induced asthma] as far as getting in better shape… From a basketball standpoint, get him to be a better defensive rebounder. He had some trouble against centers who had lower body strength, as far as a strength standpoint and continue to grow as a low post scorer. He’s shown signs of being able to shoot that jump hook and do that more.
”We’re going to eliminate his full-court dribbling, that’s what we are going to do. We’re going to eliminate or he’s going to be sitting with [reporters] at the press table for a while. Because I’ve watched that on film and that’s not good.”
*Who will push McGee as a backup center? “Kevin [Seraphin] has had a great summer and a great fall, playing over in Spain. He’s really, he’s the one player that I’m excited to see him come back and play in camp. He’s coming in camp with more ability of improvement because last year in came in, he didn’t know a lot about the NBA, language was a barrier, everything that he did was new, every day in practice and everything we did, and the competition. Now he’s had a year with us. He had a great run with the France team, going through training camp, going through the Olympic pre-trials qualifying, then going over to Spain and playing and playing at a high level and playing pretty good. He’s going to come in, in the best shape that he’s probably ever been in… So he can play that backup center position. He can push and he does have lower body strength. We’re going to look and see. The free agent list is not great. When you say great, you have those big marquee players. Those players get taken up by other teams, and the guys filter on down. Well, there are not a lot of those guys. Guys who are maybe lower are going to move up a little bit.”
Will your coaching philosophy with this group change? “It’s funny, the lockout team I had, Garnett was 19 or 20 and Marbury was 19… our star players were basically guys who were always in their early 20s. As a team, not many people have had a team as young as ours. Am I going to change? No. I change all the time. But the philosophy is not going to change with how we’re going to play. We’ve got to defend, we’ve got to rebound, we can’t turn the ball over and you’ve got to play team basketball. The biggest adjustment you have, with young teams is playing team basketball. Because with young teams, each player is trying to establish who they are as an individual and that’s going to get them where they want to get. You have to keep on grinding away for them to understand you get individual success through team success. That’s where it really comes. The one positive is, you look at Oklahoma City, it has to be a team you have to look at, because they were very similar to where we were and we’re hoping that we can make that kind of jump they did as quick as they did.”
Are there are concerns about the unknowns caused by the lockout? “I think we have a pretty good handle, as far as where we’re at. I don’t think we have a lot of unknowns. There’s unknowns of how are your rookies going to play. But that’s every year you go into. I don’t think you have a lot of unknowns. That’s one of the positives we do have. If you look around the league, we’re one team that’s coming back with 10, 11 guys on our roster that finished the year, and they are going to be there the first day.”
***On Jordan Crawford “Well, I didn’t know he was as good as MJ [Michael Jordan]. I wasn’t sure of that. I didn’t know that. That’s one thing I didn’t know. But I did know he had a lot of confidence. So I think I have a pretty good handle of where he is and the things that he can do.
“This training camp is going to be really good for him. He’s got a tough spot, because he’s got to play two positions at a high level. He’s such a great scorer. And he has the ability to play the 2. But yet he’s going to have to have the ability to play backup 1 to John and change a little bit how he plays at times when he’s playing that spot. He can’t just go have that same mentality that, ‘I’m going to score every time I touch it,’ like he does sometimes when he’s at the 2. So he’ll have a little bit of an adjustment from the standpoint of just learning, but I think he can do that. I mean, the one thing about Jordan is Jordan’s a player. He loves to play. I like his competitiveness. I heard the situation, what happened this summer with KG, and I’ve seen that many times, believe me, and it doesn’t surprise me. He’s not going to back down from a challenge. We all do know that he has a lot of confidence.”
**On looking for a potential backup point guard for Wall. “I think that we’ll bring in some people, and if they’re good enough to make our team, they can make our team. I don’t think we’re going to be in a situation where we go out. I mean, we feel that we have John, Jordan – he had a triple-double when he took John’s spot in playing him as a point – and we think that Shelvin Mack is going to be a solid guy that can play both positions but has the ability to play the 1. We’re not in a situation where we’ve got to go out and sign a backup because there’s not a lot of minutes there right now. John’s going to play 36, 37 minutes. Jordan’s going to eat up some minutes and then you have Shelvin. So if there’s somebody that’s good that comes along, that we feel is a veteran guy to give us stability then that’s something that we look at. We’re in a situation where we’re working on individual development to get better individually to get better as a team. We’re not going to just short-term also take away that development, to bring in a Band-Aid. That’s not what we’re going to do, either. If someone comes in, they’re going to have to come in with the idea that they’re going to be productive for a team and they’re going to be in a situation where they can help young players that we have, too.”
*On expectations for Rashard Lewis. “I look at Rashard getting back to playing how he was in Seattle and getting back to playing how he played for me when I had him at the Goodwill Games – being able to play small forward, being able to punish people at the small forward spot with his size. I think now that he’s more healthier, where he’s had an opportunity to get his legs back in shape, also be able to go out on the floor, put it on the floor, shoot perimeter, and also be a more diversified player, not a one-dimensional player, and give us leadership. That’s one thing he did do: He gave us more leadership last year than I thought even he could, even when he wasn’t playing. He did give us some good veteran leadership.”
*On what the lockout has taught Saunders about himself. “Every year is a challenge. Has it been different teams? Yeah, we’ve probably had five different teams going into the third year when you look at the roster changing and the trades that were made. What I feel very good about is I feel good about where we’re at. We’ve made changes that put this team in a situation that at some point is going to be able to go and try to win a championship.
“From my standpoint, I’ve always challenged myself, and always prided myself, on the fact of being a team that can become very disciplined and a team that becomes an execution team. So your teams that have the ability to win big are the teams that are athletic but have the ability to play that type of style. That’s going to be the challenge as far as moving forward.
“As a coach, when you have time off, what you learn is the things that you miss. You miss the camaraderie of your players, your staff. Even [the media]. You guys are a lot more fun to be around when we’re winning. From both sides. … But I think it’s those type of things. Because you know what? It gives you a purpose. When you’re not sure as far as when a season is going to start, you don’t always have that purpose. And what happens is your time clock is all messed up. Every morning, you usually don’t need an alarm clock to get up. I know when I get up. The same thing is with the basketball season. When September comes, naturally your body, all of a sudden, your juices start flowing, your adrenaline starts pumping, because you know that camp’s coming in October. Well, all of our systems were all screwed up. October didn’t come. Then November didn’t come. Of course, for us, now December’s coming.”
***More on Nick Young: “Nick is like … JaVale. All those young guys, the young players, the biggest thing is they’re not young players anymore. So they have to show the discipline, maturity. Not only on the floor but off the floor. The cinnamon – that thing doesn’t cut it. And I think that those are things that really have to, as a team, those are things that we have to have. And defense. And you’re judged by not what you do as an individual but what we do as a team. Just the team concept. He had I think the lowest assists, as far as anybody that averaged over 17 points in the league… Those are the things you can’t have. Just to become a more diversified player. And so he’s taken the one step. When I came here, all he had to do was play well, put it on the floor and try to get shots off. We changed it to the point where last year he became the catch-and-shoot type shooter and not always have to put it on the floor all the time. Now we’ve got to have the situation where not always shoot it every time he touches it but he’s also got to make plays for other people.
“He improved defensively. We found out he was a pretty good on the ball defender. Off the ball, he had a tendency to kind of fall asleep at times. We’re finding out where his strengths are. We’ve got to maximize those, and the things that he doesn’t do as well, we’ve got to minimize those and get him better at those things.”
