Arenas’ ankle sprain keeps him on the bench
On the final play in the first quarter of Sunday’s open scrimmage at Patriot Center, Wall cut into the lane, rose up and spun 360 degrees between Yi Jianlian and Cartier Martin for a layup to bring the few thousand fans in attendance to their feet.
Even Arenas got up from the bench to smile and applaud the rookie, but most of his afternoon was spent with a towel draped over his head. Still sidelined by a sprained right ankle suffered Thursday, Arenas spent the scrimmage trying to look detached, keeping a straight face most of the time when his makeshift veil slipped, even though at one point he had to pull the towel over his mouth after a fan got him to laugh.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wizards coach Flip Saunders said when asked whether Arenas’ absence from three of the camp’s final four practices was a disappointment. “Veteran guys are veteran guys, how they go about things. You know, [Kirk] Hinrich and Wall have probably been our two best players in camp overall. If we were to go today, those two guys would probably start because of how they performed in camp. When Gil’s ready, he’ll come back and get his legs under him.”
Wall certainly has his. He rewarded the fans by tossing his shoes and his practice jersey into the crowd after the scrimmage was over.
“It was instincts,” Wall said of the spin move. “I was going to the basket, and I seen Yi there. I didn’t know if he was in the charge area or not, and it went in.”
Saunders, who claimed he wasn’t surprised by much during camp — “What I thought we had is what we have” — also took credit.
“I told him that’s why I brought him up there to Minnesota, those three days,” Saunders said, referring to Wall’s summer visit to the coach’s offseason home. “So he picked up that move finally.”
The Wizards play their first preseason game Tuesday at Dallas.
