I just didn’t get to all the stuff that I wanted to yesterday. Here’s some of it from after Washington’s 97-92 win over Portland:
Wizards head coach Flip Saunders:
“We’re playing a lot more zone, and our zone has been able to keep the other team less aggressive, keep them a little off balance, plus, when you play more zone, you learn more zone principles, which is help and recover, and so I think we’re in more of a help type situation. I think playing more zone at times has helped our man to man defense.”
“I’ve probably screamed at more guys on the floor than in the past, but we need that for accountability, and guys need to know when they’re making mistakes to know the mistake they made to try to correct it.”
“We’ve stayed more with our system. At times, if we’d fall behind in the past in the fourth quarter, one guy, no matter who it was, thought they had to do it by themselves, where now we’ve run plays to get our guy the ball we wanted in spots. But we’ve done it off of motion so it hasn’t been as much help, and it isn’t like one guy’s having to play against three guys.”
Brendan Haywood
On the difference of having Mike Miller: “We have a lot of guys come in and try to score. Mike tries to come in and get his within the flow, as far as getting his shots off drive and kicks, driving and kicking himself to open teammates so he can give us a different look. That’s something we need out there.”
On guys playing within the Saunders offense: “I definitely feel like more guys are making a concerted effort to make that extra pass. I’m sad it took us this many games to realize that no one can do it by themselves. We have to move the ball and do it as a unit. As Flip said, hero ball won’t win it.”
Randy Foye
“Sometimes it might not be as fast as coach wants, but you gotta realize for the majority part of the season, I was a two guard. Now I’m at the point. The main thing I’m trying to do is just get guys the ball where they want it.”
“I just think for me, being the two and being on the bench for some time, I got a chance to watch. I was like a sponge. Everything coach was telling Gilbert [Arenas], I was just watching and observing, trying to be a sponge. Now I’m trying to put that in play when I’m on the court. I understand at the end of games, you have to run your offense through, you have to go to the hot guy. But you just can’t give the hot guy the ball and go one on one. You have to run it through your offense, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“In the Chicago game, Atlanta – that was a back to back. We could’ve easily gave up in Atlanta but just kept fighting. I just see guys. They want to do the right thing here, and we want to win. I understand that Caron [Butler] and Antawn [Jamison] are the go-to guys. So me as a player, as a young point guard, I’m trying to get these guys the ball where they need it at certain times.”
“[Saunders is] tough on me during the game. When I make a mistake, he lets me know about it, and if something happens, if I don’t make a read, he lets me know about it. But after the game, he love me up.”
Antawn Jamison
“We’ve been there. The Cleveland game was a blowout, just the initial shock of knowing what took place and knowing that [Arenas] was not going to be with us for a while, just dealing with that. But once you look at it, we’ve been in just about every game to the last couple of minutes of late. That’s a good sign. I tell the guys all the time, eventually things are going to go our way. We’re going to get a couple of those games that didn’t go our way earlier in the season.”
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