When you’re playing at break-neck speed, sometimes things break. And so John Wall has a bruised left knee, suffered during a takedown by Andres Nocioni in last week’s overtime win over Philadelphia, and will sit out tonight’s game against the Orlando Magic (11-4).
It will be the fifth game that Wall has missed out of his first 15 in the NBA.
“It’s just like Dwyane Wade,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders. “You can’t change how a guy plays because that’s who they are. You hope that as he gets older, he’ll, as all players do, he’ll learn to exert, know when they can go, when they can’t and know what situations they’re in, but that just comes with more experience than anything else.”
Vince Carter (left knee), who was seen taking jumpers on the Verizon Center court earlier in the evening, will also miss tonight’s game for Orlando.
Without Wall, the critical question for the Wizards (5-9) is can they put together a competitive performance against a team with a winning record. They closest they’ve come to that was the second game of the season, when they lost by four, 99-95, at Atlanta, two days after losing at Orlando by 29.
Since then, they’ve accumulated three losses by at least 20 points: at New York (by 21), at Boston (by 31), and at Atlanta (by 20).
“I think what happens sometimes is so much of this game is whether you’re with a good team or wherever you’re at, is confidence,” said Saunders. “Especially with young teams, most of them have been on the road, and we’ve had a tendency that we’ve fallen behind, we haven’t made shots, we’ve turned the ball over, bad shooting percentage and turnovers, we hang our heads and are feeling sorry for ourselves, and they’re getting layups at the other end in transition. That’s been as big as anything, and that does happen a lot with young teams. You have to learn to play with the same passion, the same intensity without a crowd as you do at home. This is the best team we’ve played at home so it’ll be a challenge tonight to see how our guys mentally react to the situation.”
Yi Jianlian (knee) and Al Thornton (ankle) remain out for the Wizards, as does Josh Howard, who Flip said is still another 2-3 weeks away from consideration given his still limited participation in practice.
