With the encouraging news yesterday about Antawn Jamison and Mike Miller – both of them are trending toward a return to the court Saturday vs. Detroit – the Wizards might actually feel like they’ve got some momentum should they pull off a win tonight at Miami, where they did win twice two seasons ago. Hopefully they stayed out of South Beach last night… In addition, Washington’s schedule does ease a bit, with only two games over the next nine days – the latter, of course, being a nationally-televised visit from Cleveland next Wednesday. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The immediate task is better offense, and head coach Flip Saunders is trying to keep it simple: “Easy passes lead to easy buckets. Tough passes lead to tough buckets or turnovers. So we’re not making that easy pass. Right now we got no mojo, so we need to find some mojo, bottle it up and bring it with us.”
To get that mojo, Washington has to embrace Flip’s offense. Brendan Haywood, who called out his team for too many one-on-ones after the Phoenix loss, elaborated on why the Wizards haven’t totally clicked with what Saunders has installed so far: “I think some of it is lack of familiarity with the offense. Some of it is trying to break old habits from the previous offense because a lot of times, once you broke the offense down, you got into a lot of ISOs. But that’s not the way we play anymore so we have to get rid of some of our old ways and pick up some new ones.”
And then, there’s Dwyane Wade, who had 40 last week at Verizon Center. Randy Foye, for one, wouldn’t mind trying to go bucket for bucket with him. He did it last year at Target Center, with 29 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds vs. Wade’s 31, 8 and 3.
“Yeah. It’s always there,” said Foye. “I always think about that game last year. I know them stats in the back of my head.”
As of yesterday, Foye wouldn’t speculate whether he or DeShawn Stevenson would get the first chance to guard Wade tonight.
“I just feel as though you can’t really stop him,” said Foye. “He’s one of the top three players in the league. You can contain him, but you can’t let the other guys get off.”
Oh, and don’t forget Michael Beasley. Can’t wait to see if this hairstyle appears on the court.
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