Now, I apologize for the misleading title of this post because I didn’t speak to either Mike Miller or Randy Foye at shootaround since the bigger media scrum talked with them yesterday. But the mere fact that they were the two guys requested by the lone reporter with a camera this morning makes it more and more clear about the role they are starting to assume for this team. Plus, it adds to the speculation over the future of the team’s remaining two captains. Caron Butler, who snuck out of the locker room on Monday afternoon, declined requests to talk yesterday. Antawn Jamison wasn’t requested so he didn’t have to decline, but the growing question for him is whether he deserves a coaches’ nod for the All-Star Game. He is averaging 22.7 ppg and 8.9 rpg…
In any case, Wizards head coach Flip Saunders did chat. Excerpts:
On the latest contributions from DeShawn Stevenson as a starter: “I think he’s given us stability. He does a lot of little things, defensively and offensively.. He’s a guy right now, you can put him on somebody, and you don’t’ have to give a lot of help even though he might get scored on – say he’s playing a Derrick Rose – but you don’t have to give a lot of help because it’s probably not going to matter nearly as much. I think he’s getting in better shape, one by playing some extended minutes. He’s put himself in a situation to get in better shape, and I think it’s helped his shooting a little bit. I just think it’s just being able to play with a bit more energy over consistent periods.”
On D-Steve’s shot: “He’s worked hard on it, getting better body balance and those things.”
On Foye taking over at the point: “He’s learning. Randy’s always been very offensive minded because he’s really more of a two, as far as how he plays. He’s trying to leran how to get other people involved offensively, but we still want him to maintain his aggressiveness so he’ll go through some Periods where maybe he’ll be a little one-dimensional so he’s trying to work through that.”
What is it that Saunders wants Foye to improve the most? “More pace into the game, be more aggressive in how he gets us into an offense as far as a little bit quicker. And then sometimes he has the tendency to dribble too much. The last few games I had to call him Curly Neal during timeouts because it looks like he’s dribbling like the Harlem Globetrotters, all over a half court, dribbling for I think 20 straight seconds and then took a shot. That’s not, that’s too frustrating for me and everybody else.”
On Foye’s challenge of taking over for Gilbert Arenas: “It’s a little bit different for Randy because he’d been a starter in Minnesota and so it was not like he was coming into a situation where he wasn’t comfortable in that type of role. That’s one of the reasons when we made the trade was the idea that we didn’t know what Gilbert was going to be like at the time from an injury standpoint, how he’d come back. If it was the situation that somebody went down, we thought we could put him in and we’d be able to survive with him as a starter.”
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