The result – the Wizards’s 99-90 loss to 13-game losers Detroit – wasn’t ominous. All the pieces were there for it to be ugly for the home team: a serious lack of useful practices thanks to a revolving door of players visiting the grand jury investigating Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton; a lack of Mike Miller, who also used the revolving door to go back on the injured list barely six quarters into his long-awaited return; a lack of Andray Blatche, who was mad about a lack of shots against New Orleans and was suspended; and even a lack of Caron Butler, who didn’t get any sleep Monday night dealing with a family emergency.
Add it up, and you get a lack of sharpness and a lack of mental focus, and a serious lack of scoring in the second quarter.
But it was something else that was ominous: the way Wizards head coach Flip Saunders answered when I asked him if the last few days of disruptions were to blame.
“I don’t want to blame it on that because we might have a lot of those days here over the next month,” he said. “You can’t have a built-in excuse.”
It sounds like there may not be any choice.
Ugh.
Saunders did quickly shift his attention to the one guy who has risen above the fray: Antawn Jamison.
“Antawn was great again tonight,” said Saunders. “I feel bad because that guy has been playing his butt off. We’re playing him about 43 minutes, and the guy’s being thrown around like a rag doll. He’s so consistent, his aggression, what he’s doing has been so efficient.”
I asked Jamison about the load he’s shouldering: “Right now it’s that way, but we get Andray back tomorrow. Caron is going to get back into the thick of things. Brendan [Haywood] has been doing a tremendous job here of late. When Mike gets back, I think I’ll be pretty much back to normal. But I have to be aggressive, especially right now, and there’s going to be certain nights when Nick has it going, and then I can relax a little bit. But my mindframe is to really come out and set the tone offensively and rebound as well. Eventually things will get back to pattern.
“But I think that should be everybody’s mindframe, to come out aggressive offensively because we’re missing a lot of firepower so. We just got to continue to stay positive and play hard and eventually things will go in our direction, hopefully.”
As for the second quarter, in which the Wizards scored a season-low 11 points, here’s nevermind-my-20-and-10 Randy Foye: “I think a lot their guys, guys like Chucky Atkins, came in, knocked down some threes. We let a lot of guys get going that we should have not let get going.”
Butler grinded his way to 14 points but always looked tired and out of rhythm. He had some pretty good reasons. Nick Young did not, yet he finished with 8 points (on 2 for 9 shooting) and 4 turnovers.
“Nick really struggled today,” said Saunders. “It was like he was little bit out of it, defensively, as much as anybody. He had a lot of mental breakdowns.”
Another ringing endorsement.
“It’s hard because we’ve been going through so much, and every day you’ll have a certain amount of teammates out there,” said Young. “Yesterday, I think we had eight so we couldn’t play full court. Everything was half court and shooting drills so we’re just going through it. But we got to keep our heads up and keep going.”
The tone of resignation that wasn’t ominous. But it was depressing.
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