Damage control is in full effect at Verizon Center. Gilbert Arenas spoke to the media yesterday and took swipes at Caron Butler, but before the day was through the players spoke to one another and cleared things up, according to reports in the Times and Post. Brendan Haywood didn’t talk to the press, instead using his blog to clear up misconceptions about comments that sounded like swipes at Arenas but were actually meant for the whole team.
Even head coach Flip Saunders took the issue head on, as you can see in my story. In fact, here’s more: “What we’ve got to get back to playing within a system We can’t let other things bother us, whether it’s personalities. We have to put that aside because everyone – I can put everyone in that room, sit everyone down and go through a film session, and when they got out of that room, they’d think they were the worst player in the NBA because that’s how those film sessions are. We’ve got to look at the positives of what we have, and the positives each players bring and not worry about the negatives because everyone has warts.”
So, it appears that everyone is on the same page headed into tonight’s game against Philadelphia, which will be emotional with former Wizards head coach Eddie Jordan on the opposite sideline. Here’s the thing: what makes the developing situation in Washington interesting is the move from Jordan’s Princeton offense to Saunders’s flex is where players and coaches can all say they’re on the same page but aren’t proving it.
Here’s Arenas talking about the differences between the two systems: “The thing that catches me thinking is in Eddie’s offense, once I pass the ball up, I’m a scorer. So when I get it, I’m a scorer, and I attack. Here [under Saunders], if I get the ball, if I don’t catch myself, I would shoot a lot. It’s like when Earl [Boykins] comes in, he comes 10 minutes and he has 10 shots, but that’s because that’s what he’s asked to do. Me, if I do that, 35 minutes, I’ll have 35 shots. So it’s more of trying to get people involved. I’m like okay, who do I need to score here? Ok, Antawn [Jamison] is on fire. Caron hasn’t scored in the while, OK, I need to get him the ball here.”
Now, is that a swipe at Butler or his production (16.8 points per game, 67-for-167, 40.1 FG pct)? Consider, Arenas himself is shooting 39 percent and leads the NBA in turnovers (4.0 per game), which cancels out his 6.3 assists per contest.
More from Arenas: “It’s not difficult to pick up the offense. It’s difficult to get the guys the ball without killing the rest of the team. If I want to get Antawn off, just like I did in Cleveland, I just do pick-and-roll. If I want to get Randy [Foye] the ball, I just call two plays. If I need Mike Miller to shoot, I call the play. Certain people just need certain plays. That’s the easy part, but they’re telling me to be in attack mode while getting them the ball. They want me to attack more than I already am. They say if I go and do what I do, everybody will score easy. But if I attack all the time, I’m going to take away from everybody else. It’s not like Chris Paul in his offense where he is the offense just pick-and-rolling everything. It’s different. But, like I say, Antawn, he comes back and he has 32 [points] because I know what he needs because I’ve been playing with him the longest: pick-and-roll. Caron, he needs ISOs. But how do I get him the ball without cutting other players out? That’s been the problem.”
If Arenas and Butler say they don’t have a beef with one another, that’s fine. But just as Arenas singled out Butler via omission on the subjects of getting along and taking responsibility, he’s done the same thing when it comes to executing the Wizards offense, and this air hasn’t yet been cleared.
