Enough gushing over Andray Blatche, a.k.a. the next Kevin Garnett, and to a lesser degeree JaVale McGee, for a moment. As the Wizards head into their rematch with the Bucks, who beat them easily, 100-87, two nights ago, let’s read the tea leaves from tonight’s pregame chat with Flip Saunders:
On McGee’s matchup with Andrew Bogut, who had just two rebounds in Milwaukee: “Tonight’ll be a different story because I’m sure Bogut’s going to want to come out and establish himself early offensively. He’s going through those growing pains. The thing about JaVale, he makes glaring mistakes when he makes mistakes, not getting back on defense, things like that. I thought he’s made very, very good improvement here over the last four games. I don’t want to jinx him, but I think he’s done a nice job. He’s protecting the rim. He’s got people looking for him now inside. The more he plays, the more he’ll gain a reputation from them, from referees because I think sometimes he gets some blocks that are call goal tends because they’re not used to someone his size being as quick as he is up to the rim.”
Translation: McGee is getting close to turning the corner. Compare the way Saunders talked about him to what comes next.
On the potential of Shaun Livingston: “A lot of times, when Randy [Foye] plays, Randy gets what I call system assists. We bring a shooter off a double and that’s the one we’re looking for, where Shaun gets assists when he kind of makes something out of nothing, and he’s the one guy on our team that can do that a little bit.”
Translation: Foye has not turned the corner at point guard. Not even close.
On Mike Harris, whose 10-day contract is nearly done: “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Translation: Next.
On Nick Young: “He’s struggled. He’s had opportunities. He’s had a lot of competition at that spot from both a scoring and defensive standpoint. The last game at Milwaukee, we had no one at either one of the two or three that could make a shot or guard anybody. He did a little bit late when the game was out of hand so hopefully he can carry that over to today.”
Comparing Young to Blatche and McGee: “Those guys have a played unbelieveably hard, and that’s what he’s got to do, just play so hard. We saw the last game, ’Dray dove ten feet for a loose ball. Those are the things Nick has to do, like he did the one game earlier. Those are the things he’s got to do on a consistent basis.”
Translation: Is this anything different than what’s been said about Young all season?
Add Pick & Roll to your RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Pick-and-roll
Follow me on Twitter @craigstouffer
