Four thoughts after the Wizards’ 103-89 loss to the Lakers:
The injury news of the day wasn’t limited to morning shoot-around. The Wizards’ tenth different lineup of the year – due to the injury absences of John Wall and Andray Blatche – lasted barely five minutes before Yi Jianlian re-injured the same right that had previously cost him nine games earlier this year.
“Based on the fact that it was the same knee, that’s the way it looked, I would say that can’t be good,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders.
Without Blatche and to a lesser extent, Yi, the Wizards effectively have no true low-post scorer, a fact Saunders also admitted.
“What happens is every time you lose someone, roles change,” said Saunders, using a line that felt much like last year. “When you continue to lose people, you’re looking at a guy like [Trevor] Booker, who is an energy guy for you and now has to be a main guy. We’re asking that of somebody who’s really not ready to do that.“
Booker, JaVale McGee, Hilton Armstrong and Kevin Seraphin combined to foul the heck out of the Lakers on the inside, and the relentless parade of players headed to the line was really a slow death for the Wizards – until Kobe Bryant’s quite a bit more ruthless work in the third quarter.
Nick Young could only do so much – both defending Bryant and scoring himself – until he couldn’t do anything at all. With the kind of shots Young hit off the bench in the first half, he seemed well on his way to another season-high kind of night against L.A. The Wizards led after one quarter and weren’t totally out of the game at halftime, by which point Young had 17 points to lead all scorers.
But Bryant got locked in at the just the same time that Young got locked out in the third quarter, and the game went completely lopsided from there as the Wizards lost their fifth in a row and for the ninth time in their last ten games.
“Nick gets down on himself sometimes when people score on him,” said Gilbert Arenas. “He couldn’t do nothing about it when Kobe was hitting those shots. That kind of broke him a little bit. But Nick is holding his own. He’s coming into a player now.”
Young wasn’t hanging his head afterward in the locker room. Shaking it, but not hanging it.
“It’s tough, because you don’t know whether to play up, because he will try to blow by you or pump fake,” said Young of the options for defending Bryant. “When he has got it going he will pump fake, and I’m jumping that because he has just hit two in a row. He’s a tough player to guard. You got to keep battling though, you aren’t to go to stop Kobe Bryant and keep him at zero, because he will find a way. He has been in the league and has seen all kinds of defenses.”
The Lakers know who they are and what they do. Even if the Wizards play hard at times, they are pretty much the opposite. From the moment the Lakers walked into the Verizon Center for shoot-around Tuesday morning, they acted like they owned the place. That attitude was certainly reinforced by the jarring amount of gold and purple inside the Verizon Center for the game later in the day, even if the arena was surprisingly filled only to 75 percent capacity.
And once the Lakers get going, it can be mesmerizing to watch.
“They played how you want to play as a team,” said Saunders. “They share the ball tremendously. They’re very unselfish in how they play. They have a killer instinct. What they do is they do the dirty work inside, within six feet, seven feet of the basket, they punish you physically. They manhandled us at times around there.”
Meanwhile, the casualty-laden Wizards turned to Arenas, who wants to be a good teammate even if it costs his overall point production. He never quite found his rhythm, and he’s hyper aware of not trying to be a gunner.
“Tonight was the first time I got to play point guard and play point guard, so I was just trying to contribute. If I seen open shots, I’m going to take it,” said Arenas. “I haven’t really paid attention to scoring, I’ve just been trying to play a solid game.”
Even if Washington was lacking rhythm, the effort was there, as it has been for most home games this season. But there were times in the third quarter where the Wizards’ aggressiveness on defense was stifled by the whistle.
“I was just trying to be physical with him, frustrate him, just irritate him a little bit,” said Al Thornton of his defense on Bryant in the first half. “But I got called for some cheap fouls that I didn’t agree with. I was just trying to be physical.”
Bryant’s three free throw line misses came after he swung his arms through against Thornton on the perimeter. Even if he missed them, that was when the game turned, and a 46-45 rebounding advantage was no match for the Lakers 29 points on 40 attempts at the free throw line – where the Wizards were only 12-for-16.
“It pays to be good because when you’re good, you get to play a little bit more physical it seems, and you seem to get a lot more calls,” said Saunders.
The D.C. sports stars were out in force but not all of them were cheered. Certainly fans gave Jayson Werth a nice ovation, and Alex Ovechkin also got a decent reception. But the Redskins in the building, a bunch of them, heard plenty of boos, most notably Donovan McNabb. Wow, the new overpaid star for dour baseball franchise, a superstar for a hockey team mired in by far its worst slump in years, and multiple members of an imploding football team, all in the building to watch the injury-riddled and underwhelming Wizards. Just needed a D.C. United player in there, but it D.C.’s stinky sports year was well represented.
