Sometimes as a reporter, you just have one of those days when your questions just don’t quite go over right with who they’re asked to. And they let you know about it.
That happened to me at Wizards practice yesterday, where the media first caught up with Jordan Crawford, who has been playing exceptional of late. Not only has he averaged 20.4 points in his last seven games, he’s also reclaimed the starting backcourt spot that was his for two games at the beginning of the season.
But he struggled in the early portion of the year, in part because he was miscast by former coach Flip Saunders as John Wall’s primary backup at point guard. By 10 or so games into the year, Crawford was shifted into basically playing as Nick Young’s backup at shooting guard while Shelvin Mack to over backup point respoinsbilities. Certainly, the Wizards have used some three-guard sets, and have been successful, and there’ve been plenty of occasions when Crawford has been the one bringing the ball up and distributing – he’s averaging 3.3 assists per game in February.
But there’s no mistaking that Crawford is more comfortable attacking and scoring as the off guard, right? It’s exactly what I asked him.
“I’m more comfortable being on the court,” Crawford answered. “I don’t know what makes you think that, but I guess you been watching the games or something, I don’t know. Do you think that?”
My answer: Yeah, that his rhythm and shot selection have both been better.
“For sure, yeah,” Crawford said, and the conversation moved on.
At this point, I’m still not sure exactly what happened, particularly since we were talking about Crawford playing well. But there you go.
And then my afternoon got even better when Wizards coach Randy Wittman took his turn with reporters. The conversation started with positive questions about Crawford, injury updates on Young and Andray Blatche, but then, the question had to be asked about JaVale McGee’s response to whether he understood why he was benched. It just happened to be my turn to do the asking.
“The message, non-message,” Wittman said. “We’re tyring to be competitive and do things that are going to get us closer and opportunities to win games. We’ve got. That’s, I don’t know where all of a sudden I’m sending messages. I’m coaching. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what it’s called in our business is coaching. No subliminal messages here that somebody’s got to crypt through and figure. It’s coaching. They know. Each player. it’s not JaVale. It’s not anyone, it’s all 14 of them. They know where they stand and what I expect of them. So there is no message. I mean, a lot of people state that. I’m coaching. And I coach you the same way as I would those guys. You need to ask better questions. That’s how I would coach you.”
Ouch! Luckily, there were no cameras on me – they would’ve seen my face turn the color of the Wizards’ road uniforms.
Hey, it was good-natured ribbing, and I deserve my fair share of abuse. It was just rough that it came about in two straight interviews. Do I understand why, of all days, it happened yesterday? I can’t say I do. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out sooner or later.
