It’s mystery starter night at Verizon Center for the Wizards, but it really only matters who is in the lineup for the opposition: Blake Griffin, whose visit to New Jersey on Friday night sparked a rare sellout in Newark. Will the same happen in Washington?
The Wizards are doing their part – okay, not really. They’ll be without Andray Blatche (shoulder), Rashard Lewis (knee) and Cartier Martin (knee), and it took until less than ten minutes before tip that a lineup of John Wall, Nick Young, Josh Howard, Trevor Booker and JaVale McGee was unveiled.
It’s the seventh start this season for Booker, who will likely find himself matched up with Griffin, who has two inches on him according to the rosters and maybe four in reality.
“I don’t know if I have confidence in anyone going on Griffin one-on-one because the way he’s been a monster,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders. “Trevor, he’s going to have a heck of a challenge because one, he’s undersized. Griffin is 6-10. Book is about 6-6½. But Book will compete, I know that. If Griffin scores, it’s not going to be because of the lack of effort on Booker’s part. One thing we can’t do is we can’t get Griffin’s confidence going by turning the ball over, letting him be down here, jumping off his trampoline and be dunking over everybody. As a team, we’ve got to take care of those type of situations.”
The Wizards also have their own issues on offense with Young experiencing soreness in his left knee after practice yesterday. If he’s limited, Washington could have some serious problems generating offense.
Wall will also face an intriguing battle against his former Kentucky backcourt partner, Eric Bledsoe, but the Clippers start Randy Foye, who is making his first return to D.C. since spending last season with the Wizards.
“I hope I don’t get booed,” said Foye. “I don’t think I did anything that bad to get booed, but I’m just excited to be back.”
Foye (10.0 ppg, 2.7 apg) is actually averaging slightly less than he did last year (10.1 ppg, 3.3 apg), but he’s having a lot more fun – emphasis on the “a lot” part.
“We have a lot of potential,” said Foye. “We have a lot of good young guys, exciting guys that’s willing to work hard, and I think that’s big for us. We just have to continue to grow, learn every day, and hopefully, we can turn this thing around.”
And then, of course, there’s the aforementioned Griffin.
“It’s not just playing with him because playing with him is easy because he runs so hard, and he works so hard,” said Foye. “The biggest thing with him is his work ethic, the type of person he is. He reminds me of KG [Kevin Garnett] a lot with his personality, pass the ball, get a ball up to make it easy on himself later in the game.”
