Okay, let’s not kid ourselves with too much nitty gritty analysis in the Wizards’ 118-94 loss to San Antonio. It was the most embarrassing loss of the season for Washington because falling behind by 41 points at home is simply horrendous.
Only one sequence in the game is worth talking about with any detail, and that is Tony Parker’s personal 10-0 run that put the game out of reach, taking the Spurs’ lead from 14-10 to 24-10 in about two minutes. It started with two free throws. 16-10. It continued with Parker picking off Andray Blatche and racing down for a layup. 18-10. Parker then swiped the ball from Blatche and did the same thing again, layup. 20-10. Parker then got an outlet from DeJuan Blair after a JaVale McGee miss for another layup that was clinched by a McGee goaltend. 22-10. Then McGee made a bad pass and another goaltend. 24-10.
Just as a reminder, the two main Wizards players in that sequence were the same two players the Wizards committed to at the beginning of the season, worried that there was a chance they could lose them if they weren’t locked in beyond a potential lockout year. Meanwhile, DeJuan Blair, who the Wizards passed on in the draft two years ago, had 13 points, 12 rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal.
With that out of the way, Wizards head coach Flip Saunders: “Words can’t totally explain how I feel. Disappointed. Embarrassed. I feel bad from a fan standpoint. I look, there’s 8:40 left to go in the game, we’re down 36, and our fans are cheering for them to miss shots at the free throw line. Which says something about how your fans are trying their hardest to do what they can. They want to see you go out and just play. I can’t have an explanation of why we didn’t come out with the intensity we needed to. We do have a tendency, when we play against tough teams, and this is a tough physical team, sometimes we’re not ready for that. It’s disappointing.”
Here’s the problem, the fans were only chanting for missed free throws because the big video screen over the court was offering a reward of free Chick-fil-A sandwiches. For the rest of the night, especially at any point after Parker’s game-clinching first-quarter run, there were few signs that any Wizards fans were actually among the sellout crowd of more than 20,000 at Verizon Center.
“I was more shocked I didn’t hear that many boos tonight,” said Nick Young (4 points, 4 fouls). “I don’t know if there was more San Antonio Spurs fans tonight or Wizards fans. Anyway, we didn’t hear no boos, and if there were Wizards fans, I’m proud for that part.”
Even Young really didn’t get it right. It’s not that the Wizards fans were supporting their team in silence, it’s that a resigned acceptance has settled over the franchise. There’s no anger there, almost a realization that the Wizards are exactly where they are supposed to be as currently constructed. Even if they just got a beatdown from the best team in the NBA – the Spurs scored the most points in the first quarter (37) of any team the Wizards have played this year and they scored more points in the first half (72) than they did in 48 minutes during their 77-71 loss at Philadelphia – it was a game full of the same kinds of mistakes and frustrations that have plague Washington all season: bad turnovers, poor shot selection, glaring defensive breakdowns, and an overall lack of toughness. It was just concentrated into the first quarter, making the next three purely academic.
Tonight’s loss to the Spurs showed that a couple of nice practices and a win over imploding Milwaukee haven’t fundamentally changed the Wizards’ habits, and the Verizon Center crowd knows it.
“If I was in the crowd, I’d have did the same thing,” said John Wall (8 points, 7 assists). “It didn’t seem like nobody cared out there, even me, including everybody else, nobody cared. I think we all cared deep down inside, but we didn’t play like it. We didn’t show no type of energy that you gotta have when you’re at home. It don’t matter if you’re losing, you still gotta play hard, and I don’t think we did that.”
Even Saunders knows it, given how many times he looked down his bench as if hoping to find an answer among his roster of players that hasn’t been there before, only to give up and turn back to watching the game.
“I didn’t see this coming,” said Saunders. “I don’t think anyone saw it coming, just with how well we’ve played at home, how well we’ve gotten up for games against big-time opponents. But there’s a prime example. There’s a team that they play how the game’s supposed to be played. They play out of substance not style. To them, it doesn’t matter who scores, they don’t go for the dunk. When they miss a dunk, they get back, they don’t care about the assist and the flamboyance. That’s how you want your organization to be, and that’s how we’re working to try to get there. You can say it’s a process, but it’s frustrating when you get against that, and you get steamrolled.”
Any wonder who Saunders was referring to with the substance-over-style comments? Not bloody likely, given the wild night that McGee had, one that actually began with him scoring the Wizard’s first four points over Tim Duncan.
But then there were the goaltending calls and the awful missed dunk – which couldn’t have been more poorly timed given a week from tonight he’ll be competing in the dunk contest.
McGee briefly found redemption with a sweet reverse jam only to fritter that away with an poorly conceive behind-the-back pass turnover and later soaring hip-first, judo-style into Steve Novak after biting on a shot fake.
McGee finished with 14 points and three rebounds.
Remember when the question was whether or not the Wizards would’ve preferred to lose to San Antonio if they could beat Cleveland on Sunday? At this point, a loss tomorrow might not be as embarrassing as tonight’s.
“You’re as good as your last performance,” said Saunders. “Let’s put it at that, so right now we’re not very good, based on how we played today, and we have to get a lot better to compete with anybody in the NBA.”
