[MJG]

I second the ridiculousness of Arenas' bombing. He's usually pretty decent with it on most nights, but 4-15 is just hurtful.

[jazzy1]

This game was a collection of so many terrible things and we still almost won. I don't want Profit taking the potential game tying 3. I want Hughes or Arenas to take that shot. We still could have won with better execution.

As for the drama. Haywood and Kwame almost squaring off. It was funny. They are good friends and almost got in to it.

Arenas and Hughes both played awful, airballs, turnovers, lax defense just terrible.

Kwame, Etan, Brendan and JJ just terrible. Each of them took turns traveling. Kwame getting his shot blocked twice early, Brendan being inactive just terrible defense. Rebracha runs wild in the 1st half.

Late in the game Kwame played sollid defense on Brand which aided the comeback. He should have guarded him from the begining.

This was a very lazy effort tonight. Guys were on very tired legs.

No one had any zip. Must recover for Sunday's game which I think we have a shot to win.

I also pray Brendan isn't huirt that badly Brand tripped him on the follow through trying to draw a foul. Dirty play. His thumb didn't look good at all ,looked dislocated.

A game I want to forget.

[jazzy1]

Originally Posted by MJG

I second the ridiculousness of Arenas' bombing. He's usually pretty decent with it on most nights, but 4-15 is just hurtful.

Yeah he was tired and bailing out. He played 48 minutes in back to back games. We gotta start cutting his minutes before he gets injured.

[Shanghai Kid]

At least Damone Brown looked decent, he's worth signing for the rest of the season considering injuries.

I don't even want to think about Woods thumb, the interior D was so bad when Etan was in the game, I don't even want to think about it. If Wood is hurt for real Jamison needs to come back immediately. I know he's soft and needs rest, but his team pretty much needs him at this point.

Jared Jeffries is becoming one of my least favorite players in the league. I've never seen someone so horrible and akward in the NBA. No team with Jared Jeffries starting will win a playoff series.

We seriously need to upgrade out frontcourt over the summer. If your Arenas or Hughes, would YOU be comfortable passing it to these slow, uncooridnated, turnover prone bigs? I don't blame them anymore, just keep shooting guys.

[jazzy1]

Originally Posted by Shanghai Kid

At least Damone Brown looked decent, he's worth signing for the rest of the season considering injuries.

I don't even want to think about Woods thumb, the interior D was so bad when Etan was in the game, I don't even want to think about it. If Wood is hurt for real Jamison needs to come back immediately. I know he's soft and needs rest, but his team pretty much needs him at this point.

Jared Jeffries is becoming one of my least favorite players in the league. I've never seen someone so horrible and akward in the NBA. No team with Jared Jeffries starting will win a playoff series.

We seriously need to upgrade out frontcourt over the summer. If your Arenas or Hughes, would YOU be comfortable passing it to these slow, uncooridnated, turnover prone bigs? I don't blame them anymore, just keep shooting guys.

I'm all for knocking the bigs But seriously did you see the crap Hughes and Arenas were doing. And you don't knock them seriously. I can't understand what the hell they were doing out there. The most ridiculous to's and terrible shot selection I've seen all season.

Gilbert passed the ball into thin air once no one around. Hughes did even worse.

This may have been the 1st time Kwame has really been worked on defensively he's usually pretty stout defensively guarding his man but tonight it wasn't there.

But there's no way in hell we can move forward with 2 guards like Larry and Gilbert who can't contain their own men off the dribble.

Our perimeter defense is a joke and embarrassing, those guys gamble for steals and we look and say hey Bigs please stop em.

If O-lay defense is how we're moving forward there is trouble ahead.

We gotta get a stopper on the perimeter. Someone who can at least stay in front right now we don't have anyone.

I thought Larry was a good defender but he's been broken down many times himself.

Not to play the blame game because they truthfully all share blame.

EJ just doesn't highlight defense as part of his coaching. We do so many things on defense that aren't fundamentally sound its a joke.

Arenas doesn't ever bend over into a defensive stance. Just terrible.

I wasn't mad at them gunning tonight we had nothing else going.

But I don't advocate gunning the rest of the season it was a bad night tonight.

Call me foolish I still think Kwame can become our post option. He just has to get comfortable in the post again like he was last season. He dropped 22 on brand in a game last season tonight he was toasted. I think he has the skills to be that guy but the guards still have to trust more. Not throw it in once and chuck 15 3's a piece.

[Weasel]

Good game. The Wizards came on really strong towards the end of the game and really scared the crap out of me. They keep on nailing the 3's in crunch time but fortunately for the Clippers Maggette kept on nailing his FT's to seal the game. Have to give the Wizards to the credit on not giving up and making it an exciting finish.

[Shanghai Kid]

Originally Posted by jazzy1

Call me foolish I still think Kwame can become our post option. He just has to get comfortable in the post again like he was last season. He dropped 22 on brand in a game last season tonight he was toasted. I think he has the skills to be that guy but the guards still have to trust more. Not throw it in once and chuck 15 3's a piece.

Yeah, the perimeter defense is bad, but LA was getting mostly points in the paint, and the reason is cause theirs never any help defense. If you beat a guard, theirs supposed to be help defense to at least foul the guy. The perimeter defense looks much worse because of EJs system, nobody rotates and we just leave guys open. We have nothing, the guards put pressure on, but once you get past them its a free layup cause the bigs are out of posistion. Etan is the worst interior defender I've ever seen.

The guards are just gunning until Jamison gets back. Antawn is very important just because we don't have any other starting calibur SF. Jeffries gives us nothing, hell he does more bad things than good, one of the worst starters in league history right now.

I don't have alot of faith in Kwame, it seems some have lowered their expectations to a point where something like 7 points, 7 rebounds is a good game for him. the team just hasn't played good since he came back, can't blame him for everything but it's a fact, we were winning games consistently without the guy and since he came back we look like last years team. And now we're starting to see all this internal friction. With Kwame getting into it with Wood last night I'm still not thinking Kwame's definetly going to be on the team next year, first he got suspended by the coach and now him and Wood were about to come to blows. Also Larry complaning in the media could basically be paraphrased as "I don't like the offense since Kwame came back, he's slowing us down". I keep thinking that of all the athletic freak bigs in the league we picked the one guy who isn't that good. Bosh/Howard/Okafor/Amare, all those guys eat Kwame for lunch. Kwame being here long term is definetly not a certainty, especially depending on what kind of offer he gets. I'm not bashing the guy so don't take it like that, but you can't justify giving him a huge contract this summer, if its a reasonable contract sure, but he's gotta show more than he's showing.

[MJG]

Just to spin off what Shanghai noted on Jamison -- his play may have seemed to be mediocre and subpar, but I have learned that what we see as mediocre and subpar play from Jamison is better than the best anyone else who is playing for him can do for us. His defense may suck and he may play twice as far from the basket as we'd like to see, but none of his replacements can come close to getting the consistent 19/8 that he gets us night in and night out. I still don't think Jamison (as he has been used this year, at least) is a part of us moving up to the "next level," but his loss certainly has shown that he played a bigger part in our success than a lot of us may have given him credit for.

I've also dropped my Kwame expectations down big time. I still have that small belief that he will still turn into a strong starting quality big man, but there is only a tiny sliver left that thinks it will ever happen in Washington. I was hoping for something similar to what he gave last year, 13/9 or so, but now I'm happy any time I see him put up 8/8 without shooting below 40%. Whether it is Haywood's improvement down low or EJ's play calling or the guards' unwillingness to dump the ball down to him or simply his being out most of the year with injury, he just doesn't look like he belongs out there most nights.

[jazzy1]

Originally Posted by Shanghai Kid

Yeah, the perimeter defense is bad, but LA was getting mostly points in the paint, and the reason is cause theirs never any help defense. If you beat a guard, theirs supposed to be help defense to at least foul the guy. The perimeter defense looks much worse because of EJs system, nobody rotates and we just leave guys open. We have nothing, the guards put pressure on, but once you get past them its a free layup cause the bigs are out of posistion. Etan is the worst interior defender I've ever seen.

The guards are just gunning until Jamison gets back. Antawn is very important just because we don't have any other starting calibur SF. Jeffries gives us nothing, hell he does more bad things than good, one of the worst starters in league history right now.

I don't have alot of faith in Kwame, it seems some have lowered their expectations to a point where something like 7 points, 7 rebounds is a good game for him. the team just hasn't played good since he came back, can't blame him for everything but it's a fact, we were winning games consistently without the guy and since he came back we look like last years team. And now we're starting to see all this internal friction. With Kwame getting into it with Wood last night I'm still not thinking Kwame's definetly going to be on the team next year, first he got suspended by the coach and now him and Wood were about to come to blows. Also Larry complaning in the media could basically be paraphrased as "I don't like the offense since Kwame came back, he's slowing us down". I keep thinking that of all the athletic freak bigs in the league we picked the one guy who isn't that good. Bosh/Howard/Okafor/Amare, all those guys eat Kwame for lunch. Kwame being here long term is definetly not a certainty, especially depending on what kind of offer he gets. I'm not bashing the guy so don't take it like that, but you can't justify giving him a huge contract this summer, if its a reasonable contract sure, but he's gotta show more than he's showing.

I'm not about to put anything on Kwame.

I think your reasoning for the slide and the timetable for it are borderline ridiculous.

We haven't been winning steady for month's and this occured way before Kwame came back we haven't been a smooth team since Hughes went down. Thats when things started unraveling. We've been a .500 team basically since Hughes went down against Phoenix, how that suddenly has become a Kwame problem I don't know.

When I look at things I see that you *****ed and moaned damn near a whole month before Hughes got hurt every time the Wizards loss saying it was Jamison's fault. Now you complaining that its Kwame's fault.

I think its a combination of several factors none of which centers on the blame coming from any 1 person.

I think 1st off its the overall style of play.

We were playing Western Conference ball early in the season catching alot of teams off guard with the running and gunning. Essentially outscoring teams while playing very little defense.

As the season wore on I think teams we were playing found out a real easy formula in how to contain our break and slow our running game. We weren't catching teams off guard anymore and teams had alot more of a book on us.

Kwame coming back has done what exactly. Slowed us down. HOW exactly.

When I look on the floor I see Arenas and Hughes forcing more shots and dribbling alot more.

They don't trust anyone other than Jamison and are forcing offense thats not there.

I know in your world that Arenas and Hughes are do nothing wrong players I just see them as 2 guards who get numbers because they jack up more shots than anyone else and their mistakes in turnovers and lapses on defense are excused because between the mistalkes they hit shots.

Surely EJ's the easy target to keep the blame for the pitiful perimeter defense from being blamed on the real culprits in Arenas and Hughes inability to contain the dribble.

Teams know exactly how to play us they Pull our bigs out of the middle and run the gurads backdoor. Because teams know that Arenas and Hughes will always cheat topside and gamble for steals its why Demar Johnson looked like an allstar getting alley oops because the bigs were pulled out and the guards were gambling over the top thus giving up alley oops.

Too look at the Kwame situation with EJ and say that was Kwame fault was very wrong. Ernie Grunfeld wouldn't go as far as to blame Kwame in that incident. And as far as the Haywood situation how in the hell can you place the blame of that on the foot of kwame without knowing what was said you just assume that it must have been Kwame's fault.

To heck with what Larry says or even how you paraphrased it. So the 5 shots Kwame gets every game are screwing up the flow of the whole team and therefore Kwame should be dumped immediately.

So in yours and Larry's world Kwame, Etan, nor Haywood shouldn't get any shots and Larry and Gilbert should take 30 a piece everynight.

How you gonna win with that.

The only thing that looks like last season is the injuries.

Hughes got hurt AGAIN, Kwame was hurt most of the year, Jamison like Stack has had a knee injury, Hayes again has missed games, Juan and Blake have been out as well as JJ missing some games.

Injuries are the only thing that resembles last season. So losing games without having enough guys to practice and having to alter what we do is a big prroblem.

The Wizards need Jamison because he's the only one who Arenas and Hughes trust to give the ball to, it prys the ball outta their hands which is always a good thing. It aids in the chemsitry. It allowsus to have a scorer on the floor who doesn't require dribbles.

As far as Kwame is concerned he's made some mistakes here for sure and now he's dealing with trying to get healhy and trusting his foot in using his moves downlow. He hasn't been smooth at all. He's not gotten back to last years form at all. if he does though paired with Jamison's outside game to me I think the team could really play well. Kwame right now can't be a post main option because of his rust and inability to explode by people consistently like he was last season. I think once he gains his mobility back he could be a 14 ppg and 9-10 rebs a game guy right now though he just can't physically or from a confidence and rust standpoint get it done yet he should stay incorporated because only through playing does the rust and confidence come back.

An Arenas, Hughes, Jamison, Kwame and Haywood line-up to me can win because we'd still have the interior d with Kwame and Haywood and still have the scoring and push game with the so called Big 3.

Ernie G says repeatedly that Kwame's gonna be here and that he's matching YET hasn't commited to Hughes I think you better take the hint in that. I'm not saying Hughes isn't gonna be re-signed just that Ernie might have a different plan in mind. Who knows what that is. He could have extended Larry if he wanted to.

I think Hughes problem is that he plays too much like a pg and takes some of those duties away from Arenas at times. Its why EJ says we don't need Co-pg's.

Hughes and Arenas at times during the game look as if they're competing for leading scorer numbers. Its funny when Buckhantz say in the middle of the game Arenas has 16 and Hughes has 15 points its as if they're trying to outscore eaxh other.

I think this season's playoffs are gonna tell us everything we need to know about what we're gonna do this off season.

When the game slows down and teams starting pounding it inside. I can't wait because I got a feeling all the kwame talk is gonna change and he's gonna earn himself alot of money.

I already know how the playoffs work it'll expose foolish guard play.

I love Arenas's game except for the defense but Hughes hasn't really played well since he's been back at all other than that 1st game. Hasn't been the same player as early in the season.

Once we get Jamison back and kwame more in the flow I think everything is gonna be fine. But I'm not about to let the injuries and inconsistent offensive and defensive flow make me make grand pronouncements that its all this players or that players fault.

Kwame's an easy target on this team its always convenient to just blame him yet the ones who were getting all the credit early in the season suddenly deserve none of the blame for the struggles yeah okay. Doesn't sound right if Kwame gets no credit for the winning but gets it all for the blame yet the guys who actually really influence the game are void of blame.

Jamison's leadership on the court right now is sorely missed because Hughes, nor Arenas aren't much of a leader at all and its showing up right now.

At least Arenas has said blame him when he's felt that things have gone wrong a