Video: The Washington Post’s LaVar Arrington, Jason Reid, Dan Steinberg and Jonathan Forsythe discuss the current state of the Wizards, who are off to another poor start with starters John Wall and Nene out with injuries.
But when the untalented triers don’t even look like they’re doing that, when they put on a clinic in chaos against the Bobcats — chucking up 31 three-point attempts and making five, being run off the floor, 29-12, in the second quarter — it’s just plain rotten basketball, a criminal act against the tenets of the game.
Reminder: Charlotte won seven — count ’em, seven — games in 66 tries last season, finishing with the worst winning percentage in NBA history.
The Washington Post’s Jason Reid, Dan Steinberg and LaVar Arrington debate whether the Redskins or the Wizards have a better chance at making the postseason this year.
Insult to injury: Beal, the third pick in the draft, shot 1 for 11 and combined with point guard A.J. Price to miss all but two of 13 three-pointers. The second pick, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, looked like a solid veteran with 15 points and eight rebounds for Charlotte.
It’s too early this season to raise the Wall question, whether he really is special enough to turn this ship in the right direction and make the Wizards a contender one day.
It’s too soon to point out that Emeka Okafor, Seraphin and Nene all play the same position best — the five, the center position — and that putting any of them against the NBA’s nouveau power forwards who can bang down 15-footers as well as bang bodies is a recipe for disaster. The Wizards’ front line is built for the ’90s, not the new millennium.
When Wall gets healthy, he will have an undue of amount of pressure on him to fix what one player simply can’t right now.
What can be said is they are bad now, really bad. When you get beaten that badly by a historically bad team of a year ago it’s not a stretch to think you have historically bad possibilities, too.
Again, it’s early, and the injuries are clearly the biggest factor thus far. But if this is any harbinger of a season to come, Ted Leonsis, the team’s principal owner, and General Manager Ernie Grunfeld are going to have some ’splainin’ to do.
“Hey, we had some good years there: When Gil was healthy, Caron [Butler] and Antawn [Jamison] were clicking and we had some nice pieces, man. That place was loud,” Haywood said, reminiscing around 2 a.m. in his hotel room. “I don’t know what to tell you. We were getting there. But it wasn’t meant to be.”
The problem with the NBA in Washington for good parts of three decades now is it never seems like it’s meant to be. That feeling is getting so old. Like, Wes Unseld-old.
For Mike Wise’s previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/wise.
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