By Ivan Carter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2008

A physically and emotionally exhausted Antawn Jamison slumped at his locker after the Wizards fell to 1-10 with a 122-117 loss to the New York Knicks on Saturday night. Then he tried to explain what had just happened to his team.

When asked why the Wizards continue to fall apart late in close games, Jamison, seldom at a loss for words, went silent.

"I have no idea," he finally said.

When asked a similar question, Juan Dixon fared no better.

"If I had the answer to that question, I'd tell you," he said. "I'd tell everyone."

The Wizards are long on questions and short on meaningful answers as they try to pull themselves out of a horrific start to the season.

Gilbert Arenas, the team's $111 million franchise player, may or may not be back at some point in January and has openly talked about the team being lottery-pick bad; center Brendan Haywood is out at least another three months following wrist surgery; and the remainder of the roster is a mix of under-performing veterans and inexperienced young players.

Coach Eddie Jordan is doing what he can to keep his spirits up, but even that has its limits after a night like Saturday when the short-handed Knicks, who played only seven players after trading their two leading scorers on Friday, blitzed the Wizards with 16 three-pointers and summoned the energy to pull away down the stretch.

"First of all, not in our wildest dreams did we think we'd be 1-10," Jordan said of his postgame message to his team. "How do you handle that? I wish I could give them a manual that says, this is how you keep your poise, this is how you suck it up, this is how you stay positive. I can't find a manual like that but again, I reiterated that we don't have losing habits and that's a big thing for us. You respect the game, you play hard, you help your teammate, you protect your teammate, you play with confidence and you understand what the coaches are telling you and try to follow directions. We have all of that. We just haven't won."

The good news for the Wizards is that eight of the next 11 games are at home. The bad news is that the Wizards thus far have shown no sign that they are capable of taking advantage of such a favorable stretch.

Where to begin with the ugly numbers?

The Wizards are averaging only 94.6 points per game and giving up 103.5. That's a differential ranked 28th in the league entering yesterday's games.

Washington also is shooting only 43.5 percent as a team and has the league's worst three-point shooting percentage (28.2 percent). Defensively, the Wizards are giving up wide-open three-pointers in bunches (opponents are making 36.3 percent of them), and the Knicks have particularly benefited. In two wins over Washington, the Knicks connected on 29 three-pointers.

Jordan has changed the starting lineup, utilizing Dixon, Antonio Daniels and Dee Brown at point guard on different nights, he's started rookie JaVale McGee at center, he's gone with big lineups and small and he even challenged a returning all-star in Caron Butler by sitting Butler for the second quarter Saturday night after being displeased with Butler's defense.

Nothing has worked well enough to produce more than one win.

"You look at our roster and there is no way you can tell me that we are a 1-10 team," said forward Darius Songaila, who is averaging 4.5 points on 51.4 percent shooting and 1.1 rebounds in 12.4 minutes. "We've been there with the exception of a couple of games. We're there every game. We're better than this. It's just a matter of us putting it together for 48 minutes because 46 ain't going to cut it."