Wizards Aim to Build on Win

It's going to take a lot more than a home victory over the worst team in the league for the Wizards to dig themselves out of a 5-23 hole, but Saturday's 104-95 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder (3-28) did provide some relief for a team that had lost eight straight games.

"Everyone in here knew we were going to win," said forward Dominic McGuire. "We just had to have this one. We're so tired of losing and then the way we let that one get away in Cleveland [a 93-89 loss on Christmas day], it just made us that much more motivated."

The Wizards are still looking for their first winning streak of the season and will have a chance to start one tonight at Houston, where they will face the Rockets for the second time this season. Houston used a strong fourth quarter to blow open a close game en route to a 103-91 victory at Verizon Center on Nov. 21.

Three days later, after a bad loss at New York, Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld fired Eddie Jordan as coach and replaced him on an interim basis with Ed Tapscott. The team is 4-13 under Tapscott after Saturday's victory, a win that was keyed in part by the efforts of two players Tapscott has been grooming since taking over -- McGuire and Andray Blatche.

McGuire, the rugged second-year player from Fresno State, made his third consecutive start and played his best NBA game. He finished with 12 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists and helped spark a game-turning fourth quarter run.

McGuire's offensive game remains a work in progress, but his defense, rebounding and overall aggressiveness makes him valuable and his confidence appears to be growing by the day. On consecutive fourth-quarter drives Saturday night, McGuire drove and either missed a shot or turned it over. He remained poised, however, and later drained a 20-foot jump shot as the shot clock wound down.

"I was just trying to stay aggressive," said McGuire, who has 29 rebounds in his three starts. "You can't get down on yourself. I know I have the ability to score. I don't always show it but I just have to do whatever to help my teammates."

Blatche also has shown solid progress. He filled the stat sheet with 19 points, tied a career high with 15 rebounds and added four assists, three steals and a block in 37 minutes. Those efforts helped make up for the absence of leading scorer Caron Butler, who was out with a sprained left ankle. Butler participated in practice yesterday and is expected to play if the ankle responds well after the morning shoot-around.

"Those guys played phenomenally well, especially with us missing Caron," said Antawn Jamison. "We knew we were going to need Dom against Kevin Durant and Andray really played well. We need that from those guys."

The Wizards will need that and more this week as they face road games at Houston (20-11), New Orleans (17-9) and Boston (27-4).

"It's three great opponents, three teams that made the playoffs last year and will make them again this year," Jamison said. "So, it's really about tuning into the task at hand. We have to play the type of basketball we did [Saturday night] in terms of moving the ball and then we still have a lot of room for improvement defensively because it's a different game on the road against very good teams, very savvy teams."

Several players said that the roots of Saturday's success could be found in Thursday's crushing loss at Cleveland, a game in which the Wizards led the Cavaliers by seven points with less than two minutes to play.

"We knew we played well in Cleveland but just didn't get some breaks for the win," Blatche said. "So, we just wanted to take that energy and that performance into [Saturday night] because if we played like that on a consistent basis, we can start winning some of these games."