Wizards Frustrated By Lack of Progress

When he made the decision to fire Eddie Jordan as head coach on Nov. 24 and replaced him with Ed Tapscott on an interim basis, Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld felt a change had to be made in order to salvage the season following a 1-10 start.

Before the injury-riddled Wizards were destroyed by the Denver Nuggets on Friday night -- a loss that dropped the team to a league-worst 10-40 overall and 9-30 under Tapscott -- Grunfeld said he stands by the decision to remove Jordan and would do it again.

"Yes, I thought at the time and now, that we needed a new voice," Grunfeld said. "We were 1-10. During the preseason we played lackluster basketball and we played that way early in the season. [Jordan] had a very nice long run -- he was the third-longest tenured coach -- but after awhile I felt a new voice and new style was needed."

The problem is that the Wizards have shown no tangible improvement since the change and in fact, it could be argued that they've gotten worse.

Friday's loss was the eighth in the last nine games and the team has been especially noncompetitive in recent losses to the Nuggets, New Jersey Nets, Memphis Grizzlies and Philadelphia 76ers.

Clearly, injuries to key players such as Gilbert Arenas, Brendan Haywood, DeShawn Stevenson and Andray Blatche are a huge part of the problem, but the team wasn't playing well with Stevenson and Blatche in the lineup and hasn't gotten better since Grunfeld shook up the roster with a three-team trade that sent Antonio Daniels to New Orleans and brought in guards Mike James and Javaris Crittenton on Dec. 10.

Even worse, the Wizards have been sloppy defensively and disjointed offensively while often displaying poor body language on the court and on the bench.

Veteran forward Antawn Jamison defended Tapscott and his staff following Friday's game and continues to pin some of the team's struggles on the lack of progress made by young players, who have seen an increase in playing time as the season has gone along.

It appears that if anything good is going to come out of this season, other than a lottery pick, it will be the development of rookie center JaVale McGee and second-year players Crittenton, Dominic McGuire, Oleksiy Pecherov and Nick Young.

"You can use youth as an excuse if you want to but you should still be able to play at a high level and you should still understand that if you're getting beat back door time after time after time after time, you should be smart enough to not allow that to happen. It's embarrassing. . . . Nobody's going to feel sorry for you. We've got young guys so we should have more energy that the other team and I'm not seeing that."

Jamison's frustration has been slowly building throughout the season and it hasn't been helped recently by the absence of fellow regular starter and two-time all-star Caron Butler, who has missed the last two games with the flu.

The team did not practice yesterday and Butler will be reevaluated today before a decision is made on his status for tonight's game against the Indiana Pacers at Verizon Center.

For his part, Tapscott continues to try to maintain a positive attitude in pre- and postgame meetings with media members and with his team in the locker room and on the bench. At one point during Friday's debacle, he walked to the end of the bench where Jamison had taken a seat after coming out and chatted briefly with his co-captain before returning to his usual spot near the scorer's table.

"Antawn is frustrated but he gets upset in the right way," Tapscott said. "He'll make comments in a teaching mode, he'll make comments in an effort to bring up intensity, so he's doing everything he can do, but the game is played five-on-five."

As the losses mount and misery sets in, Grunfeld said he stands by the job Tapscott and his staff have done.

"He was put into a tough situation and he's kept these guys together and he's kept them playing hard," Grunfeld said. "He's put in a real rigorous routine for our younger players as far as weight room, skill development and conditioning. It's been real difficult for him but he's hung in there and kept the situation going in a positive direction. Obviously, no one's happy with the wins and losses but I think we've seen development from our players and they've shown progress."