(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)To satisfy your Wizards fix, DCist is teaming up with Kyle Weidie and Rashad Mobley of Truth About It, who will take turns penning a column on Washington’s professional basketball team every week throughout the season. You can read Kyle and Rashad on all things Wiz here.
Two weeks ago against the Miami Heat, the Washington Wizards played their hearts out for three quarters, only to fall short in the fourth 102-90. John Wall was ejected, but Jordan Crawford stepped up admirably and scored 39 points in a valiant, but losing effort. After the game, the Heat’s Dwyane Wade had some interesting comments about Crawford’s performance:
“He shot the ball well. Like I said, they were free shots. He’s a scorer, he played with a lot of heart, he’s a tough kid, but it’s a little bit different when you’re playing for something, then when you’re not. But he had a free mind, and he hit some good shots, some big shots, so credit to him.”
Then Wade had some pointed comments about why the lowly Wizards were able to stay so close to the Heat for so long.
“They are playing free basketball. They have no worries in the world. They don’t see a bad shot, it’s not a bad shot, everything they do is right.”
Now, at the time, I wrote that Wade’s comments were nothing but backhanded compliments, and I expected more from an All-Star player whose team was playoff-bound. But with closer examination, Wade had a point, and there is definitely a precedent for this line of thought.
During the second half of the 2003-2004 season, then-Wizards center Kwame Brown began to play the type of basketball that justified his status as the top pick in the draft just two seasons prior. He averaged 12 points and 7.9 rebounds from mid-January to the end of the season. Brown’s finest effort came on March 17th of that year, when he outplayed Sacramento Kings forward (and former Wizard) Chris Webber, scoring 30 points and grabbed 19 rebounds en route to a 114-108 Wizards victory. Even though the Wizards were just 13-28 during this stretch, were never a threat to make the playoffs and playing worry-free basketball, the thought was that Kwame finally understood what it meant to be an effective player. The stakes were automatically raised for the next season.
Unfortunately for Kwame, things did not work out so easily. During the offseason, Brown injured his foot, and when he returned in December, he was unable to capitalize on all that promise he had flashed the previous season. The Wizards made the playoffs that year (thanks to the emergence of Gilbert Arenas and the acquisition of Antawn Jamison), but Kwame was suspended for skipping practice and was a non-factor. He was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers just a few months later.
A more recent example of how dangerous it is to fall in love with spring brilliance is last year’s version of Andray Blatche. From the start of the 2009-2010 season, right up until the All-Star break, Blatche averaged a respectable 11 points and 5.2 rebounds in just four games as a starter. But when Jamison, Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson were traded on top of Arenas’ suspension, he was awarded starter’s minutes and his production increased.
Blatche averaged 21 points and 7.9 rebounds over the last few months of the season, and despite his team’s 8-24 record during that span (which included a 16-game losing streak and a Blatch suspension for sassing Coach Flip Saunders), he appeared to have finally learned what it took to be great every night, not just when he felt like it — the same line of thought applied to Kwame six years earlier. And just like Kwame, Blatche injured his knee during the offseason, used the next season to get himself back in shape, and was not nearly as dominant as he had been the previous spring.
This season, John Wall has been consistent and JaVale McGee has been consistently inconsistent, so their good play late in the season is not at all surprising. The stars of spring for the Wizards this year are rookie Jordan Crawford and, yet again, Blatche.
The Atlanta Hawks initially drafted Crawford with the 27th pick in the 2010 draft. For his first several months, he played in just 19 games and averaged 3.3 points in 8.9 minutes per game. But when he was traded to the Wizards on February 23rd, his numbers increased across the board. In 27 games as a Wizard (18 as a starter), Crawford has averaged 17.6 points in 36 minutes of game. He’s set career-highs, he was fearless on the court, he took a high volume of shots and he played like he had been on the bench all year — and that’s because he basically had been.
The one caveat is that Crawford was producing these numbers for a team that had no shot of the playoffs, major injuries to contend with at least three D-League players who may or may not be around next year. Crawford played well with Wall and he played hard, but he was asked to score by default. But when players return from injury, expectations are raised, and other teams figure out how to stop him, Crawford may struggle — or he may perform at an even higher level. It’s just uncertain.
Blatche missed 10 games in March due to a sprained shoulder, but prior to that he was averaging 15 points and 7.3 rebounds per game. During the last nine games of the seaon (one in March and eight in April), Blatche upped his totals to 22 points and 10 rebounds a game (which included a stretch of five double-doubles in a row). The best game of that stretch came against the Cleveland Cavaliers on April 1st, when he scored 36 points and grabbed 19 rebounds — 16 of which were on the offensive end.
Blatche and Crawford played so well with John Wall, that Ted Leonsis was ready to label them the new big three — a label that fit perfectly for the last month of the season when the Wizards were learning how to win meaningless games. But as Dwyane Wade so eloquently said two weeks ago, “they were playing free basketball, they had no worries.”
Last night, the Wizards wrapped up their season with a 100-93 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Afterwards, head coach Flip Saunders seemed cautiously optimistic about his team’s chances next season.
“From where we were at the beginning of the season to now, a lot of guys made a lot of progress,” coach Flip Saunders said. “The young guys have made great improvement. We have to use that as a springboard and transform that into wins next season.”
The dance continues.
