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Truth is glazed and the Wizards are basted
Peachtree Hoops

Highest Plus/Minus: Antawn Jamison (+14 in 37:35)
Lowest Plus/Minus: Juan Dixon (-16 in 7:00)
Best Five Man Unit: Antonio Daniels, Nick Young, Antawn Jamison, Darius Songaila, Andray Blatche (+4 for the start of the 4^th quarter)
Worst Five Man Unit: Dee Brown, DeShawn Stevenson, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, JaVale McGee (-9 to start the game)

Four factors:

Last night's game more or less followed the script that we've seen far too often this season: Wizards find themselves in a early hole at the end of the first quarter, start to make a comeback in the second, struggle at the start of the third, make another comeback to get close and then they can't finish at the end.  I think this quote from the Wizards Insider recap really says it all:

Well, as a Wiz vet said to me a few minutes ago in the locker room: "Same old (stuff)."

Obviously, there's been a lot of tough losses this season and you can see that it's starting to wear on some of the players.  The key right now is to focus on execution and keep things upbeat, because the last thing we need right now is for the players to start thinking beforehand that they're going to mess things up late in the game.  The last thing a 2-12 team needs is self-fulfilling prophecy working against them.

Other thoughts from last night's game:

• At this point, we all know what Darius can and can't do as a player.  We know he's not going to get a bunch of blocks or dunks, but he can make some shots and he work well within the frame of the offense.  Last night he did a good job of playing to his strenghts.  Other than Andray Blatche, Darius has benefited the most from the coaching change, in this blogger's opinion.

• I admire the thought of Andray to go and use his long arms to try and poke the ball away from the other team when they grab a defensive rebound, but he really needs to stop doing it.  He's gotten way more fouls doing that than he has steals.
• There are three ways to get open three point shots in the NBA:
  • Work the ball around, force the defense to over-commit and leave a man open beyond the arc.
    
  • Play against the Wizards.
  • Be DeShawn Stevenson.  Teams will give you all the space you want to shoot a three when you're only making 26.9% of them.
    
• Antonio Daniels hit two three pointers last night!  The last time AD made two triples in the same game was November 24, 2007.  The rest of Daniels' game was also solid, I don't think it will be long until we see him back in the starting lineup.
• The rebounding was very good last night.  I know the Hawks were without Josh Smith and Zaza Pachulia, but the Wizards didn't get any rebounds from JaVale McGee, Dominic McGuire, or Etan Thomas and they still managed to win the rebounding battle.  I'll take it.
• To be honest, I didn't know a whole lot lot about Solomon Jones before tonight's game, but I was impressed with his performance tonight.  Getting 5 blocks in 15 minutes has a way of getting people to notice you.
• I believe the Wizards have benefitted more from technicals from players in street clothes than any other team this season.  Joey Dorsey got T'd up in that infamous Summer League game in July and Josh Smith got a tech last night for arguing from the bench.  At least one thing has been going our way this season.

With 68 games left on the schedule, it's still going to be a long time until the Wizards ______ the season.

On defense, we can't ______ close-outs.

On offense, we can't ______ when we get high percentage shot attempts in the paint.

And as the record clearly shows, we just can't ______ games.

EDIT: The lack of a game thread was my fault.  I forgot I had to do some broadcasts for Brandeis games. -PM.

First of all, sorry about not having a game thread tonight, I guess there was some kind of miscommunication on that, which I'm pretty sure was my fault.  I was at the G!O!T!N! tonight (hence, why I'm pretty sure it was my fault) so I didn't get a chance to see the start of the Ed Tapscott era tonight, but I'm pretty sure that there's some kind of mass conspiracy going on, because there's no way that these numbers right.

Did Andray really have 25 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 blocks tonight?

Did Caron Butler really score 35 points?

Did we actually hold a team to 30% from behind the arc?

Did Andray play for almost 30 minutes and only have 1 turnover?

Did we outscore the Warriors in every quarter of the game?

Did Dee Brown, who had scored all of nine points this season, score in double digits tonight?!?

If even one of these things is true, I'll be estatic.  But I'm pretty sure that you all are trying to pull a fast one on me.

I said earlier that my thoughts on the firing of Eddie Jordan were scattered and to be honest, they still are, but I feel the need to say something so rather than try to collect them all into some garbled nonsense, here are those scattered thoughts in their raw form.

• It's kind of funny because I was actually planning on laying out why Eddie Jordan wouldn't be fired in the Knicks recap, but as I was typing it up, I lost my draft and when I re-typed it, I decided to skip that part.  The main point of my argument was going to be that Ernie Grunfeld would not have spent all that money in the off-season to keep the core of the team together long term just to get rid of the coach less than a month into the season with 2/5ths of the starting lineup out.  Today is another fine example of my gut instinct failing me.
• Another thing that I've learned in my life is that Kevin Broom is a far smarter man than I can ever hope to be.  I would highly recommend checking out his thoughts on the issue.
• While I'm not sold on the timing of the decision, ultimately I agree with the move.  I don't think that the team tuned Eddie out by any means, but it was clear that he wasnt getting what he used to out of his talent.  Unless your name is Phil Jackson, Gregg Poppovich, or Jerry Sloan it's going to happen at some point or another.  That's the reality of life as an NBA coach.
• It's been pretty clear this season that Antawn Jamison is not happy with certain people in the locker room.  My fear is now that Eddie Jordan is gone that Antawn is going to start going nuclear on those people now that a man has lost his job.  His comments after today's practice do nothing to dissuade this fear of mine:

An agitated Jamison (and he's almost never agitated) when asked by a TV talking head whether Jordan "deserved it" : "Next question."

Was he shocked: "I was shocked. Why would I not be shocked?"
Reporter: "Because the team is 1-10 sometimes that happens when a team is 1-10."
Jamison: "The team is 1-10, not the coaching staff. Next question."

More Jamison: "As players you take the responsibility for going out there and getting the job done and we didn't get it done. Unfortunately they got rid of coach and we have to take it from there."

• Speaking of Jamison, it was kind of odd to see him rocking an Undrcrwn O-Face tee today after practice.  Somehow I get the feeling when he put on that shirt this morning and thought about change that he wasn't thinking about a change at head coach.

• According to Ernie, Ed Tapscott will be the interim head coach for the rest of the season.  I'll take Ernie at his word that that's the case, but I'm with Ziller in thinking that Ed Tapscott won't be the long term solution as coach.  I liked what he had to say during the press conference today, but it doesn't take much of coaching pedigree to identify the issues with this team right now.  Until I see otherwise, there's nothing that I see that would lead me to believe that he'll be anything more than a caretaker for Grunfeld until he finds a long-term solution.
• As for who I'd like to see take the reigns long term, I'm probably crazy, but I'd really like to see Avery Johnson get the job.  I know he lost his team near the end of his tenure, but I'm pretty sure he's aware of that.  Why not give him a chance to show that he's learned from those mistakes?  If he can overcome that, there's not a lot in his coaching ability left to criticize.  But that's just my two cents.  The other two names that I've heard tossed around a lot (Flip Saunders and Tom Thibodeau) would also be nice selections, in my opinion.
• As he rides off into the sunset in that 2008 Mercedes Benz Silver GL with black leather interior, I've got a lot of good memories from the Eddie Jordan era.  It may not have ended the way that anyone wanted, but I think when we look back at this era years from now, we'll look back at this era fondly.  I think UM put it best:

He was never able to get this team over the hump, but he’ll be remembered more for the good he did for this franchise. He’s a good man, a solid coach and a great Washingtonian, but it was time to move in a new direction.