Coach Ed Tapscott has decided to leave SG Nick Young as the team’s 6th man, despite the career-high 28 points Nick Young scored against the Chicago Bulls last week. Young isn’t sulking, though. He followed up his career-high in scoring with 12 points on 6 of 9 shooting in less than 26 minutes against the Charlotte Bobcats.
However, Young did miss a midrange jumper with less than 3 seconds in regulation against the Bobcats, leading to yet another loss. The team really misses Gilbert Arenas in those situations. Arenas has hit 10 last-second game-winning shots for the Wizards and there isn’t anyone on the roster who has demonstrated that sort of clutch shooting. We’ll be seeing more of those heart-breaking endings before this season is over.
Last Sunday the Wizards defeated the Cleveland Traveliers Cavaliers and were staring at a stretch of games against sub-.500 teams. It looked like a chance for the Wizkids to run off a few wins and improve their record, the worst in the Eastern Conference. It hasn’t happened. Games against the Raptors, Bulls and Bobcats all got away, though, and, adding in a loss to the superb Orlando Magic, the team has now lost 4 straight games. Just as bad, the vets are shouldering a big load of the work this year and it is starting to take its toll.
Forward Antawn Jamison did not practice yesterday because of a right knee strain and will be re-evaluated at today’s shoot-around.
Jamison and Butler — all-stars last season — have been carrying heavy minutes as well as the bulk of the playmaking and scoring load in the absence of Gilbert Arenas. Jamison has yet to miss a game; Butler missed three with an ankle injury.
Jamison is averaging a team-high 38.4 minutes; Butler (38.2) isn’t far behind.
“We’ve played a ton of games and I don’t want to wear them out,” interim coach Ed Tapscott said. “They’re such willing warriors for me. You look at where we are and we have a lot of games and a lot of travel so I’ve tried to give the young guys a little more run.”
Let’s hope Tapscott means it about playing the kids more. Early indications are that he might be serious. After inexplicably sitting for 4 games, rookie C Javale McGee got on the floor against Charlotte for 19 minutes and came up with 9 points [4 of 4 shooting] and 4 rebounds. PG Javaris Crittenton scored 4 points in almost 23 minutes against Charlotte, 6 points in almost 24 minutes against Chicago and played almost 27 minutes against the Raptors. Those are good minutes for Crittenton, indicating that Tapscott has decided, at least for now, that the team needs to play their kids in the backcourt. Using McGee more should be easy if he gets pretty much all the backup minutes at center behind Andray Blatche and Blatche frees up more time at center by backing up Jamison at power forward.
The Wizards play the Milwaukee Bucks tonight and DCPSR will have a game preview up later today.
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