| Jazzed Up Authored by - March 21, 2005 - 10:08 am
March 21, 2005
By Jason Rosenthal
Before embarking on a five-game Western road trip, the Wizards secured an important home win Saturday night at MCI vs. the reeling Utah Jazz. Gilbert Arenas, held scoreless in the first half, scored 22 points in the second half, including four crucial free throws in the last 30 seconds, sending the Jazz to their 8th straight defeat. The Wizards overcame an eight-point halftime deficit, improving to 36-28 overall — 24-9 in the friendly confines of the East End.
The Wizards were playing with just eight healthy players, including NBDL call-up Damone Brown, who arrived shortly before the game. Seldom-used Laron Profit started in place of Antawn Jamison (injured list) and Kwame Brown (flu).
"The numbers say we should not have won the game,” said Coach Eddie Jordan. “But you can't measure heart, you can't measure desire and you can't measure guts. That is how we won the game tonight.”
The Jazz shot 52.4% from the floor and out-assisted the Wizards 27-15. But as they’ve done throughout the season, the Wizards won because of offensive rebounding, outscoring the Jazz 21-5 in second-chance points while grabbing 15 offensive rebounds. The Wizards were also a pomegranate-margarita sweet 9-18 from three-point range, led by Steve Blake, who converted 5-6 three-point attempts. Blake gave a huge boost to the Wizards in the second quarter, with Arenas struggling and saddled with foul trouble.
The game was physical and chippy throughout, including 50 personal fouls, five technical fouls, and one ejection. Keith McLeod (Bowling Green University) was tossed in the third quarter after first elbowing Jared Jeffries, then pushing him when Jeffries had punched the ball from his hands. Eddie Jordan was called for a technical shortly thereafter.
“Our crowd was great tonight,” said Jordan about his technical. “They were into the game and I was just trying to fight for them.”
Larry Hughes and Jazz guard Raja Bell were going at each other throughout the game. Hughes, peeved at what he thought were a couple cheap shots, sidestepped a question about his matchup with Bell.
“Ruffin told us – that’s how they play,” said Etan Thomas. “That’s how Jerry Sloan coaches them to play.”
Bell put the Jazz up one, 93-92, on a jumper over Hughes with 43.7 seconds to play. Arenas regained the lead with two free throws, but Bell again answered with another jumper, putting the Jazz back up, 95-94 with 17.7 to play. After a timeout, Arenas dribbled down the clock before making his move to the basket, getting fouled and sealing the game with two free throws at the 2.3 second mark. Howard Eisley missed the potential game-winning jumper as time expired.
In typical Arenasesque fashion, Gilbert raced into the stands, high-fiving fans before customarily ripping off his jersey and presenting a lucky fan with a sweaty souvenir.
Andre Kirilenko, who is the antithesis of the European stereotype, led the Jazz with 28 points, 7 boards, 6 assists, 3 steals, and 5 blocked shots.
WizFans Extra
The Damone Brown signing presents a delicious piece of irony. The last time Brown was in MCI Center was as a member of the Toronto Raptors on January 13, 2003, during Michael Jordan’s last season. Brown had just been signed to fill a depleted Raptors squad, featuring just eight healthy players, including three players on 10-day contracts. The game was at the start of a four-game home stand, in which Doug Collins had wanted to use as a nice springboard towards playoff positioning. The “Let’s Get Greedy” tour started badly, as the Raptors beat the listless Wizards. It was downhill from there for MJ’s encore.
Magruder High School alum Jerome Williams scored 14 points and grabbed 20 rebounds in the game, but the real story was Damone Brown. Brown got some nice pub as a result, featured in a passage of Michael Leahy’s When Nothing Else Matters, his over sensationalized story of MJ’s two years in Washington:
One of the evening’s standouts was 6’9” forward, 23-year-old Damone Brown, two years out of Syracuse University, who had just arrived the night before from the Charleston Lowgators of the developmental league to be told that, as his opening assignment, he would spending much of the game guarding Michael Jordan. Welcome. The coaches had only this bit of advice for him: Don’t go for Jordan’s pump fake.
Brown played so well against Jordan that the Toronto coaches kept him in the game for 32 minutes. His size and the constancy of his hand in Jordan’s face seemed to bother the star as the game wore on. By the fourth quarter, Brown was as strong as ever, and Jordan, who was logging 41 minutes midway through a mid-season of too many long nights, appeared tired, hitting only about a third of his shots for a glossy but sub par 22 points.
With two minutes left, Brown went by Jordan for a layup and the game was over, Toronto winning by nine. There were Damone Browns all over the country now, guys you’d see up in the NBA for a year, or a month or 10 days, and then never see again, headed to Europe, or back to the developmental league, or to a playground. They were floating all over, and that one of them had just stepped into MCI and done a number Jordan meant the line between the aging god and scads of players could not be any thinner, that nothing was a guarantee when it came to an old legend’s play. A Damone Brown meant anything was possible.
Brown would score a career high that night, and maybe, just maybe, he’s on the team just to spite MJ. In reality, he’s injury filler, who shouldn’t see anything but emergency time.
What We Learned
The zone defense that Eddie Jordan employs is either not being executed correctly by the players or is just a really bad scheme. The Wizards were out-assisted for the 18th straight game. That’s not a good trend. It’s a sign of two things. One, the team isn’t playing good defense, and two, on offense, they aren’t moving and sharing the ball. Eddie Jordan hasn’t had a healthy lineup in several weeks, and while that can explain some of the offensive shortcomings, it cannot explain how poorly this team plays defense.
Teams get too many open looks when the Wizards go to a zone, which might work in the 1-16 game of the NCAA’s. At the pro level, however, guys hit open shots. I know Eddie Jordan feels that he needs to compensate for presumably poor one-on-one defenders, but it’s obvious to most that the zone isn’t working. Perhaps Ritchie Pettibone is available to help out with the defensive coaching?
Despite injuries and defensive shortcomings, the Wizards are being held together by the strong play of Hughes, Arenas, and the under appreciated Brendan Haywood. For the Wizards to be playoff threats, however, they’ll need to have their pantry stocked with their full roster to make some noise.
Jared Jeffries isn’t used to watching the NCAA tournament without his alma mater, Indiana University, as part of the festivities. With rumors swirling that his old coach, Mike Davis, will be fired shortly, Jeffries wants to see someone come in with ties to the IU program.
“I’d like to see someone like Keith Smart or Randy Wittman,” said Jeffries. “Someone part of the IU family.”
Playoff Watch
At 36-28, the Wizards are two full games ahead of the LeBron-led Cavs for the 4th seed in the Eastern Conference. However, the Wizards leave Monday for the start of a five-game, seven-day Western swing, while the elephants, clowns, and trapeze artists invade Chinatown. Luckily, the trip includes winnable games vs. the Clippers, the free-falling Trailblazers, and a rematch with the Jazz. The games vs. the Nuggets and Sonics games could get ugly.
In April, the Wizards finish the season by playing seven of 12 at home. Hopefully, the team’s core 10 – Arenas, Hughes, Haywood, Jamison, Jeffries, Kwame Brown, Etan Thomas, Blake, Michael Ruffin, and Juan Dixon – will be healthy for the final stretch. Not only will the Wizards be jockeying for home-court advantage in the playoffs (you read that sentence correctly), but Eddie Jordan will be putting some finishing touches on his player rotations as the team marches towards their first playoff berth since the Muresan era.
Jason Rosenthal is the content supervisor at WizFans.com and team columnist for RealGM.com. He can be reached at jmrosenth@yahoo.com.
|
