boutons
05-15-2005, 04:18 AM
Wiz have a LONG way to go.
Bulls have better talent and better coaching.
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washingtonpost.com
A Foundation To Build On
By Michael Wilbon
Post
Sunday, May 15, 2005; E01
In time, if the Washington Wizards keep raising their ambition, it will be a crushing disappointment to be swept in the playoffs. Maybe even next year. But not now. Almost nobody becomes a championship contender overnight. Okay, Magic Johnson did, but he's it. He's the entire list since the NBA-ABA merger. Everybody else, from Julius Erving to Larry Bird (though not for long) to Michael Jordan to Shaquille O'Neal, has been forced to negotiate defeat and frustration, sometimes with a sprinkle of humiliation, before getting a whiff of a championship. Used to be that Shaq, though it's easy to forget now, was swept out of the playoffs all the time, every year from 1995 through 1999. Jordan's first three years in the playoffs, he won a grand total of one playoff game and was swept twice. And one day, if the Wizards keep improving , a 45-win season and advancing to the second round won't mean much, if anything.
But it's pretty impressive now, even after Miami won four straight to end their season. Washington isn't San Antonio or Los Angeles or Chicago. Washington has been a NBA wasteland for the better part of 25 years. Putting together a team worth watching, sending two Wizards to the All-Star Game, finishing over .500, making the playoffs and winning in the first round is almost dizzying given the years and years of despair.
This was a great season, plain and simple.
"It's disappointing right now," Brendan Haywood said, "but we did things that hadn't been done since the '80s. The Wizards were pretty much dead, and we brought in some life."
Of course, the hardest thing to do in the NBA is go from 45 wins to 50 or more. It requires playing much better defense than the team played this season. It will require a roster upgrade that figures to include acquiring a veteran with a scowl and the muscle to back it up and a player who thinks defense first. It will require the players who stay to get better. It requires making a team pay when it comes into your home without its best player, as Miami did in Games 3 and 4 of this series.
Consider this: O'Neal scored no points in Washington. He and Alonzo Mourning together scored no points in Game 4. Yet, the Wizards lost both games at home. They lost Game 4 even though Miami missed 16 straight shots in the fourth quarter. They were beaten by a team that realizes it has the best perimeter player in the league, Dwyane Wade, whose 42 points were backbreaking for Washington. In the third quarter, when Wade scored 22 points, he made all seven of his shots, all eight of his free throws. Nobody in the game under 6 feet 10 is as good as Wade is right now. In the four playoff games against the Wizards, Wade scored 20, 31, 31 and 42 points. He averaged eight assists and seven rebounds. Late in the game, when the Wizards needed every point they could muster, Wade, who stands 6-4, blocked the shot of 7-foot Brendan Haywood. "I want the ball in my hands," Wade said afterward. "I want to make plays for the guys. I got in that matrix [in the third quarter]. I felt like I couldn't miss."
If we took that league MVP vote today, Shaq and Steve Nash might have company. Wade scored 34 points in the Game 4 closeout of New Jersey, 42 in the Game 4 closeout of the Wizards. Both games were on the road. Both games were tight. "I want to be the guy," he said, "who people say, 'He's ready to put these guys away.' " Well, we're saying it already.
As for the Wizards, at least they made Miami work for its sweep, right down to the final seconds, when Eddie Jones had to hit a three-pointer to reclaim the lead for the Heat. The Wizards played better last night than they did Thursday in Game 3, and better in Game 3 than in Game 2. They've got a long way to go but traveled a pretty good distance this season. Not too long ago it was pure fantasy to think they'd play three consecutive nail-biters against the No. 1 seed in the conference.
They've gotten, through participating in 10 playoff games, some sense of how much harder and smarter a team has to play in May than in April. They must have learned that depending on the Big Three of Gilbert Arenas, Larry Hughes and Antawn Jamison is fine for the regular season, but hardly enough for the playoffs. They have to have learned they need to involve Haywood (18 points, 15 rebounds) more, that they can't continue to jack up shots in close games (a measly 12 assists in Game 4), that they do better when Arenas and Hughes attack the glass instead of settling for three-point attempts, that defense is more reliable than offense.
Mourning, whose timely and perfectly characteristic block of Hughes's shot, which would have tied the game, has a very sharp sense of the Wizards after these four games. "They're a very talented team that's missing a couple of pieces, with a solid [offensive] system that works for them," he said. "The thing is, they play in spurts. They're a spurt team. There's no real consistency. When their shots aren't falling, there's not too many things they do to impact the game."
Mourning wasn't criticizing Eddie Jordan or his players. He was just candidly assessing the Wizards after a four-game playoff series. And it would be silly to disagree with his evaluation, just as it would be silly to find much fault with the Wizards for losing to a better team. And yes, Miami is better even without Shaq because Wade was the best player on the floor by quite a bit. It will be fascinating to see whether he'll find his Waterloo in Detroit, where Michael Jordan found his for so many years.
Wade's presence, because he's only 23, ensures there'll be no U-turn in Miami. The last time the Washington franchise looked this promising, 1997, it turned out to be a house of cards. You say the names Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Rod Strickland, Gheorghe Muresan, Tracy Murray, Calbert Cheaney and it's a reminder of failure, not promise. There have been quite a few one-year wonders, and the only way to avoid being one is to get right back in the playoffs next year, get to the point where you win at least a couple of home games against a Miami or Detroit or Indiana in the playoffs. Sooner rather than later, the Wizards have to get to the point where a sweep, or for that matter a loss of any kind in the playoffs, is totally unacceptable.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Bulls have better talent and better coaching.
============================
washingtonpost.com
A Foundation To Build On
By Michael Wilbon
Post
Sunday, May 15, 2005; E01
In time, if the Washington Wizards keep raising their ambition, it will be a crushing disappointment to be swept in the playoffs. Maybe even next year. But not now. Almost nobody becomes a championship contender overnight. Okay, Magic Johnson did, but he's it. He's the entire list since the NBA-ABA merger. Everybody else, from Julius Erving to Larry Bird (though not for long) to Michael Jordan to Shaquille O'Neal, has been forced to negotiate defeat and frustration, sometimes with a sprinkle of humiliation, before getting a whiff of a championship. Used to be that Shaq, though it's easy to forget now, was swept out of the playoffs all the time, every year from 1995 through 1999. Jordan's first three years in the playoffs, he won a grand total of one playoff game and was swept twice. And one day, if the Wizards keep improving , a 45-win season and advancing to the second round won't mean much, if anything.
But it's pretty impressive now, even after Miami won four straight to end their season. Washington isn't San Antonio or Los Angeles or Chicago. Washington has been a NBA wasteland for the better part of 25 years. Putting together a team worth watching, sending two Wizards to the All-Star Game, finishing over .500, making the playoffs and winning in the first round is almost dizzying given the years and years of despair.
This was a great season, plain and simple.
"It's disappointing right now," Brendan Haywood said, "but we did things that hadn't been done since the '80s. The Wizards were pretty much dead, and we brought in some life."
Of course, the hardest thing to do in the NBA is go from 45 wins to 50 or more. It requires playing much better defense than the team played this season. It will require a roster upgrade that figures to include acquiring a veteran with a scowl and the muscle to back it up and a player who thinks defense first. It will require the players who stay to get better. It requires making a team pay when it comes into your home without its best player, as Miami did in Games 3 and 4 of this series.
Consider this: O'Neal scored no points in Washington. He and Alonzo Mourning together scored no points in Game 4. Yet, the Wizards lost both games at home. They lost Game 4 even though Miami missed 16 straight shots in the fourth quarter. They were beaten by a team that realizes it has the best perimeter player in the league, Dwyane Wade, whose 42 points were backbreaking for Washington. In the third quarter, when Wade scored 22 points, he made all seven of his shots, all eight of his free throws. Nobody in the game under 6 feet 10 is as good as Wade is right now. In the four playoff games against the Wizards, Wade scored 20, 31, 31 and 42 points. He averaged eight assists and seven rebounds. Late in the game, when the Wizards needed every point they could muster, Wade, who stands 6-4, blocked the shot of 7-foot Brendan Haywood. "I want the ball in my hands," Wade said afterward. "I want to make plays for the guys. I got in that matrix [in the third quarter]. I felt like I couldn't miss."
If we took that league MVP vote today, Shaq and Steve Nash might have company. Wade scored 34 points in the Game 4 closeout of New Jersey, 42 in the Game 4 closeout of the Wizards. Both games were on the road. Both games were tight. "I want to be the guy," he said, "who people say, 'He's ready to put these guys away.' " Well, we're saying it already.
As for the Wizards, at least they made Miami work for its sweep, right down to the final seconds, when Eddie Jones had to hit a three-pointer to reclaim the lead for the Heat. The Wizards played better last night than they did Thursday in Game 3, and better in Game 3 than in Game 2. They've got a long way to go but traveled a pretty good distance this season. Not too long ago it was pure fantasy to think they'd play three consecutive nail-biters against the No. 1 seed in the conference.
They've gotten, through participating in 10 playoff games, some sense of how much harder and smarter a team has to play in May than in April. They must have learned that depending on the Big Three of Gilbert Arenas, Larry Hughes and Antawn Jamison is fine for the regular season, but hardly enough for the playoffs. They have to have learned they need to involve Haywood (18 points, 15 rebounds) more, that they can't continue to jack up shots in close games (a measly 12 assists in Game 4), that they do better when Arenas and Hughes attack the glass instead of settling for three-point attempts, that defense is more reliable than offense.
Mourning, whose timely and perfectly characteristic block of Hughes's shot, which would have tied the game, has a very sharp sense of the Wizards after these four games. "They're a very talented team that's missing a couple of pieces, with a solid [offensive] system that works for them," he said. "The thing is, they play in spurts. They're a spurt team. There's no real consistency. When their shots aren't falling, there's not too many things they do to impact the game."
Mourning wasn't criticizing Eddie Jordan or his players. He was just candidly assessing the Wizards after a four-game playoff series. And it would be silly to disagree with his evaluation, just as it would be silly to find much fault with the Wizards for losing to a better team. And yes, Miami is better even without Shaq because Wade was the best player on the floor by quite a bit. It will be fascinating to see whether he'll find his Waterloo in Detroit, where Michael Jordan found his for so many years.
Wade's presence, because he's only 23, ensures there'll be no U-turn in Miami. The last time the Washington franchise looked this promising, 1997, it turned out to be a house of cards. You say the names Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Rod Strickland, Gheorghe Muresan, Tracy Murray, Calbert Cheaney and it's a reminder of failure, not promise. There have been quite a few one-year wonders, and the only way to avoid being one is to get right back in the playoffs next year, get to the point where you win at least a couple of home games against a Miami or Detroit or Indiana in the playoffs. Sooner rather than later, the Wizards have to get to the point where a sweep, or for that matter a loss of any kind in the playoffs, is totally unacceptable.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company