PHOENIX — Well, there wasn’t much to say about this game. The Wizards must’ve had visions of snow drifts and snowball fights back at home dancing in their heads, because it definitely didn’t look like they were focused on playing good basketball.
We knew they were going to have a tough time because they were on the tail end of a back-to-back and because they had some banged up guys — Antawn Jamison (stinger), Caron Butler (ankle), Gilbert Arenas (bruised hip).
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But Flip Saunders didn’t want to use any of that for an excuse for tonight’s poorest of poor efforts.
“You can come up with excuses every night, why not to play,” Saunders said. “It’s a back-to-back, we’ve been on the road for eight [days], it’s the last game of the road trip. If you want to even be an average team, those thoughts can’t enter your mind. It’s almost as though the last thing we wanted to do was to be out there tonight. It’s pretty much unacceptable.”
The Suns pounced on Washington right away, and in the second quarter Gilbert Arenas tried to rekindle the magic of Friday night in Golden State. He jacked up 14 second-quarter shots. But there was no swag tonight. He made only four of those shots. And for the night as a whole, Arenas threw up 21 shots and made only six of them.
The Wizards as a team made only 32 of 88 shots and 8 of 21 3-point attempts. They had only 14 assists. Steve Nash had 15 himself to lead a Suns team that had 25. The Wizards had 14 turnovers.
The Suns outrebounded the Wizards 53-41, and hammered them 60-26 on points in the paint. The Suns had 19 second-chance points, and Washington had only nine.
No hustle. No heart. No life. No fight.
Basically there were two positives tonight. Nick Young came off the bench and had 20 points and got a good deal of playing time (five seconds short of 28 minutes). And Randy Foye had 13 points and a team-high four assists in his first extended playing time of since Nov. 21. I really am not seeing why either Nick or Randy is not starting at shooting guard. DeShawn Stevenson is a cool dude, and great to talk to. But zero points, 0-for-4 shooting, and he seems to have lost the quickness that made him a lockdown defender.
Foye could be helping the Wizards if he would be given the chance. Maybe a decent showing tonight — even though it was against scrubs — will convince Flip to give him some more minutes.
Alright everybody. I’m out. Gotta get up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport and hope to God that I can get back home to BWI. I know the Wizards have to be tired of life on the road after this week away because I definitely am.
