Thursday, December 6, 2007

Spank you very much, there's the door, don't let it hit you on the way out

We handled them. No question. Things that were awesome at last nights game...

Nick Young. Man, if he keeps this up he is going to drastically improve this team in the near future. Eddie Jordan puts him in, and he just scores. That's all. The buckets just keep going in. He finished with 14 points on 5-7 shooting and went 4-4 from the stripe. There was a point in the 4th quarter where he was looking to drive the lane from the top of the key, found it and leapt from about 1 step past the free throw line and attempted a sweet jam. It was blocked, but the move motivated him. You could see it the rest of the quarter, he kept looking for that lane. Eventually, he got it, from the corner he drove and finished with a sweet dunk. All I have to say is, the campaign to get Nick Young into the dunk contest has got to get going. This kid can dunk, even his teammates think so.

Brendon "Beast" Haywood took Ilgauskas to the floor last night. He shined his bald head so shiny he saw his own reflection after he came down from every big dunk or grabbed every rebound out of Big Z's hands. That's a shiny head.

Kurtis Evans

Caron Butler. Not enough can be said about his play. I mean, now that he has range, he is simply unstoppable. He is being guarded all the way out past the arc, and is consistently beating defenders to the hole. But everyone is talking about his offense, what about his D? Superb. Yeah, he makes mistakes, but he has been shutting down defenders left and right. He has consistently buckled down his opponent. He hasn't had an opponent score 20 on him in the past 5 games, while scoring 20+ in all those games except vs. San Antonio (he finished with 16). Damn, he's good.

Jamison is fantastic as well, but his fantastic-ness isn't as exciting as the others, because he always does this. He's proven time and time again that he can score in the most unusual ways, get rebounds, run the offense, and be the player the Wizards need him to be. Last night, his turnaround jumpers went in, his crazy down the lane flip shots went in. He finished the game with 17 pts and 12 rebounds. He's been simply amazing (see, amazing DOES happen here!).

AD. 9 assists last night. 10 points. 5 rebounds and only 2 turnovers. Part of me wants to argue with Gil about him being a PG. Put AD on the floor with Gil and let AD run the floor. Gil can create for himself and might work better off the ball. Anything's possible. Antontio Daniels was kinda surprisingly invisible last night. Which is good at times. That means he did his job and let the offense run. When your PG can disappear in the crowd while the rest of the offense does it's thing, it can be a beautiful thing. He always comes through when we need him.

Roger Mason actually hit some shots. He hit a couple vs. Toronto as well, very timely, awesome, 3-pointers. I think he shoots better from the corners though, like Bruce Bowen (if only he could match his D), but I like that they are going in. That's always a plus. He only hit one 3 last night, but finished 3-6 from the field, which is better than the 0'fers he had been putting up.

Not a single player on the Cavs scored more than 20. Big Z was Big Useless. 12 points in 23 minutes. Drew Gooden was outclassed by Jamison and looks like a caveman. Boobie's nickname is Boobie.

I got a free Gilbert home replica jersey for filling out 300 All Star ballots and voting for all 3 Wizards (with help, thanks buddy!) at the game last night. Not sure if they will keep doing it, the table was behind section 401.

Let's review what I blogged about yesterday, see how I did:
  • Assists. If we can break 20, we are golden. This obviously requires a significant contribution from AD.
We finished with 23 assists, 9 of which came from AD. Check.
  • Rebounds. If we could, that would be super (Hey Brendon, wake the F up!)
We out-rebounded the Cavs 45-29 and simply dominated the offensive boards with 13 to their 6. Haywood was a big part, pulling down 9 on the defensive end. Butler and Blatche, the Bed and Breakfast cause they are my Bread and Butter pulled down a combined 7 offensive boards.
  • Steals. We are currently 16th in the League in steals per game, with 7.5. We used to better at that (Jared Jeffries helped a lot, maybe we can get him back too). I would like to see that number up, especially tonight with so few good ball handlers on this Cleveland team.
Seven steals last night. Pretty average. More than the 5 of the Cavs, but I guess that the tighter D may result in less steals, since players aren't cheating as much (as it should be). Come to think of it, I'm going to back off the above statement and say I'm happy if we have tighter D, the steals aren't THAT important.
  • Caron Butler lighting it up behind the 3 point line. It's just awesome to see.
Didn't hit any last night (0-2), but that's ok. He still finished with 27 points on 13-23 shooting. He leads the league in 3 point efficiency, among other things, from the Post:
He's one of only two players in the league averaging more than 12 points and hitting at least 50 percent of his three-point shots (Daniel Gibson is the other), and one of only three players in the league averaging 23 points per game and making 50 percent of his shots (Dwight Howard and Carlos Boozer are the others). Butler ranks among the league's top 20 in scoring, shooting percentage, three-point shooting, foul shooting, steals and minutes.
All in all, the game was a complete success. For a complete recap, check out the live blog over at truthaboutit from last nights game. We ran smoothly on offense and defense, and I personally enjoyed kicking the crap out of the Cavs, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

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