Site stalwart DCBlazer was at the game today! He sends in the following report:
Dear Wiz management, INVEST IN A HUSLTLE BOARD for crying out loud!!! Only points and fouls of those on the floor are shown.
Not being able to observe the Blazers throughout the season I remain uncertain whether the game wasn't so much as won by the Blazers as lost by Le Bullet. You never got a sense that the Blazers really owned the game. I never got a sense of their identity. They did do a great job of controlling the pace of the Wiz; contesting shots and limiting second chance opportunities. It was a grinding affair and obviously we came out on top. And what can you say, GA scoring a paltry 9 points was worth the ticket even if we had lost.
A smattering of boos for Coach during introductions but other than that, nothing special. Jack really likes to leave the floor with the ball in his hands, getting stuck in no man's land once he does so. Fortunately as the game wore on he started to get a bit more settled. The first quarter we came out flat and lacked drive. Good thing that the Wiz were just as bad. The first six minutes we were in love with the perimeter topping it off with a couple of airballs from 3-point range from Z-Bo and MW.
As a religious reader of everything Blazers (especially Dave's B.E.) I was very curious to see the kids play. I don't care if LMA is running point (ok, I'm exaggerating), he needs to play the minutes. His shot is so smooth that I can handle to lack of low B-Ball IQ that rooks usually come with. The more he's in, the sooner he's indoctrinated, the more he dominates as his shot is impossible to stop.
I think the game ball goes to Juan on this one as DC's his town and this was his playground. Once he arrived on the floor during the 1st quarter we got the energy that was severely missing with the first unit. Great alley-oop to LMA.
During the lead up to the game, all of my readings suggested that Ime was going to be the guy tasked with sticking to GA, but the Blazers did I nice job of switching up defenders on him as I saw Ime, Roy, Jack all spend a decent amount of time on him. Even Z-Bo seemed to provide some get help D a few times. Though the Blazers didn't look strong it did seem that they said, "anyone but GA is going to beat us if we drop this one," and it showed.
Roy wasn't the Roy that I've been reading about and I am not sure that it was due to the tough game in Charlotte, his finger or defending GA but he had a couple of errors and was slow on the defensive transition after he botched a play on the offensive end. At the end of the day, you can see his game and before I knew it, there was 8:38 left in the 2nd and we were up 30-14. GA didn't drop his first until the 7:30 mark.
The second half we seemed to come out with a bit more purpose and it showed (that or I just got accustomed to the Blazers style of play). I did find myself yelling at Z-Bo from my nosebleed seats to pass the ball as it just kills you to watch him sit on it like he does. PASS THE BALL!!!!!!! We managed a lot of second chance opportunities and had a great shooting percentage from what I could tell.
The only thing probably worse than our transition D is our fast break O. "O" is for ouch. Nothing more to be said.
The Wiz could not buy a bucket if they had busted into the US Mint. It was a joy to be immersed within the Wiz fans on stupid wig hair day as the Johnson behind us was chattering about how bad the Blazers were and that the Wiz should have been smacking them by 40. The rest of the game was spent watching to see if GA was going to hit double digits as garbage time hit relatively early in this one.
As an aside, I just got done watching DC news on TV and they took it to GA, telling him next time maybe he should "keep his mouth shut!" I nice rundown of the game using "humiliated, embarrassed, etc." in the process. A quick interview of GA at the tale end asking him if he'll be as inclined to throw out such a prediction in the future, GA said "...maybe I should predict like 10 steals or something instead..." (not verbatim).
Hope this helps as it was the first time I've ever scribbled notes while cheering on our boys.
Thanks DC! Much appreciated! It's nice to have eyewitness confirmation that Jarrett should absolutely, positively stop that jump passing and the team needs to work on fast breaks SERIOUSLY! Hard to get too picky in a double-digit win against a good team though...
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)