(Paroxysm at Gametime features our writers with original reporting by attending live games. It’s just like the stuff we did when we started, only completely the opposite in every way. In this edition, Amin Vafa covers his first game and balances the nervosa of being out of your comfort zone with being out of your comfort zone by playing as a Washington Wizard. Enjoy. – Ed.)
“Remember: You are not going to feel like you belong there. You belong there.”
The usual protocol when a bear standing at a podium gives you advice is to take it. Easier said than done.
I covered my first game tonight. My first professional sports game. I’d been in the locker room before. I’d been to meet and greets with players. I’d seen players shopping at Target or walking their dogs. I’d seen coaches walking down the street. Hell, I even saw Oliver Platt at the train station this week. But it’s different when you’re there for a game. You’re part of a machine. You need to go through the motions just like everyone else. You’re told beforehand where to be, where to go, who to see, who to cover, who’s who, who’ll be there to help out. But beforehand is different than during. Practice it all you want. During a game, all of that changes. Things are happening. You’re moving on the fly. You can’t just do it all by yourself. You have to communicate with other people. “Excuse me person who works here, where am I supposed to be? It’s my first game.”
Chris Singleton’s is back near halfcourt during shootaround. He’s with an assistant coach and the other rookies Jan Vesely and Shelvin Mack. They’re practicing basic ball movement skills: dribbling low to the ground, moving the ball fluidly around their torsos, bouncing the ball against their fingertips above their heads. Once they work together for a few minutes, they join the layup/post-move line. The same assistant coach tosses them the ball under the basket. They do a quick pivot under the basket, and lay it in. Andray Blatche is around for this part of shootaround, but after a few missed dunks it looks like his calf is still bothering him. But to his credit, he’s working up a sweat and looks like he wants to be out there and is having fun.
The line breaks up. Half of the players start going back inside to the locker room. A couple of them stay on the court. Vesely’s practicing his foul shots. Probably a good call. Jordan Crawford is practicing long jumpers at the top of the arc. Singleton’s on the right side of the arc, shooting threes. Singleton put up a respectable 3P% in college (about 33%). He’s shooting about the same percent this season, but he has taken far fewer shots.
“I knew I could shoot. It’s just if they knew I could shoot. That’s what I was working on, this whole lockout.â€
Singleton nailed his warmup and shootaround 3s. I didn’t think he was going to hit them, though, because his footing was really odd. He sets up his shots pigeon-footed. Then I realized another player has that same, ugly footing for this 3s: Antawn Jamison. Weird that the two haven’t played with each other, yet both played for the Wizards and share this awkward habit.
The Wizards were  up 68-60 at the half. A halftime score, we remind ourselves, higher than the final output of their game against Chicago at the United Center last month. After playing a surprisingly strong half of offensive basketball (they still gave up 60 points at the half), they lay a dud offensively and defensively against Sacramento (largely without Tyreke and Demarcus).
“Until they are commited to playing winning basketball… we’re going to be like this team was tonight. There wasn’t anything in that second half that was done to win the game… Guards from Sacramento crashed boards and put it in 6 times in fourth quarter.”
-Randy Wittman, not trying to hide his frustration and disappointment after a complacent second half.
Coach Wittman alternated between the usage of “they” and “we” when referring to the team, his professionalism battling his dismay at  his team that won’t listen. He called out three specific plays (thus singling out the perpetrators) where “winning basketball” mentality and plays weren’t implemented. The first was Nick Young’s botched 360 layup in the first quarter. The second was blaming a guard for standing out by the three point line while his man got his own putback (this happened a few times, it seemed, so it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly to whom he was referring). The third was JaVale McGee’s monster goaltend during the 3rd quarter, but to be fair, someone brought that up. However, Wittman was more infuriated by McGee’s lack of playing the Pick and Roll correctly than his goaltend.
Around the same time Isaiah Thomas officially rid himself of the “Mr. Irrelevant” moniker, the two teams headed into the locker rooms.
“We have some bad habits, and we’re trying to break them. When you have bad habits, sometimes you go back to them. When we played like a team and shared the ball and played team defense, we played well. When we didn’t, we struggled.”
-Roger Mason Junior, on the team’s regression to a non-fluid offense in the second half.
“We didn’t play defense, didn’t box out… We gotta get better mentally and physically… We gotta regroup. Enjoy these couple days off and get back to business.”
-Jordan Crawford, on the team’s lapses and looking forward.
“I thought this was a game we could win, and we thought we were gonna win… [We played] lots of one-on-one ball…[Sacramento] beat us up on the glass… [This game is] something we gotta learn from…we gotta play for 48 minutes.”
-Rashard Lewis, on expectations and consistency
“Singleton will be easy to talk to, Amin. He probably won’t have big crowds in front of him like the stars of the team, but he’ll have some good stuff to say. Ask him a few questions. Start with some softballs, and then ask him a few other questions.”
-Matt’s sound pregame advice to me.
Singleton. Singleton. Singleton? What on Earth could I ask this kid? Well, there’s all the regular stuff about him being drafted because his defensive prowess. “You were ACC Defensive Player of the year two years in a row. You led the ACC in steals and steals per game your sophomore year. You defend multiple positions. You’ve defended Deron Williams, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Kevin Durant this season. Who’s your toughest cover?” Well, his Defensive Win Share isonly 0.5, and he gives up an above average PER at both forward spots when he’s defending. So maybe everyone is a tough cover. Because he’s a rookie. And he’s being thrown at lions. VETERAN lions.
I could ask him about the college-to-pro transition, and how the team atmospheres differ. Yeah, maybe I’ll ask him that. OK, I’ll start with some easy questions about his personal life, then I’ll ask him about his transition after the game. He’s got half a season under his belt. It’ll be perfect.
Chris Singleton: 13 minutes, 0 points, 0-1 FG, 0-1 3P, 1 Reb, 1 Ast, 1 Stl, 1 Blk, 1 PF, -1 +/-
OK, so a rough half for Singl… oh, that was for the whole game? And he wasn’t around for questions after the game? Ruh-roh.
OK, it’s fine. Think. Think, McFly, think. Wait, what’s Rashard Lewis doing out there when there are 3 guards and a center on the floor? He’s playing power forward, like he used to in Orlando, but more in the post than out by the 3-point line. And he’s doing a halfway decent job. Good on him. A +5 on the night.
“You’ve got to move without the ball, because it’s not very many plays called for the three-man in this offense. A lot of stuff is with the point guard and the big, as well as the two guard.”
Well, Rashard, you look like you’re playing well as a big. You’re still moving without the ball a lot, but your aggressiveness is noted. Maybe you should stay at the 4.
This team is very young. There’s a veteran presence on the team (Blatche, Evans, Mason, Turiaf, and Lewis). There are even some championship-tested players on the team (Mason, Lewis, and Turiaf). But by and large, this team is young. It’s full of rookies and sophomores, guys who played for successful teams in high school and college, but who don’t have a “winning mentality” in the NBA yet, to use Coach Wittman’s phrase. Of the five veterans on the team, they’ve either all been injured at some point, or have had their minutes limited by ineffective play.
The young guys on the team, no matter how many times they practice their fundamentals during shootaround, need a veteran to hold their hand for a while. Not a long while, just long enough to point them in the right direction. And not literal hand-holding, just a good and consistent example. But there comes a time in every young player’s career when having no stable veteran presence is no longer an excuse. Self-motivation is a big key for this team. They don’t have many vets on whom they can rely to show them the ropes. But it’s clear from the energy in the locker room and the energy on the bench that these players care about each other, even if they beat themselves up after a loss. A wise man once said, “If we can’t live together, we’re going to die alone.” And based on the consensus post-game comments (“We played selfish. We didn’t pass the ball. We fell on bad habits. We didn’t play team defense.”), these guys know that they need to play together to finish out games.
Thirty-three games down. Thirty-three games to go. You can choose to be wandering the corridors of the arena by yourself, or you can motivate yourself to ask some questions to make sure you’re headed in the right direction and do your job. You belong there.
