Your Wiz won their first game of the season in classic Wizards fashion. By that I mean the game was far closer than it needed to be, but it wouldn’t be Wizards basketball if it wasn’t that. Good to see the good guys get a win and clean up a lot of the stuff from the absolute disaster of a season opener against Indy. Here are my 5 points from last night’s win against MEM:

1. Both Kuzma and Poole combined to finish for 48 points, but both of them played like utter crap. Kuzma was 1-10 from three, and Poole was 8-23 from the field. I really can’t blame Kuz THAT MUCH because it seemed like the vast majority of the shots he was taking were good shots but they just weren’t going down for him. Poole on the other hand is a different story. Not only does he have atrociously bad shot selection, his handle is nice but not tight. He lost the ball like 4-5 times by trying to be too fancy. He needs to make sure his handle is tight and that he doesn’t try to do to much. He also had a lot of ill advised shots where he tries to create magic in the paint but he almost ends up failing always. Let’s see if there’s improvement over the course of the season, but we will see 40-50 shots from these guys nightly so get used to it.
2. Kispert was on a heater in the first half. He was hitting all sorts of threes, and the Grizzlies just couldn’t guard him. Unfortunately, he cooled down in the second half. Don’t know how much of that can be put squarely on him because he was brought in like 6 minutes into the second half and by then it seemed like he had cooled off. It was very encouraging to see Kispert play like this because he really didn’t light it up during pre-season and after the last 15-20 games of last season, I was expecting big things from Kispert. He certainly produced big last night, and I hope the offense makes it an emphasis to get him the ball and that he can get 10 shots a night.
3. The offense flowed much more smoothly for about 3 quarters. During the back half of the third quarter and the first half of the fourth quarter, the offense sputtered to a halt. This happened against Indy as well, but when Kuz and Poole are both out, it’s really not going to look good. This is where guys like Kispert, Deni, and Tyus are going to have to step up. We were up by 22 points at our apex in this game, and MEM was able to come back to 6 and make it a very close game. I really hope to see development from Kispert and Deni in particular with regards to being able to create shots and put up big numbers (15 ppg) which is very doable with the offensive carte blanche they will have with the time they have with the second unit.
4. We were playing a very very fast paced game. We shot 46 threes, which is the most we’ve taken in a LONG time. We took damn near 20 threes in the first quarter. This will be the recipe for success for this team. We have a lot of shooters so taking as many threes as possible maximizes the chance for this team to put up big numbers. It was enjoyable to watch them take so many threes, but again, the one thing the team as a whole can work on is shot selection. That was outrageously bad.
5. The defense was better, but could still be much improved. Too many times were Desmond Bane, Ziaire Williams, Smart, and the other Grizz three point shooters left open. The problem wasn’t effort, though that was a factor. The main problem was there was a lot of confusion and chaos in the Wiz defense. Often times, it seemed like multiple people were guarding the same person and people weren’t where they were supposed to be. It’s on WUJ to instill that discipline and continuity in the guys on defense. What I really care about with this team is not the offense, because that has a ceiling with how high it can go given the obvious lack of star talent. I want to see the team become at least a respectable defensive team by the end of the year, which is a reasonable goal given the great wing defenders we have (Kuz, Deni, Bilal, and Delon).

This was a good win tonight, but it clearly showed that the Wizards were an absolute work in progress, and that for this to be a finished polished product, it’s going to take a lot of time. I will be very interested to see how the Wiz do against their first contender of the year in the Boston Celtics. Fan Favorite Tingus Pingus will be back in town but this time in the Green and White. If history is any indication, we’re going to get our ass kicked, because the Celtics have been absolutely destroying us as of late, but who knows. I’ll see y’all tomorrow @ 7 for what should be a blowout but maybe is an interesting game…