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| Wednesday, January 2 Updated: January 4, 11:49 AM ET No longer stinky, MJ and Wiz turn it around By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
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I was all set to write about the increasing sentiment among teams that the league might not enact the luxury tax after all -- which, if it happened, would be a big, big deal. Then I went to see the Wizards play the Nets on Monday. He's at it again. He is overpowering your doubt, withering your resistance, making the impossible seem strangely inevitable. He is filling the MCI Center and every other arena in the league and he is lifting weights again for the first time in weeks and he is easing Dick Ebersol's pulse and he is checking on Brendan Haywood and he is making the Wizards -- the Godforsaken, ugly stepchild Wizards -- into must-watch entertainment.
He is scoring at will again, as teams have to re-think their scouting reports. The book on him earlier this season was to simply put a bigger guy on him, because he didn't have the quicks anymore, and when Paul Pierce capped him in the final minutes the first week of the season, and he couldn't get by Antawn Jamison and Rashard Lewis, it looked all too prescient. But that was B.S.: Before Stink. Ever since he said "we stink" following the Wizards' ninth straight loss in late November -- and by "we," he meant "them" -- everything has fallen into place, both for him and the team. Since then, Richard Hamilton has played like an All-Star, and Haywood, the seven-foot rookie, is off the injured list and blocking two shots a night, and the big guys are rebounding and setting screens, and Hubert Davis and Chris Whitney and Tyronn Lue are hitting 3's. But it all starts with him, because he's the guy that makes the others believe they can win. He scored 51 and 45 in consecutive games, and just as impressive is the 17 rebounds in those two games, and all of a sudden, Friday loomed on the schedule. "What's Friday?," he asked reporters, playfully, after he dropped the 45 on Kenyon Martin and Richard Jefferson's beans, but he knew that Friday brought the Bulls to Washington, and didn't that end up being interesting, with him ending up scoring 29 against his old team and helping raise the Wiz three games over .500 while also surpassing the 30,000-point plateau in his career. The Hornets tried 6-9 Lee Nailon on him, and he torched that, and then they tried Stacey Augmon, and that went worse. Monday, the Nets tried Martin, as they had during the preseason, figuring they'd live with whatever he did offensively, because they'd bludgeon him on the other end with Martin posting him up. And that worked, for about 10 minutes. Then he scored 22 points in a row. Almost all jumpers, but tellingly, and importantly, a few points came on up and under moves that got him to the rim, and on free throws, after he blew by Martin and went baseline and beat the help to the basket and got fouled. If he can drive again, that changes everything. Phil Jackson told me in preseason that the key to this whole comeback was whether he could still finish plays at the basket. He's starting to finish. So I asked him afterward if he was surprised the Hornets and Nets didn't double-team him. "I think what's happened is at the beginning of the season, they didn't need to, because I wasn't making my shots," he said. "I didn't seem as quick. So most teams, in the last couple of games, have been playing me straight man-to-man. And I think that's gonna have to change. If not, I think that's gonna be to our benefit." Either he'll smoke you or he'll pass it to Hamilton, like he'd been doing before Hamilton tore his groin against Orlando just before Christmas. And even though Hamilton is still a week or so away from even beginning non-weight bearing exercises in a pool, fate is being kind to Washington after so many years of turning its back. The Wizards play just four games from now until the middle of the month, which is when Christian Laettner (broken fibula) should be back, and when Hamilton returns, defenses will now have to make a real tough decision, because there's no one in the league better at the mid-range game right now than Hamilton. "I think we're just running our plays all the way through." Hamilton said. "Before, we used to just get the ball to Michael, and (the result was) play over. Now, we're going to the second and third option, and it's really helping. Now, teams just can't focus on M.J." But the Wizards are also winning because they're fifth in the league in points allowed, and a big reason for that is that Haywood and Jahidi White have become a solid duo in the middle, combining for 12 points and 13 rebounds a game. Doug Collins insisted that the Wizards trade for Haywood, who he thought was the best center in the draft, and after the team's then-president of basketball operations checked with Dean Smith and the Tar Heel Network and found out that the kid wasn't soft like people thought, the Wizards sent Laron Profit and a lottery-protected first to Orlando for Haywood, who still couldn't figure out why he'd been picked 20th in the first round. "I was more disappointed more than anything else," Haywood said. "I was slated to go anywhere as high as nine, as low as 15, and maybe slip to 18. To be picked at 20, I was a little disappointed. I just put it behind me, because a lot of guys picked before me, I just feel in the long run I'll have a better future. The guys at the bottom of the draft were the guys that had experience. Unfortunately, it's like the guys who put in a lot of years and tried to hone their skills got bumped out. (But) it's showing right now. We're more prepared." For the first time in, oh, forever, the Wizards look prepared. They've beaten Philly in Philly and Toronto in Toronto and Boston and New Jersey and Charlotte in Washington, and besides Milwaukee, who else is there, really, in the shaky East? (By the way, amazing how selective you all are. I wrote a column about a month ago in which I laid out two possible scenarios for the Wizards -- one optimistic, the second, pessimistic. I made it clear I didn't know which one to believe. But to a person, all the reaction was to the second scenario.) If the Wizards make the playoffs this season, and I don't think I'm being overdramatic here, it says here that will be the greatest accomplishment of his career. Greater than the six championships. Greater than the scoring championships. Greater than the Olympic gold medals. I know that in the NBA, change can occur quickly, with the addition of one great player. And I thought the Wizards would be better, maybe 15 games or so. But who penciled this in? At 38, after three years off and without Pippen and Rodman and Jackson? Even he knows it's amazing. He'd finished five points short of back-to-back 50-point games, a feat that has been accomplished only five times in league history, and if he'd hit a wide-open three with three minutes left, Collins would have probably left him in to get the final two. But as he walked toward his private dressing room, I asked him if he'd rather have that mark or the triple-double he'd missed by only three assists. "That's hard," he said. And then, the smile gave him away. "C'mon, back to back fifties," he said. "At 38? And if the game had been closer, I would have gotten it."
Coaches, coaches, more coaches There have been surges in African-American hires before, though, and there will certainly be changes by season's end; it appears highly unlikely Don Chaney will survive his interim tag, for example, and Mike Evans' tenure in Denver is precarious. (And Mike Fratello, good friends with Hornets' co-owner Ray Woolridge, seems to know an awful lot about Charlotte's future plans.)
Still, there are signs of progress. Sidney Lowe appears to be getting a real opportunity to turn Memphis into something. Despite Orlando's disappointing performance this season, there's no apparent pressure on Doc Rivers. Alvin Gentry is winning more in Clipperland than anyone since Larry Brown. Black, non-superstar ex-players, like Cartwright and Nate McMillan, are getting chances just as white non-superstars like Danny Ainge and Scott Skiles have received. (A brief aside, along these lines, about Jerry Krause in Chicago. Now Krause brings a lot of grief upon himself with the way he does things, and the liberties he takes with the truth. But Krause not only promoted Cartwright immediately, he also brought in B.J. Armstrong as assistant general manager a year ago and presided over Pete Myers' ascension from scout to assistant coach. I know all about the alleged discussion Krause had about Darius Miles' cornrows before the 2001 draft, so I'm sure some will think Krause is engaging in some p.c. makeover. But I don't really care about the whys -- Krause has been on point when it comes to giving African-Americans a shot over the last few years and he deserves some credit.) And who's doing better than Byron Scott in New Jersey? Last season Scott excoriated his team's shortcomings seemingly every night -- too much, I thought. But Scott is a Riles Disciple from way back; he'll use the media for a little gamesmanship when he sees fit. That's why he dogged Steph in the New York papers in the days leading up to Starchild's return to New Jersey last month. And he tries new stuff. No doubt Jason Kidd has been a big reason the Nets are leading the Atlantic, but don't discredit Scott's adaptation of Pete Carrill's Princeton offense. Scott and Yoda Pete spent a year together on Sacramento's bench, and Scott loved the idea of a two-guard front that involved everyone. The Kings used it sporadically, but when Scott got the chance to hang up his own shingle, with a point guard that could make it work, he jumped at the chance to implement it full-time. And the Nets are driving everyone crazy with their backcuts and screens. "It gives everybody an equal opportunity to be a scorer," Scott says. "If you move and you cut and you can pass and shoot, this is a great offense. It has some original NBA sets. It has isos in it; it has post-ups in it. We can get to everything that most NBA teams do through our offense. We just do it a little differently with some motion in it." The Nets have only put about 65 percent of the Princeton stuff in. Scott figured it would take until New Year's before his players really figured it out, but they picked it up quicker than he thought. Todd MacCulloch's passing ability out of the post really helped, and Kidd, of course, is a one-man defense wrecker. The beauty of the offense, according to Scott, is that it's even more effective if teams try to zone up the Nets' perimeter shooters. "When they put back zones, we said we've got to find something that we can run against man and zone and not have to deviate between the two," Scott says. "Once we run it, if our point guard goes through and there's nobody going with him, we know right away you're in zone, and we go right into our zone offense. The two-guard front is very hard to press. And we thought, with the type of guys that we have running it this year, the ball movement, the way we run, the way we can move, the way we're picking, the way we're passing, it's a perfect offense." Basketball intelligence, you see, can be found anywhere. You just have to look for it.
Around the League Currently, the plan is to find a cop for Jermaine O'Neal using Travis Best as bait. That would have the added benefit of freeing up 10-15 minutes a night for Rose at backup point guard, which might make JR a little happier and give Thomas some versatility with matchups. But it's going to be hard to pry a quality big (high on the Pacers' priority list: P.J. Brown) from someone for Best, even though he's cap friendly and in the final year of his contract.
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