The Wizards are good at preaching to the fans about patience. But it’s time they preached discipline to their players.
That means once and for all reining in the leash on JaVale McGee, who has started 58 games this season, more than anyone else on Washington’s roster. Yet, he’s the only Wizard consistently able to draw the type of over-the-top criticism coach Flip Saunders employed after the third-year center’s wild underhanded airball layup kicked off Monday’s 116-89 loss to Oklahoma City.
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“Let’s put it this way, if we weren’t in a rebuild, on my others [teams], he’d have a tough time [getting minutes],” Saunders said. “You have to bite your lip. I actually bite my lip, and I almost have a callous on my lip to try and let them play through some things, to hope that they get it. But you can’t play that way. That’s losing basketball.”
Callous is one thing. Backbone is another.
Certainly, the Wizards struggle with a lack of options at center — Hilton Armstrong was only a pulse, and Kevin Seraphin is the definition of raw — which explains why night after night McGee gets sent out for the opening tip. But if Saunders can’t take a stand against the third-year center’s mind-boggling inconsistency when games don’t matter — McGee followed his embarrassing start to Monday’s game with a triple-double Tuesday night in Chicago — how can he expect McGee to respond when they do?
Good habits are forged at the start, which is where the Wizards are in their rebuild. If they’re unwilling to change now, there’s little reason to believe they will in the future. That’s also losing basketball.
