In Tuesday night's loss to the Heat, Wizards' guard/ best player/ future/ dance innovator reminded fans in the Verizon Center that he was in fact a 20 year old rookie. It all started when Wall began closely defending Miami's back-up/ Soviet center Zydrunas Ilgauskas.
Right there's problem number one--presumably Wall was hoping for an easy steal, but Ilgauskas is like a Y2K bug threat from outside so letting the Russian lumber around until Wade or LeBron takes a hand-off from him would've sufficed. Instead, Ilgauskas caught a case of Marcus Camby-elbows, which resulted in Wall receiving a face full of Eastern Caucus forearm.
Wall responded by throwing a hand at Big Z, which considering the size disparity probably came off as more of a slap to the target. Next--God bless his heart--Javale McGee fancied that the best way to rectify the situation would be to have no other than, yes Javale McGee, intervene. Inevitably this caused what could have simply been poop falling on the edge of the carpet to diarrhea hitting the ceiling fan (on "AC Blast").
To even things out Heat reserve forward and the consummate veteran (although not for 'love of the game' reasons but to meet fiduciary responsibilities associated with fecundity) Juwan Howard entered the fray, and did exactly what any veteran should attempt to do in a close game--cause a ruckus involving as many of their good players at minimal cost to your team.
So, what resulted? Ejections. The Heat lose two bench players, who most often it seems only fill roster space, in Ilgauskas and Howard, and the Wizards lose Wall and almost McGee. Here's a less obvious case of where the Wizards' youth compromises their ability to win--Wall allows marginal players from the other team to engage him in a fight that results in his team losing their best player and almost another starter (McGee).
What Wall needs to learn is that no matter the degree of elbow-injustice, he can't go Pat Swayze in 'Red Dawn' and attack the Soviet invader. He needs to play for the Wizards to win, which means that fisticuffs are the work of otherwise limited veterans (or, in the Wizard's case recently called up D-Leaguers, like Othyus Jeffers or Mustafa Shakur).
No comments:
Post a Comment