WASHINGTON – Remember a few months ago, upon the arrival of Wizards head coach Flip Saunders, how all of the talk was about how there was too much talent on the team for Saunders to stick with his traditionally short bench and tight rotation?

 

While Washington has (again) dealt with their fair share of injuries again this season, ineffective play has forced Saunders to quickly abandon any preconceived notions he might have had about what he planned to do with his rotations.
 
Saunders played every player who dressed Saturday in hopes of finding the combination – any combination – of players who played well enough together to climb back into a contest that the starting unit surrendered to the visiting Charlotte Bobcats shortly after the game’s opening tip.
 
With both teams playing the tail end of back-to-back games, it was the Bobcats who mustered enough energy early to put themselves in a position to take a break late.  Charlotte led by as many as 24 points at one point in a game that never really took the feel of a contest as they blew by the Wizards for a 92-76 victory to claim their first road win of the season.
 
Washington (5-11) approached the evening with the lackadaisical effort of an early morning shoot-around.  From the very start each player appeared to be waiting for his teammates to do something to keep them in the game.  While everyone was busy waiting for the next man to step up, no one stepped up.  The lack of urgency and effort wasn’t lost on the three-quarters full Verizon Center fans, who voiced their displeasure with a chorus of boos early in the third quarter and into the fourth before heading for the exits just midway through the final frame as if to say “We have better things to do with our time.”
 
Caron Butler led all scorers with 19 points, but behind Butler the Wizards received little contribution offensively.  Nick Young managed to register a double digit scoring total (10 points on 4-of-11 shooting) as did Brenden Haywood (10 points, nine rebounds), but the Wizards got no more than six points from any other player on the roster – despite the fact that minutes were handed out so liberally as Saunders was searching for anything and anyone who could provide a spark for his team.
 
Six of the twelve Bobcats players who appeared in the contest registered double digit scoring outputs as Charlotte found wide open lanes and easy looks at the basket, created by crisp ball movement and a lack of defensive intensity from the Wizards.  Charlotte dropped in 46 percent of their shots, combined for 21 assists and out rebounded the Wizards.
 
Forward Gerald Wallace notched a double-double in the victory, scoring 14 points and hauling in 14 rebounds.
 
"I wasn't good tonight,” Saunders said, taking the blame for the ugly loss squarely upon his own shoulders.
 
“Because when you fall behind like that, you start searching and you're trying to throw all people out there on the floor. We couldn't get anything to sustain."
 
The word sustain is misleading in that it suggests the team actually had points in the game where they played well enough but just couldn’t keep them rolling.  In reality there were few, if any, of those moments.
 
Forward Antawn Jamison, whose double-double can almost be penciled in the box score before the tip on most evenings failed to grab even one rebound against the Bobcats.  Gilbert Arenas didn’t make a trip to the free throw line all evening and the team converted just 39 percent of their field goal attempts while allowing Charlotte to bury nearly 50 percent of their attempts.  Not a winning formula on any account.
 
Aside from Saunders, no one else in the Wizards locker room accepted any responsibility for the loss at all.  Reserve forward Andray Blatche directed questions about the slow start to the starting unit.  Brenden Haywood credited the Bobcats with putting up more points to earn the win, and Caron Butler…well, Butler didn’t say a word, choosing instead to wait until the media presence had died down a bit before returning from the showers.
 
Told of Saunders’ remarks during his post game conference in regard to the coaching staff doing nothing to stand in Arenas’ way that would discourage him from taking over games if he is indeed still capable, Arenas bristled a bit.
 
"I'm not going to go out there and try to score 30 when we have a lot of offensive players here. I'll take the shots I feel are sufficient for me. Other than that, the offensive load's on everybody else," Arenas said.
 
“Right now, I don't know if these guys trust me to take 10 straight shots. I don't know if I trust myself to take 10 straight shots.”
 
If that trust doesn’t return quickly, the Wizards will find it difficult to dig themselves out of a hole that just keeps getting bigger game-by-game.