November 25, 2006 - Fresh
off of a five game road trip, the Washington Wizards hosted the Detroit Pistons Saturday night at the Verizon
Center.
Having played back-to-back
games on the road, Gilbert Arenas, a.k.a “Agent Zero” to his team mates and fans, tells reporters, “This
is what we do, we’re professionals, we’re used to it”.
With the help of
Gilbert’s three point shot and Etan Thomas’ dunk early in the first quarter, keeping an edge over the Pistons
seemed easy for the Washington Wizards, who lead by nine points at the end of the quarter.
But by half time Detroit took the lead away, 62-58, and didn’t
give it back.
The Wizards did rally
however to stay close with the help of Caron Butler’s 15 foot jumper that put the Wizards within two points.
But it was the offensive
scoring of Detroit’s TayShaun Prince and Chauncey Billups, and a bad pass by Wizards’
guard DeShawn Stevenson that resulted in another two points, that gave Detroit
a comfortable lead, 75-82, over the Wizards midway into the third quarter.
The Wizards, plagued with
turnovers, sent Detroit to the foul line a record 13 times
in the third quarter allowing the Pistons to score each time.
More of the same ‘strategy’
continued into the 4th quarter as the Wizards sent Detroit’s
Chauncey Billups to the foul line five times.
Says Chauncey, "I'm a good free throw shooter.
If I take that many, I expect to make them all".
Dispite the loss, 111-115,
the third this season to the Pistons, head coach, Eddie Jordan says his Wizards "played hard, and did very well at what we
wanted them to do".
Guard, Jarvis Hayes, continued
to show improvement, coming off a lower back contusion after hitting the floor trying to block a shot in a game against Cleveland’s Shannon Brown on November 18th at the Verizon Center.
Michael Ruffin, Wizard’s forward, remains on the inactive list with a
mid foot sprain and will be out another two weeks.
Commenting on the 2004 NBA Championship team, coach Jordan remarked that
Detroit just knows "where each one is and they communicate the right way to each other."
So the lesson learned here would then be what?
That free throws and communication win ball games?
With an 0-5 record on the road at the time of this
article, is this something that perhaps our Wizards need to work on?
Just asking.
