Due to the rust that the lockout has caused league-wide, the Wizards should improve slightly as the season goes on.  However, in a season that has 7 teams on pace to qualify for the worst 100 offensive season in league history, the Wizards have been playing epically bad basketball.

Whenever a team is this bad on the offensive end, it usually a combination of a lack of talent and poor execution. The Wizards, with a roster full of low basketball IQ players, are no exception. It’s to the point where it’s tough to accurately scout the one player Washington fans should be optimistic about, John Wall. Wall’s progress as a prospect has stalled and it looks as though his teammates may be part of the problem with his development.

While one could fill a 1,500 word post with examples of poor execution, selfish play or bad shot selection from the Wizards this season, we’ll just take a look at a few possessions where Washington starts out in a great position and ends up with a failed result.

This first play is a pick and roll between John Wall and Ronny Turiaf that’s defended by the Sixers’ Jrue Holiday and Nikola Vucevic. The Wizards are immediately put in an advantageous situation because Jrue Holiday goes over the top of Turiaf’s screen. The Wall-Turiaf tandem is tailor-made for a defense to have the on-ball defender go under thanks to Wall’s struggles shooting off the pick and roll (He’s currently at just 27.3% on jump shots coming off pick and rolls).

With Vucevic’s slow lateral foot speed, he doesn’t have a chance of staying with Wall. Wall easily splits the trap and forces Marreese Speights to have to rotate over, leaving an easy kickout pass to Trevor Booker on the left wing.

Booker should straddle the three point line and give Wall the option for an easy kickout pass. This would force Philly’s Jodie Meeks to defend both Booker and the Wizards player stationed in the corner.  When Meeks closes out, the Wizards will have an uncontested corner three.  If Meeks closes out too aggressively, Booker can then pump fake and drive past him. Instead, Booker dives to the paint, changing the angle of John Wall’s pass and giving Meeks a chance to intercept it, which he does.

Here is a video of the play. Watch the angle change as Booker dives to the paint, giving Meeks a chance to intercept the ball and changing a 2 on 1 situation in favor of the Wizards into a fast break opportunity for the Sixers.

The second scenario again involves a pick and roll, this time with Nick Young handling the ball and JaVale McGee setting the screen and diving into the paint.

Trevor Booker is in the paint, and Rashard Lewis is standing in the corner. Wall, standing at the top of the key, should be Young’s outlet valve, rotating over to give Young a clear pass if he’s trapped. Lewis should then slide over to his left and Booker should curl over to the corner three slot.  Not only will this movement opening up the paint for McGee, but Young will have pressure-release if trapped, and station the Wizards players to swing the ball around the three point line against a scrambling Sixers’ defense.

Instead, Wall, Booker, and Lewis remain virtually still and don’t start moving until Young is already trapped.  There’s no spacing in the paint, which allows Vucevic and Meeks to double team Young out in the corner, with no clear passing lane to Wall.

The play once again results in a turnover. Here’s the video:

Flip Saunders is likely to be a casualty before any player movement occurs, but many of the Wizards core players (Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee, Nick Young, and Jordan Crawford, primarily) had questionable basketball IQ’s long before they stepped onto an NBA court. It’s not uncommon for a top overall pick to come into a team that lacks talent, but is uncommon to belong to a team as dysfunctional as this current Washington Wizards team. Only time will tell how it affects Wall’s development going forward.

Much like two for one situations, whether or not to call a timeout late when trailing by one is a “feel” decision. Coaches usually end up taking a timeout to set up their offense and make sure everyone is on the same page when trying to tie the game or take the lead.  On the other hand, while you are setting up your offense, the opponent can set up their defense.

So as a head coach, you are put in a really tough position.  Last night we saw on three separate occasions where coaches decided not to call a timeout, and in all three instances, the offense got a bucket:

There are is one common thread in each one of the above clips.  And that is, in all three, the offenses aren’t really doing anything all that intricate on the offensive end.  You have two ISO sets (Jazz & Grizzlies) and a quick screen for the ball handler (Magic).  If you are running a simple set, then why call a timeout to let the defense set up?

Much like our two for one discussion, I don’t know if there is a definitive right or wrong answer here.  I think that if a coach has confidence in a player to go ISO or get to the rim, going without calling a timeout makes sense.  If you have a young team without a player who can break down the defense, you call a timeout and run a set.  What do you guys think?

Before we get to criticizing J.J. Redick, we do have to give him credit for crashing the boards as soon as KG releases the basketball on his attempt.  With Boston worried about the fast break, they only send two guys in for the rebound, and they are effectively boxed out.  Redick is uncontested as he attacks the rebound.

When I first saw the play, I thought Redick simply lost track of time and thought there was less time then there actually was.  However, this screenshot tells us that Redick knew exactly how much time was left since he took a split second to look at the clock.

Redick quickly takes off as both Stan Van Gundy and Vince Carter try to get the referee’s attention and call a timeout.  The refs aren’t looking in their direction though because they are watching Redick dribble towards midcourt.

Now if you are going to go without calling timeout that’s not the worst decision in the world.  You catch the defense off guard and they don’t have time to get the matchup they want, leading to a ton of cross-matches.  However, once you make that decision to go, you can’t stop.  Especially behind half court, and that is what Redick does here.

To make matters worse, he doesn’t call timeout right away and he allows another 2 seconds run off the clock.

Why is this all so important?  Well, in the NBA if you don’t advance the ball after getting a rebound and before you call a timeout, you have the ability to choose to inbound the basketball at halfcourt.  However, if you do advance the basketball, you have to inbound it from where you call timeout.  The Magic now have to inbound the basketball from about 3/4 court instead of halfcourt.  Here is the resulting play.

As you can see Rashard Lewis finds himself open for a split second, but it is such a long pass, J.J. Redick doesn’t even attempt it.  Instead, he passes it to Jameer Nelson who takes a runner from halfcourt.

Now, the video starts when Devin Harris takes the foul to give with 6.9 seconds left in the third quarter.  This is after he hit a jumper to cut the Grizzlies lead down to two points (After they were down 16 to start the half).  The Grizzlies re-enter the ball, and end up scoring as time runs out.  Yes, the foul is early, but the biggest problem here is where the foul takes place, right around half court.  Mike Conley isn’t a threat out there, so if Devin Harris was to allow him to dribble it down to the three point line or deeper in, it could have taken another 2 to 3 seconds off the clock.  The mistake ended up giving the Grizzlies a two point lead and taking away all the momentum from New Jersey.  Memphis also scored the first basket of the fourth quarter, so you had a 2 point game quickly jump back up to a 6 point game because of the foul.

This is what leads us to the second play.  The Nets are down 5 points with 12.2 seconds left, and after Devin Harris hits a free-throw, it is obvious that the Nets are going to try and foul.

I know that most teams try and deny the inbounds pass, but I think that is the wrong play here.  In this situation, you want to get the foul as quickly as possible.  Sure a turnover is fine, but in most cases you aren’t going to be able to force one, so you should play behind your man, let him make the catch, and foul him before too much time runs off.  Instead, Terrence Williams gambles for the steal, allowing 5 seconds to run off of the clock.  The worst part is Terrence has no chance of making this steal, and even if he gets his hands on it, he is just going to be smacking it out of bounds.  The worst part is that Rudy Gay ended up missing one of two foul shots allowing for it to still be a two possession game, but with under 8 seconds left, all hope was basically lost.

He save the ball under his own basket.  Now, you can’t knock the hustle that Corey Brewer shows here, but there are other options he has.  Instead of throwing it blindly underneath his own he could throw it away from the basket, into the corner (where there was a teammate).  With around 5 seconds left, he can also just heave it as far as he can down the court and hope that time runs out (I understand this might have been difficult to do based on his body position).

His final option is eating the basketball and taking it out of bounds with him.  Now that doesn’t sound like a smart idea, but think about it, would you rather set up your defense to try to get another stop or would you rather keep the ball in bounds as two of your teammates are falling out of bounds?  By eating the basketball and going out of bounds with it, he is putting his team in a better position to win.

Now, here is another example.  This is from the Nets-Celtics game last week:

The ball gets saved by Devin Harris as he is going out of bounds.  By saving the ball on his own end like that, he is basically taking himself out of the play, and the Celtics are able to use this to get a wide open back-breaking jump shot..