Andray Blatche tried his best to stick up for Flip Saunders. But the Wizards forward might inadvertently have done his coach more harm than good.
Blatche’s comments following Washington’s 93-72 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday made it clear that Saunders may be giving his players the right message, but some of them just aren’t listening.
“He’s a great coach,” Blatche said of Saunders. “He stresses what we got to do and what it takes to win. We get out there, and sometimes we lose focus on what he says. Flip, he’s definitely doing his job. I don’t feel like everybody is listening.”
The Wizards are sitting at 0-8, a franchise-worst start, and are hoping to avoid a league-worst start, the 0-18 mark set by the 2009-2010 New Jersey Nets. They face the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night at Verizon Center.
Saunders has been an NBA coach for 17 seasons, beginning with the Minnesota Timberwolves (1995 through 2005), followed by the Detroit Pistons (2005 through ’08). Now in his third season with the Wizards, Saunders’ record with Washington is 49-123.
“It’s like I told my guys, ’Hey, I’ve been doing this a long time as a coach. You haven’t,’ ” Saunders said after the loss to Minnesota. “You can’t get 82 Knute Rockne talks every night. Your job as a professional in this league is to start preparing for a game the day before and be ready to play.
“That’s what you do. We’re a very fragile team. I’m going to go home tonight, and I’m going to say what I can do as a coach to get us better because evidently right now I haven’t done a good enough job..”
A quick scouting report on the Wizards was offered by Timberwolves backup point guard Ricky Rubio.
“They run a lot. They play a lot of one-on-one. One of their strengths is [point guard] John Wall running the fast break, and we needed to stop him,” Rubio said.
The Wizards also receive scouting reports on their upcoming opponents, but how closely they study them is a concern.
“We send out more scouting reports and give out more stuff on YouTube, video scouting reports the night before, than anybody in the league. How much are you taking that stuff?” Saunders asked rhetorically.
Rookie Chris Singleton also gave his coach a vote of confidence.
“Like coach says, if it doesn’t work the first time, you got to fix it. The main two words he uses in practice are ’fix it,’ ” Singleton said.
“That’s when the players have to come together and fix it. We’re losers. We’re 0-8.”
But the Wizards almost appear at a loss as to how to turn around their season after a performance even they described as embarrassing.
“We’ve got to have some kind of self-esteem, some type of pride, that you don’t want to keep being 0-8,” Wall said. “To start this bad, it’s nothing but pride, to see if you’ve got the heart to play.”
• Carla Peay can be reached at cpeay@washingtontimes.com.
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