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Wizards Keep On Rolling

Jimmie | December 28, 2006 | Comments (0)

It’s official: we have a pretty darned good basketball team in Washington.

The Wizards racked up their 12th win in the last 16 games with a 114-107 beatdown of the Charlotte Bobcats and moved to within 1/2 game of the Orlando Magic in the NBA’s Southeast Division. The Magic come to town Friday, incidentally, which ought to make for one whale of a game.

In their winning streak, the Wizards won three out of four on a west coast road swing, including huge overtime wins over the Lakers and Suns (where they broke the Suns’ 15-game winning streak). They have scored more than 100 points in the past 12 games. In their victory over Memphic Tuesday, they scored 77 points in the first half

Gilbert Arenas has been simply unstappable in this stretch. He’s put up 60 points and 54 points (the former set a franchise record) and averaged over 30 PPG. He won the NBA PLayer of the Week before his games again the Lakers and Suns. It’d be difficult to find a player int he league who is playing better than he right now. Currently, Arenas is the third-leading scorer in the NBA and the Wizards are the third-best scoring team in the league.

Still, the offense hasn’t hit its full stride. Even accounting for amazing work from Caron Butler, Antawn Jameson, and DeShawn Stevenson, the Wizards still have room to grow. Jarvis Hayes hasn’t found his scoring stroke yet and had dismal games against the Grizzlies (zero points in 20 minutes) and Bobcats (9 points in 21 minutes). I’m not sure whether he’s still a little cautious about his knees, which I could definitely understand. I’m sure it doesn’t help that every time he hits the floor, Steve Buckhantz (the Wizard’s TV play-by-play announcer) has to tell us all how it reminds him of some horrific Hayes injury in the past.

The Wizards are also dealing with some injuries to key players. Etan Thomas is still out, as is MIchael Ruffin. Granted, neither of them score a great deal, but they take some pressure off of Brendan Haywood and allow him to be more aggressive in the paint. That’s more a hit to their overall defense (which still needs work) but it affects scoring, too.

Still, the team is playing as well as any in the league and is starting to get some much-deserved attention from the national sports media. Both the Lakers and Suns games were on national television and they get another chance in the spotlight on January 12th on the road in New Orleans. By then they will have had another shot at the Lakers and five games out of six against teams with a better than .500 record. We’ll know better what sort of team we have here in town.