Washington Wizards
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An opposing team's scout sizes up the Wizards

Losing Etan Thomas is going to hurt this team down low because it can't count on Brendan Haywood and Darius Songaila to defend inside. They talk about how they're going to defend this year, but I'm not buying it. It could really cost coach Eddie Jordan. I respect him a lot, but they built this team without defenders and they don't have that in their makeup. ...

But they also don't defend because Eddie puts a lot of time into offensive execution and how he runs his sets. Coming out of timeouts, they have very intricate sets with two or three dribble handoffs to get a shot, and they execute it. Eddie might be the most-copied coach in the league at the moment. More people are implementing his Princeton stuff into what they do. Even the Lakers have implemented some of it into their triangle, and last year Houston was running Princeton stuff in a couple of its sets. Eddie's a very organized guy with all of that, and yet in the end it might be to his downfall. Because with all of the time and effort he puts into the offensive end, I can't see that it would leave very much time and effort to practice their defense ...

The East is going to very tight this year. A lot of playoff-capable teams are going to be in the lottery, including some teams that could be in the running for their division heading into April. It's going to be that close, and that makes it hard on the Wizards with all of the questions they have. All three of their stars -- Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison -- are coming off years where they had injuries. They lost one of their key frontcourt guys in Thomas to a heart ailment, and there's pressure on Eddie to change his approach and focus more on the defensive end ...

I just wonder about Arenas, from some of the things that come out of his mouth and the way he plays, if he's more into proving that he's an MVP candidate than getting his team an upper seed and carrying them through the first round of the playoffs. He has a hell of an ego, but then he has the quickness to back it up, and he has a history of making the shots. But he's the only guy I've heard of in a long time who came into a game saying he was going to get 50 -- and all because Portland coach Nate McMillan was an assistant on the USA team [which cut Arenas before the 2006 World Championships). That's the mark of somebody who reads his press clippings a little bit too closely and likes to hear himself talk and, frankly, isn't a leader. When Kobe was getting his 80, it was something that just started happening and then he went for it; Arenas was aiming to do it before the game, regardless of the flow or what his team needed ...

The other problem is that he's a point guard, and you want that guy to be a facilitator who makes sure that everybody executes at the offensive end. But usually scoring is a secondary priority. That's how it is for Steve Nash or Chauncey Billups, who don't necessarily want to score but they can. They take over the game when nobody else is grabbing it. But Arenas has a different mentality ...

To be fair about this, I haven't seen Arenas competing with his teammates for shots. We all know how versatile and explosive he is as a scorer. But I do see Eddie frustrated with the situation. I think his teammates ride along with him and think he's funny, and when he has the ball they can't do anything but support him. But when he's going off on his own and it isn't working for him, I can see Eddie getting fed up with it. I just wonder if this whole persona thing is going to be too much to handle and it will be their downfall, that Arenas will become bigger than the team, like Allen Iverson became in Philly ...

Just like the questions about Arenas' recovery from his knee injury, we'll have to see how Butler is able to come back from his broken hand. Butler's career has gone to a higher level since he's been in Washington. He is terrific on the wings and able to make jump shots in transition, he finishes at the basket and he doesn't get married to the three-point line. He knows he can hit from 19 feet and so he takes that instead of trying to force it back to get the three. There is a toughness to his game in that he competes. A lot of times you want to equate toughness with the defensive end, but that isn't the case with anyone on this team. When you play Washington, it's going to be a scoring battle. They beat you in transition, and when you score they come right back on you so fast that you can get tired from scoring. They wear you out sometimes ...

Jamison is 31 and entering his 10th year, though he's also playing for a new contract. He's made a big difference to that franchise with his leadership, as well as giving them energy, offensive rebounds and three-point shooting from the power-forward spot. He can put 30 up there on a given night, and if he and their other guys are moving, and on top of their game offensively, they can outscore anybody. But I don't see them being able to stop people inside and defend in transition ...

What they've tried to do defensively in the past is to trap and zone things up a little bit, and they've changed their defenses from possession to possession. But too often on traps if you don't get that turnover that results in a fast-break bucket, you end up surrendering the easy layup, as we saw from the Rick Pitino not so long ago in Boston. When a team like Washington is defending like that throughout the game, all it's really trying to do is hide its deficiencies ...

DeShawn Stevenson is probably their best defender. He's big and physical, he doesn't back down, he gets in there and moves his feet. He's not a shooter off the dribble at all, and he's not a great driver and finisher. As a shooter, he tends to get married to the three-point line; he'll catch and shoot, or he'll try to get to the basket with about four spin moves ...

When we start talking about Brendan Haywood, we're getting into their biggest problem area of all because I don't see them being deep enough up front even with Darius Songaila being available the whole year. When Haywood was sharing time with Thomas, they were providing decent numbers: Haywood with more length, Thomas with more toughness. On his own, Haywood is not a rebounding center, and he vanishes for long periods of time ...

They're going to be looking to 21-year-old Andray Blatche for big minutes, but I don't see where he's delivered consistently enough to be reliable. At 6-11, the potential is there. He has the ability, athleticism and length, but he just doesn't know how to play winning basketball yet ...

Nick Young is an athletic driver who tries to get to the rim for the dunk, but let's see how much confidence he has in his jump shot and how quickly he learns how to play in their complicated schemes ...

Antonio Daniels is a big guard, a decent defender with long arms, big hands and decent quickness, though he's lost something in that area over the years. It's always amazing to me how he can make shots on his drives, that he's athletic enough to throw shots off the glass and they go in somehow. He isn't a great shooter or scorer or passer, but he's good in that offense because he and Arenas can handle both positions. They run so much misdirection stuff that the point guard doesn't have to be the playmaker, though I guess it's obvious when Arenas is scoring 30 from the point-guard spot that he's not making a lot of plays for other people ...

If things go south for them this year, I wouldn't say they're in a desperate or hopeless situation because they have pieces they can trade. It's going to be an interesting year for this team one way or another.