It never fails. Every season a handful of rookies suddenly become slower, less efficient, irritable, they no longer find “South Park” funny, food no longer tastes right – even their most comfortable shirts feel itchy. Everything goes wrong. But usually all that wrong waits until the All-Star Break before rearing its ugly head. But Wednesday marked the D.C. Wizards’ season opener and rookie phenom John Wall‘s official entrance into the league. He looked confused. Confused like he suddenly realized he’s leading a team reliant upon JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche to do a lot of heavy lifting. Confused like someone who isn’t convinced those guys can lift heavy things. Confused like he was never sure if he should shoot or pass. And because of that confusion, Wall just did both – a lot. He shot 6-of-19 from the floor and never looked like he wanted to take any of those shots, which is weird, because he also had a game-high nine assists, none of which the receiving player looked as if they wanted. There’s nothing normal about Wall. I’ll assume that also includes the order in which he develops. Get the wall out of the way, then get out of Wall’s way.
Here’s what else went down in fantasy basketball last night:
Cartier Martin – He scored 17 points on 5-for-9 shooting. It’s pronounced Carch-yay, not Cart-e-ay. If you already knew that, you’re smart enough not to bother with this guy.
Andray Blatche -In 24 minutes the Wizards’ power forward had two rebounds. Two. He also made two shots and distributed two assists. Yup, he dropped some deuces all right.
Hakim Warrick – He’s averaging 14/6.5 in his first two games and looked comfortable pickin’ and rollin’ alongside Steve Nash. With his 20-22 minutes per game, he’s not worth much outside of deep leagues, but you shallow leaguers should keep an eye on him. Or don’t.
Goran Dragic – Tuff the Magic Dragic dropped 11/6 in 15 minutes. He can do this. And as the season goes on and Nash can’t stick around games for 33 minutes, Dragic will do this. If you’ve got a spot open in medium-sized leagues, you know what to do.
Robin Lopez – Fouled out despite playing fewer than 20 minutes. He’ll be better than this, mostly because it would be hard to be worse than this.
Anderson Varejao – Likely out Friday in Toronto and possibly Sunday to be with his ailing father. First Mo’s father-in-law, now Andy’s. When they said LeBron was the life force of this Cleveland franchise, I assumed it was metaphorical.
Kevin Love – Was benched in the final eight minutes of Wednesday’s loss due to poor defense. There’s a threshold here for how many times this will happen before someone steps in and tells Kurt Rambis to knock it the hell off. The problem is, David Kahn has a high threshold for asinine. If you know a Love owner freaking out right now, low-ball him. Love owners who are freaking out right now, chill out. I just told all your league mates to low ball you. Tell them Adam told you to go fly a kite.
