Flip Saunders walks out of Washington Wizards practise
Frustrated with the lack of urgency and effort from his players, Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders cancelled and walked out of the team’s practise on Monday 8 November.
According to the veteran head coach, with the way they are losing in their previous games, he expected that his players will come with a sense of urgency, but he was disappointed with the
soft play of the entire team.
“After you lose a couple of games you hope to come in with a sense of urgency,” Saunders said. “We didn't come with that same urgency as a team. We are not going to beg guys to play hard.
If they don't want to play hard we'll come back in at another time and we'll get people in who do play hard”
Saunders also added that he was dismayed after losing games that they should have won easily had they exerted more effort and play focused. He blasted the recent performance of the Wizards,
who were out-rebounded in their last four games, and turned the ball over 20 times per game.
Meanwhile, the good thing for the Wizards is that their players accepted Saunders’ action as a motivational ploy, and that their coach is just trying to get into their heads for them to play
harder to bounce back from a lacklustre start.
Despite having the 2010 first overall pick John Wall in their fold, the Wizards started the season with a 1-4 record, but their players are not ready to quit.
“It's tough to watch that we’re 1-4, but I've been in situations where I've started out 0-5 and made it to the Finals,” Wizards forward Josh Howard said. “It's a correctable mistake. Guys
need to go out there and sell it to one another.”
Emerging power forward Andray Blatche, who is averaging 17 points and 7.6 points per game this season, also shared the same sentiment and said that they need to work doubly harder to bounce
back from their horrible start.
“Patience is running out and people are getting frustrated,” said Blatche, who scored 16 points and grabbed 15 rebounds in their game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday 6 November.
“We got come back and begin communicating offensively and defensively. We got to fight, we're 1-4.”
The Washington Wizards will try to snap their two-game losing skid when they host Yao Ming and the Houston Rockets on Wednesday 10 November.
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