Buckhantz Calls Dagger On Airball, Retracts Dagger

I jumped out of my bed screaming like a maniac.  I fell to the floor, arms raised in victory.  As Steve Buckhantz' "Dagger" rang out from my TV I smiled.  I rolled around on the ground doing mini-fist pumps on the floor with my eyes closed, as if I was the NBA champion.

Then, all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, Buckhantz stopped talking.  I looked up at my TV and saw the Pistons celebrating.  What happened!?

I watched as Comcast showed the instant replay of the Wizards game winner.  It didn't go in.  It didn't even hit the rim.  It was an AIRBALL?!

Listen to the call below from the Dagger, to the 20 seconds of Buck celebrating before someone mentioned to him that the ball didn't go into the net to the 2 announcers trying to explain that it looked like it went in: (and watch what was shown live on TV here) Or watch below before it is deleted.



Listen here:




Steve Buckhantz: "They're saying it did not go!"

Phil Chenier (laughing): "We saw the nets move"

Steve Buckhantz: "We saw what appeared to be the ball going in the net, but evidently it came up short!"

============

Steve Buckhantz:  "So the Dagger has been retracted" 

Phil Chenier:  "First time ever, I believe"


This season Steve Buckhantz, my favorite sports announcer of all time, has been making some mistakes.  Two different times in the past few weeks he has gotten excited about Wizards rebounds where the players were clearly way out of bounds.  But on this particular play, I can't blame Steve.  I thought the ball went in.

Wizards lose to the Detroit Pistons for the 3rd time this season...

Pistons Break Up Wizards Win Streak

Written By Jeremy Batka @EastCoastAssn

The Wizards win streak ends at four as the Pistons overcame a sloppy start to beat Washington 96-85 in Detroit Wednesday night.

Despite shooting 48% from the field the Wizards were outscored 31-17 in the fourth quarter. Wizard fans were also puzzled with Randy Wittman's lineup choices in that dismal final quarter.

Emeka Okafor was on his way to a very impressive night scoring 20 points and snagging nine rebounds. But for some reason he didn't step foot on the floor in the final six minutes of the fourth and played just 25 minutes on the night. Martell Webster had a similar story also playing just 25 minutes while scoring 9 points on five shots.

The Wizards led by a handful for the majority of the game but poor free throw shooting (14-22) and sloppy defense allowed Detroit to hang around long enough to eventually make a run which they did thanks to Will Bynum and Jose Calderon.

The six foot nothing Bynum had 20 points and eight assists while the not much taller Calderon led all scorers with 24 going 6-9 from beyond the three point line. The Wizards back court combination of John Wall and Bradley Beal had a much worse night.

Wall had 16 point and 9 assists but went just 4-11 from the field and scored a good chunk of his points when it was too late. Beal came off the bench yet again and was feeling it in the first half. However just like every other Wizard Beal went cold in the fourth and managed just ten points on the night.

The Wizards go into the All-Star break with a 15-36 record and a lot of work to do in the second half of the season.

Light Sticks Don't Help Wizards, Pistons Win

The Washington Wizards lost to the Detroit Pistons for the second straight night, falling 96-87 on Saturday night at Verizon Center in front of the most sparce crowd of the entire season.  The few thousand fans who showed up were relatively quiet the entire game, except when they had the chance to win a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich of course.

The Wizards started off slow, scoring just 13 first quarter points after a late 5 point spurt to end the period.  The Pistons had the lead the entire game but with some help from a college style half court trap, the Wizards cut the lead to 6 points in the 4th quarter.  But every opportunity the Wizards had to steal the momentum they missed a shot or played poor defense to crush their chances.

Before the game Martell Webster came out and wished everyone a happy holidays and thanked fans for the support.  However during the game the Wizards missed several layups and even a dunk and at times drawing small rounds of boos from the Verizon crowd.

Wizards Firing On No Pistons

Written By Jeremy Batka @eastcoastassn 

The Pistons rolled over Washington tonight 100-68. The scoreboard pretty much tells the whole story in this one.

There isn't much positive to say as the Wizards move to 3-21 on the season. In most of those 21 loses the Wizards have at least been competitive. That didn't happen tonight; Detroit had no trouble dominating the game from start to finish.

At one point in the second quarter the Wizards trailed 40-18.

(At that moment you probably changed the channel. I know I wanted to)

Jordan Crawford lead the team with an ugly 20 points playing back in his hometown. The team offense in general was just putrid tonight which is especially disappointing after the past few games it looked like the team was at least making steps in the right direction.

On the defensive end, Randy Wittman's club made Kyle Singler look like a star, he had ten points and five boards. Greg Monroe routinely embarrassed Kevin Seraphin and Emeka Okafor on his way to 15 points and nine rebounds.

Rookie Bradley Beal didn't play for the second straight game with a sore back. Nene also didn't play tonight, he had the flu, limiting the Wizards to nine players. Which means....

Jan Vesely was forced into action seeing 26 minutes of playing time. Vesely had six points and two steals which for him is an improvement. How bad of a season can you be having when you score six points off the bench and it's actually one of the highlights of your season?

Oh well at least the Wizards didn't waste a number six overall pick on him or some...errr wait a sec.

PTI: Wizards A Disgrace!

During PTI's toss up game the 0-6 Wizards once again made the game, and once again it wasn't for a good reason.  Let's listen to Wilbon & Kornheiser Crush the wiz after being asked this question:

Most likely to get their first win tonight: Pistons or Wizards?

Tony: "The Wizards are a disgrace.  I watched them last night.  They got beat BAD by the terrible Bobcats.  They got beat bad. Their starting guards AJ Price and Bradley Beal, #3 pick I think overall pick in the draft in the draft, were like 3 for 23, these are NBA starting guards, I can't believe they charge money to watch this team.  It's AWFUL."

Wilbon: "At one point the Wizards missed like 15 shots in a row, and I said, 'That's it, I'm done with this'".

Tony decided not to pick anyone because the Wiz made him so sick, and Wilbon went with the Wizards.

Wiz Lead, Wiz Blow Lead, Wiz Lose, Repeat

For the third time in four games the Washington Wizards led at halftime, blew a double digit lead, and ended up losing a game they should have won.  This is getting to be a little bit too crazy.

This time, facing the Pistons on Monday night at Verizon in front of Michael Phelps and 5 other guys, the Wizards were up 5 at the half, led by as many as 13 in the second half, and lost to Detroit after Rodney Stuckey hit a Dagger with 0.2 seconds remaining to give his team the 79-77 victory.

John Wall ended up taking and missing the clutch game tying shot, which has happened in all 3 games the Wizards lost that were discussed before.  Luckily the Wizards ended up getting one more shot after Ben Wallace missed 2 free throws and NeNe hit the post up hook-layup to tie the game.  However Stuckey stuck it to the Wiz driving to the elbow and killing the Zards with the John Wall signature shot (except this one went in).

The Wizards were without Trevor Booker who was resting due to some knee issues and Serphin stepped in to do what Seraphin does, but his game didn't make up for the loss of Booker.  Jordan Crawford was once again the only scorer on the team and John Wall continued his terrible shooting (6-17)

In the past 5 games John Wall is shooting under 30%, hitting only 15 of 51 shot attempts!  

Steve Buckhantz continues to spend an insane amount of time on teaching us how to pronounce NeNe.  It is almost to the point where it is as bad as when he did the same thing for Anderson Verejo.

The Wizards lost all 3 games of their back to back to back and their 4th straight.  Next up are the Pacers on Thursday night in Indiana.  The Pacers just beat Miami.

Buckhantz quote of the night:   “So Crawford does what he likes to do best, and that’s shoot long jump shots”