Washington Wizards Training Camp Update
The Wizards kicked off the 2018-2019 NBA season with media day on Monday, then began training camp on Tuesday at the new MedStar Wizards Performance Center. As always with the Wizards, there was a lot of trash talk during media day and injuries to begin training camp.
Media Day
Some interesting quotes came out of media day, here are some of the highlights:
Scott Brooks on Otto Porter: “He needs to shoot the ball. He passes up three or four shots a game. He passes up threes. I tell him, he is green. I can’t make it any greener for him. It’s green. Shoot. Shot the ball every time you get an open shot. Do not hesitate.”
Scott Brooks on Wizards players talking: “Enough talk. The players, the team(s), that talk are the ones that usually don’t have success.”
John Wall on being ranked the #32 player by ESPN: “It’s just funny. If there is 31 players better than me in the league, prove it. That’s all I got to say.”
Markieff Morris on the Wizards chances to win the East: “I think we’re the No. 1 team. Raptors going through a little bit when they changed DeMar DeRozan but other than that, Boston has never been better than us. Record shows, but internally we don’t think they were better than us last year. You know, we just got to play up to our ability and we’re better than anybody in the East.”
What I came away with from media day is that Scott Brooks wants Porter to shoot a lot more threes, Wall is going to do what he can to be a team player, and the Wizards are still entirely over-confident.
Injury Updates
Dwight Howard: Missed the start of training camp with back spasms and is expected to be out for a few more days. Howard has said it is due to a long flight to China recently that was not good for his back. Howard is considered day to day right now and should be good to go for the start of the season. This is still concerning to have back issues this early in the season for an aging center who had back surgery in 2012.
Austin Rivers: Rivers (neck) returned to practice on Thursday as a partial participant after missing the first two days with a neck injury. Rivers will be back to full strength for the regular season.
All in all, these injuries are not too serious but it would have been nice to get the new guys in for training camp and develop some chemistry with the rest of the team.
