On Monday, after the Wizards lost to the Warriors by a favorable amount at Oracle Arena, Marreese Speights said,
“We just turned up a little,” Speights said of Golden State’s defense to reporters following the win. “We knew if we hit them, if we got a couple stops they would start arguing with each other and quit. We went out there with a good mindset in the second half and we did it.”
The Wizards and Warriors were playing a tight game threw the first half, which ended in a 52-50 Warriors lead, but in the second half, the Warriors played much more aggressively on defense, just as Speights said. In the 3rd quarter of the game, the Warriors held the Wizards to just EIGHT points! They took a 58-81 lead at the end of that quarter, and the eventually won the game by 31 points. The Warriors definitely rattled the Wizards, and hit them in the mouth. A couple of days later, Wizards coach Randy Wittman was not accepting in the comments that Speights made when asked about them before the Wizards game against the Pacers Wednesday night. According to Ben Standig of CSN Washington, Wittman said:
“That’s his opinion. We have to worry about ourselves,” the coach said. “There is no splintering going on here. This is a frustrating game when you go 1 for 18 (in a quarter), trust me. That’s part of this game. “I want them to have that spark, get on each other, push each other. That’s part of this game. If you don’t play with emotion, that’s not good. “I don’t give a crap what Speights thinks. We played them twice. What’s he know.”
Wittman clearly was not happy, and does want to accept what Speights had to say. He does not care what Marreese thinks, because they only played each other two times. The coach continued to say,
“These guys are grown men. They all heard. Social media you can’t get away with anything today. Even if you didn’t pull anything up on the internet, somebody is going to call you. It was everywhere. They know,” Wittman said.”I hope that’s not what it takes. If it is motivation that helps, that’s great. I’ll send him a thank you card at the end of the day.”
Clearly, the Coach Wittman is hoping that this will make his guys mad and motivate them to play harder in order to win games. The coach finished his statement saying,
“That’s not what you rely on at this point, having somebody from another team say something like that. That should fall on our shoulders. We have to come out and play a total game. I don’t need Speights to tell me that.”
Coach Wittman realizes that his guys need to play harder in order to win games. He is hoping that the Wizards will play tougher in every game. He wants his guys to make a note of this, and use it as their motivation to play harder next time.
Randy Wittman was clearly upset over the comments that Speights made, but he wants to use them as a positive for his team. Randy wants his players to use this as a fuel to light the fire for the Wizards who have not played their best basketball since the All Star Break. Hopefully for Coach Randy Wittman and co. this will help them play harder going into the playoffs and gain some momentum.
