The day started out for us with a meeting in coach Jordan’s room. We were putting together our finishing touches on our gameplan versus Cleveland. The meeting was a short one starting at 7:15 am. We put together most of it last night after arriving in Cleveland. We met the team at 8:00 for breakfast and to go over everything. The gameplan is sound, now we have to go out and execute it.
Wes, Antonio and I headed over to the arena at 9:20 am for the 12:30 tip. This early game is like an AAU tournament. Imagine it is on in LA at 9:30 am. What time would it be on for our fans in Hawaii? Hopefully there are some Wizard fans there. The ballboys were there ready to help us. They are a good bunch of guys who give us some laughs. For some reason it seems like we are always in Cleveland. It must seem like that even more for the coaches and players that have been here for awhile, as the Wizards and Cleveland have been battling in the playoffs for the past two years.
The crowd was loud and rowdy in their yellow t-shirts. It is PLAYOFF time that’s for sure. It is a great time to still be playing basketball. Fourteen teams are watching from home. It was a good game that we controlled for awhile. In the fourth quarter we couldn’t make shots. We did not score a FG until there was 5:39 left in the quarter. You are not going to win a ny games that way, let alone a playoff game. Hopefully we can play better on Monday night and get a split on the road. We will have to do a better job on both ends of the floor and get to the FT line more.
Now for the coaches we will meet again at 6:30 pm and watch film and start putting together a game plan for game two and see what adjustments that we have to make. Practice tomorrow morning. I hope Gil’s and CB’s knees are okay.
My wife and daughter headed up to Baltimore this afternoon to watch the game at my aunt Jean’s house. Jean has become our biggest fan, she watches all the games and even stayed up to watch us when we were on the west coast. I love all of them and miss them too.
How about Phoenix and San Antonio for a first round matchup? That will be very interesting and is now in double OT as I type this. I hope my old team the Raptors do well and take care of business. Good luck to the coaches Sam, Jay, Alex, Mike and Eric. Also good luck to all the players and staff up there. I miss you all very much and wish nothing but the best for the entire organization.
I will be blogging after each game. Check out the blog on Tuesday for the latest update on the playoffs. Take care and God Bless.