Jared Dudley was back in Washington on Monday night with the Phoenix Suns. As always, he was available and interesting to talk to, two traits that endeared him to many during his single season with the Wizards last year.
Dudley manned the back corner locker reserved for veterans. Ian Mahinmi sits there this season.
Dudley’s ability to make 3-pointers turned him into an offensive weapon for the Wizards during their push to a pace-and-space offense. He shot 42 percent from behind the 3-point line last season and has upped that number to 46.9 percent with the Suns early this season.
Among his takeaways about last season were how influential Bradley Beal’s missed games were (Beal played a career low 55 games), the massive benefit to him of playing with John Wall and that the relationship between Wall and Beal is not as bad as people made it out to be. The highlights are as follows.
His general thoughts on last season: “I think the injury bug for us was so devastating early on with Brad missing so many games. If you look back on the season, we missed the playoffs by [three games] and he missed 20-plus games. The reason why it’s so big, because what he does, you can’t duplicate that. So, you try to substitute — you might try to put [Marcus] Thornton in there, you might try the rookie — but he’s a 20-point scorer in the NBA, gets to the free-throw line and he hits big 3s.
“We couldn’t really get a flow and constant thing, [so] we were always up and down.
“We were trying to get into a flow and rhythm. Luckily John was healthy. [Marcin] Gortat missed games. You can’t have your key guys miss games when you don’t have as much talent as other teams. You’ve got to have the chemistry that we were kind of somewhat lacking. I thought overall, it wasn’t a successful season but it was a good season for me just to see that for me another year of the stretch four helped me playing with John. I even struggled with the second unit. You want to play fast, but yet you have to play smart and team. That’s what we’re trying to teach [in Phoenix]. We’re trying to play fast. But, just because you play fast doesn’t mean everyone has the freedom to do what they want. You have to have self-discipline and that’s something that we lacked last year.”
Why he ended up back in Phoenix: “I think it’s fair to say the Wizards at that time had a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and I wasn’t in those plans. I might have been a fall back plan. For me, I was going into free agency trying to sign early. I wasn’t waiting for anyone. They called me that first night and said we’ll see how it plays out. But, overall they were never in consideration … they were going after [Kevin] Durant and [Al] Horford. At that time, I had three good offers from Utah, Brooklyn and Phoenix. Once it got to that, it was really about [being] comfortable with my family, the dollar amount going in. If anything, I might owe [Wizards general manager] Ernie [Grunfeld] whatever favorite bottle of wine for taking me and getting me in this situation to play with John and show everybody what I could do at that four and overall coming off back surgery no one knew what to expect and I thought I played pretty well for the most part.”
His view of the relationship between Wall and Beal: “I think it’s a working relationship in the sense of, when they’re on the court, they have a respect. But, it’s difficult when you have two stars both trying to come into their prime. Obviously, John’s ahead of the curve when he’s already been an All-Star. Brad is trying to develop his game. For him to develop his game, he needs to be more of a ball-handler, more of a play-maker and that takes a little away from John. I don’t think it’s to where, ’I’m better than you,’ I don’t think it’s as negative as people think like that. I think it’s a mutual respect where you have two young guys trying grow at the same time. Sometimes, you’ll butt heads, but overall, we gambled when we played together, we went to dinner together, so it’s not hate or any animosity.”
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