Wizards notes

CHICAGO — When Chicago Bulls coach Scott Skiles met with players last fall to conduct his first training camp with the team, the introduction was, well, different.

According to Bulls assistant John Bach, Skiles gave one of the most spectacular opening addresses he has heard in his 53 years in basketball.

Skiles told the players ’you’ve heard some things about me, and I’ve heard some things about you,’ Bach related. ’I’m going to put five things I know about you on the blackboard, and you can put five things you know about me up here, and they’ll probably be true.’

Skiles isn’t afraid of his past, especially when he was a viewed as a renegade guard at Michigan State in the 1980s. While in East Lansing, he was arrested and charged with felony possession of cocaine and misdemeanor possession of marijuana. The cocaine charge was dropped when Skiles pleaded guilty to the marijuana possession. He was arrested and charged with drunken driving a year later and served 15 days in jail.

Years removed from his knucklehead days, Skiles still carries himself with an edge. He doesn’t back down, and he maintains a discipline that has vaulted his team into the playoffs for the first time since 1998.

According to general manager John Paxson, the Bulls have adopted Skiles’ hard-nosed attitude.

’We play hard, and it is very much a reflection of the way Scott coaches,’ Paxson said. ’It’s not a negative thing at all. He’s intense. Our players are intense. They buy into how hard you have to play every possession. We’ve come a long way this year.’

With injuries to starters Luol Deng and Eddy Curry, Skiles doesn’t have a lot of offensive weapons. However, offense hasn’t been the Bulls’ focus since Skiles took over when Bill Cartwright was fired 17 games into last season.

With Skiles calling the shots, the Bulls led the league in opponent’s field goal percentage (42.2) and had a 23-game improvement this season.

Bulls guard Chris Duhon, just 6-foot-1, clearly bought into Skiles’ system. That’s why he found himself guarding 6-9 Wizards forward Antawn Jamison at times in Game 1.

’In training camp we battled,’ Duhon said. ’?We fought each other, just scraped. There was a lot of physical play, hard fouls, guys on the floor. [Andres] Nocioni being Nocioni. If you didn’t do it you sat out. Coach Skiles made that clear. If you don’t go out and play hard, you might as well sit on the bench.?

Said Skiles: ’It’s the only way to win games. I don’t think we’re selling it. We just work on it every day. It’s the only way you can guard. We feel like we haven’t played our best defense yet. We’re a young team.

Stern addresses juice

NBA commissioner David Stern attended last night’s Game 2 between the Wizards and the Bulls. Before the game, Stern, who is in the process of working on a new collective bargaining agreement, addressed the problem of steroids.

’When the hearings started, I said, ’I don’t really understand what’s going on here,’ ’ Stern said of the congressional hearings on steroids in Major League Baseball and the NFL. ’But as I watched them unfold, I came to the conclusion that this is a proper inquiry for the Congress to make.

’Given the talk about kids actually using drugs that are dangerous to them and even recognizing the role that parents should play, we as a league want kids to look up to us, to do what we do, to follow us. I think it is incumbent upon every sport to just have rules to demonstrate to your fans that if you are in the NBA you submit to a certain amount of testing. It’s really a covenant with your fans.’

Rub-a-dub

One person working hard behind the scenes in the playoffs is masseuse Zelda Wafer.

Wafer, an independent contractor, spent five hours massaging five different Wizards on Tuesday night to get them as limber as possible for last night’s game, and she worked on another member of the team before the game.

Wafer, who started with the Wizards in December, was recruited by the players, who have brought their wives, mothers and girlfriends to the Four Seasons in the District, where she also works.

The Texas native said she was a fan of the Wizards before she began working with the team. Now, of course, she’s an even bigger one.

’Oh, God, yes,’ Wafer said. ’When they get hurt I feel it. I watch how they walk and how they move. I can tell what they are going to need by the way they walk.’