Whenever there's a change in coaching, the new guy will make changes to fix the problems that he sees with the team.  This means an increased role with more minutes for some players and a decreased role with less minutes for other players.  Now that we've gotten about 20 games through the season with Ed Tapscott, we've got a clearer picture of who's benefitted from the new coach and who hasn't.

For the sake of this exercise, we'll exclude Mike James and Javaris Crittenton since they didn't come in until after the change had taken place and we'll exclude Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison as well since any coach would be playing them 40 minutes a game given the state of the roster.  With those four players out of the way, let's go about ranking the rest of the squad.

1. Andray Blatche: Since Tapscott has come in, Blatche has been a completely different player.  I think Antawn Jamison put it best in regards to how his performance has improved since the switch.  He still makes his share of boneheaded plays, but at least he's making them confidently.  Before you'd see Blatche play with that deer in the headlights look, make a mistake and get benched.  Now he looks like he has an idea of what he's doing out there and his performance has gone way up.
2. Dominic McGuire: One of things that Tapscott really wanted to establish when he took over was Dominic's role as the team's defensive stopper.  While he still has some room to grow, he's still further along than everyone else on the roster right now and on a team that struggles with defense and rebounding, his contributions have been incredibly valuable.
3. Darius Songaila: Ed still uses him as a center and while I'm still not a fan of playing him there for long shifts, he's been playing much more effectively at that spot since the change and he seems to be more comfortable with his role in the offense since the change.
4. Juan Dixon and Etan Thomas: I'm grouping these two together because they both seem to have their minutes yanked around quite a bit.  The good thing is that they're both veterans that can deal with that and be ready when their names are called.  Overall, I'd say Thomas has benefitted some from the change, where Dixon has not but it's been hard to get a read on either because they can go a week without playing and then have a week where they average 15 minutes a game.
5. Oleksiy Pecherov (seen here during his days in high school): Yeah, his role is still completely the same.
6. DeShawn Stevenson: The coaching change hasn't really affected DeShawn much either.  He was playing hurt for Jordan and he was playing hurt for Tapscott.  Eventually DeShawn put an end to the cherade by telling Tapscott to bench him, but moving to the second unit didn't really make a difference because it didn't change that he was playing through an injury he probably shouldn't have been playing through.
7. Nick Young: There's a Palace of Good Play and Nick Young does not have the key.  Where Andray Blatche was the guy always looking over his shoulder after every mistake under Jordan, Young took that role for a little while under Tapscott.  He seems to have worked his way out of that and he's back to having a more consistent role, but he has not played as well
   
8. JaVale McGee: Prada pretty much summed it up here.  One possible explanation for his lack of minutes could be Ed Tapscott mistaking the "Free McGee!" chants from the crowd for "Eazy-E!"  If he starts wearing N.W.A. shirts, we'll know.
   

Box Score
Game Flow
Post Recap
Times Recap
Live Blog
The Bog
LeBron's Travel: The Video
Morning Look
Wizards Insider
Outlet
Waiting For Next Year
And One

Highest Plus/Minus: Dominic McGuire (+11)
Lowest Plus/Minus: Darius Songaila (-5)
Best Five Man Unit: Mike James, Nick Young, Dominic McGuire, Antawn Jamison, Darius Songaila (+6 in the 3rd Quarter)
Worst Five Man Unit: Mike James, Nick Young, Caron Bulter, Antawn Jamison, Darius Songaila (-6 in the 4th Quarter)

Forgive me for starting another recap with a comparison to a game from last season, but yesterday's game reminded me a lot of Game 1 from last year.  The Wizards did unexpectedly well on the glass, played unexpectedly well defensively, and held a lead for most of the game until the Cavaliers made a late run.  The only difference was that this time the Wizards made the shots at the end (or more accurately, the shot) and the Cavaliers came up just short.

Pretty much all of the attention has focused primarily on the the travel/crab dribble fiasco at the end of the game.  I'm not going to go there because when I play basketball I play in a way that prevents any kind of accusation of traveling, which basically limits me to spot up shooting and drives where I don't have to switch hands when dribbling (I have a very Taser-like game, except for the defense part) so I'm not really in a spot to judge that call.

So other than the traveling call, how were the Wizards pull off a shorthanded win against one of the top teams in the NBA?

• The Great Equalizer: Sunday afternoon games!  I don't have any stats to back this up, but I think  most people would agree that Sunday afternoon games tend to be the sloppiest games of the week.  And let's face it, a game with lots of missed shots plays into the Wizards hands because it bails them out defensively and it doesn't really a change a whole lot for them offensively, since they're used to missing a lot of shots anyways.
  
• Rebounding: Sure, the Wizards rebounding numbers have gone up since Dominic McGuire has entered the starting lineup, but I don't think anyone was expecting the Wizards pull in more boards than the Cavs.  Sure, they were without the services of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, but Anderson Varejao is a very good rebounder in his own right.  Jamison and McGuire deserve most of the credit, combining for 23 rebounds, but this was a total team effort with every starter pulling in at least 4 boards and every bench player pulling in at least two.  Special props to Darius Songaila who pulled in a season high seven boards in nineteen minutes.  Oddly enough, Andray Blatche only pulled in 4 rebounds, but I'm pretty sure that's tied in to his injury from Friday.  He still managed to help the effort by leading the team in assists.

Like KD said in Behind the Boxscore this morning, it wasn't pretty.  But if you told me at the start of the five game gauntlet that the Wizards would have two wins, with the chance for a third on Tuesday, I would've been estatic and now as I sit here knowing that it's happened, I can say for sure that I'm estatic.  Sure, it's probably not enough to start a playoff run, but I think the team's performance over the last few games should give us hope for a run back to respectability.