Washington Wizards: 2nd-Half Surge Against Sacramento A Springboard?
By Phil Watson
The Washington Wizards haven’t exactly been lighting the NBA on fire of late.
Since reaching a season-best 16 games clear of the .500 mark with a blowout win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Jan. 19, Washington is just 9-15.
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In the process of losing 15 of 24, the Wizards have fallen from second in the Eastern Conference, five games in back of the Atlanta Hawks, to fifth, four games clear of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Yeah, it’s the type of fall most people don’t want to attempt without the aid of a parachute.
But the Wizards are still in the hunt for home-court in the Eastern Conference playoffs because the Toronto Raptors decided to go standings-diving right along with the Wiz. Since reaching a season-high 18 games better than .500 at 33-15 on Jan. 28, the Raptors are 6-11.
And the Chicago Bulls, now more like steers after having been stripped of Derrick Rose (for God only knows how long) and Jimmy Butler (for a couple of more weeks, at least), are sort of treading water at 40-28 after Sunday’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Chicago is only 6-7 since the All-Star break, so the race—such as it is—for the two other home-court seeds in the first round behind the Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers appears for all the world as if it is being contested by three drunken college students on spring break.
Lots and lots of stumbling.
But if Washington rights the ship and is able to slide past the Raptors and Bulls back into third place in the East—the Wiz currently trails Toronto by 1½ games and Chicago by just one, they may look back at the 24 minutes it played Saturday night against the moribund Sacramento Kings.
Washington went into halftime against a road-weary opponent that had lost seven of nine trailing—at home—by 18 points.
Coach Randy Wittman, according to The Washington Post, sort of snapped in the dressing room at halftime.
No one would go on record to share a speech that likely won’t be immortalized a la Knute Rockne, but point guard John Wall summed it up nicely.
“Basically we were getting punked,” Wall said.
The Wizards recovered to rally from being down by as much as 21 early in the third quarter to cruise to a 113-97 victory.
Washington became the first team since 1948 to win a game by at least 16 points after trailing by as much as 18 at the half.
It was also the first time the Wizards have put together three straight wins since Jan. 5-9.
It was the All-Star Wall who sparked the comeback with 15 of his 31 points in the third quarter, including an uncharacteristic 3-of-4 from behind the arc as Washington trimmed that 21-point gap to a single point by the end of the period.
Paul Pierce sizzled his way to 12 points in the third quarter and 17 for the game.
It’s the type of win, though, that can be the start of something much larger. Yes, it’s the NBA and everyone makes a run, but it’s not as if Washington’s confidence bank was overflowing.
They were coming off a win Thursday in which they were basically punked by the Memphis Grizzlies, who decided a game in D.C. would be a terrific opportunity to rest four of their top rotation players.
Yeah, the Wizards have been going so well of late, the Grizzlies mistook them for another team in the East that sports a patriotic color scheme, the Philadelphia 70-second-rounders.
But the first victory in the string was a 95-69 thrashing of the Charlotte Hornets, on the road, a win over a team fighting for a playoff spot that was actually, you know, trying to win the game.
Over their last three games, Washington is holding opponents to 84.3 points per game (insert small sample-size warning here).
But they’ve shot better than 50 percent in all three of those games after doing so just three times since that win over the 76ers on Jan. 19.
In that 21-game stretch during which Washington was 6-15, they shot just 44.1 percent overall and 31 percent from long range.
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In the last three games, those percentages have been 51.6 and 35.1, respectively, and that 3-point mark includes a ghastly 2-for-14 showing at Charlotte.
If the Wizards do end up potentially leap-frogging Toronto and Chicago and landing a likely first-round matchup with Milwaukee instead of the Raptors or Bulls, it might just be because Wittman’s halftime parade of profanity was the alarm clock to wake up a team that had been sleep-walking for a spell.
Even if he’s pretty sure he needed to make amends.
“I have to go to church [Sunday] because of some of the things that I said and thought at halftime, so I’ll make sure to do that [Sunday],” Wittman said. “But give them credit. I told them I am proud of them.”
Not nearly as proud as he’ll be if Saturday night’s comeback means a reversal of recent form.
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