Washington Wizards Being Overlooked In East

The East is more wide open than in past years, but why aren’t the Washington Wizards being mentioned as a legitimate threat to win the conference?

Three of the four teams at the top of the Eastern Conference, including the Washington Wizards, are playing excellent basketball right now, and the other team — the Cleveland Cavaliers — deserves the benefit of the doubt as the defending champions, despite their recent defensive woes.

With all four teams looking like formidable threats to win the East, why is it that only three of them are getting the credit they deserve?

The Cavs have LeBron James, who has been good enough to drag whatever team he’s been on to the NBA Finals for the last six years. As long as the Big Three is healthy, they’re still the favorites to represent the East in the championship round.

Between Mighty Mouse Isaiah Thomas, the ever-so-good Al Horford, bench pit bull Marcus Smart and the O.G. Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics have become Eastern Conference darlings, especially now that the No. 1 seed is in reach. They’re an infectious underdog story.

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The Toronto Raptors, who were Cleveland’s biggest threat last season, snapped out of their pre-All-Star funk thanks to trades for Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker, making them as formidable a challenge as ever — assuming Kyle Lowry can quickly shake of the rust of his wrist injury, of course.

But even with the third-best record in the conference and the sixth-best record in the NBA, the Wizards are hardly ever mentioned as a legitimate threat to win the East in 2017.

To be fair, the Wizards didn’t really give anyone much reason to buy in at the start of the season. Their 2016-17 campaign got started on a 2-8 kick and it wasn’t until Dec. 30 that they battled their way back to .500.

In 2017, though, Washington has been one of the best teams in the league, courtesy of one of the NBA’s most effective starting lineups.

Since the calendar flipped to the New Year, the Wizards have compiled the third-best record in the NBA and best in the East. They have the fourth-best point differential during that stretch, also tops in the East.

And despite ranking eighth and 19th in offensive and defensive rating on the season, respectively, the Wiz have bumped those ranks up to fourth and 16th in 2017.

They’ve been downright elite with the arrival of the new year. John Wall has played like an MVP candidate. Bradley Beal is having the best (and healthiest) season of his career, finally making good on the potential everyone wondered if he’d ever actually unleash.

Otto Porter is shooting a blistering 44 percent from three-point range, Markieff Morris has his act together again and Marcin Gortat is a regular double-double.

Washington Wizards

Their starters boast the sixth-best point differential in the NBA (second in the East), and fourth-best since the start of 2017 (also second in the conference).

A quick look at how the Wizards have fared against the other top three teams in the East reveals why people might not take them seriously as contenders yet.

Washington went 1-2 against Cleveland this season, split their four-game series with Boston and lost two of three games against Toronto as well.

A dive deeper into the numbers provides context, however.

Two of those losses (one against the Raptors, one against the Cavs) came during the Wizards’ disastrous 2-8 start to the season.

The other loss against Cleveland came in an overtime thriller where LeBron James had to bank in a turnaround three-pointer at the buzzer to force the extra period. Barring that miracle shot, Washington had that game in the bag.

With a combined 6-2 record against the Milwaukee Bucks and Atlanta Hawks — Washington’s two most likely first-round opponents at the moment — the Wizards should be comfortable with either matchup to start the postseason, though they’d obviously much rather face a cratering Hawks squad.

In the second round, they’ll either face the Celtics or Cavaliers, depending on how the seeding plays out in the top four. If they face a Cavs team that’s lost 10 of its last 16 games, they have a legitimate chance of preventing King James from reaching his seventh NBA Finals.

Wall is averaging 29.0 points and 8.7 assists per game against Cleveland this season, while Beal has put up 34.0 points per game on .532/.400/1.000 shooting splits.

If the Wizards face the similarly red-hot Celtics, well, that’ll be a good old-fashioned grudge match considering there’s no love lost between those two.

There’s no question Washington’s path to the NBA Finals would be difficult. They could conceivably face a Bucks team that’s won 13 of its last 16 games, take on a rivalry series with the Celtics and then have to upset LeBron’s Cavs in order to get to the Finals.

They’re probably just as likely to go home in the second round as they are to make it through that kind of gauntlet.

But it’s worth noting that John Wall has outplayed Kyrie Irving in their last two head-to-head meetings, blowing by him on the offensive end to set up his teammates and relatively holding him in check on the defensive end.

https://twitter.com/DCzWall/status/846059912518078464

Bradley Beal has been a flamethrower in his two games against Cleveland this season, and though Washington has no answer for LeBron (does anyone?), the Wizards are just playing much better basketball right now.

The biggest caveat to their case for Eastern supremacy? The Wizards have been pretty mediocre since the All-Star break, despite what their eye-opening 2017 numbers say. Since the break, here’s how they rank in the NBA (and in the East).

• Record:  12th (5th in the East)
• Point Differential:  14th (5th)
• Offensive Rating:  8th (3rd)
• Defensive Rating: 27th (14th)

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However, 20 games is a much smaller sample size to work with, and there was an understandable adjustment period with the additions of Bojan Bogdanovic and Brandon Jennings to a bench that needed some extra firepower.

That extra bench depth will pay off in limited minutes, especially when that formidable starting lineup logs extra minutes in a tight playoff series.

The Wizards are 29-10 at home this season, compared to 17-19 on the road. That home-court advantage will disappear in the second round, unless Washington can make up its 1.5-game deficit behind Cleveland for the No. 2 seed.

But anything can happen in an intense rivalry showdown with a Celtics group still awaiting its first playoff series win, and with the Cavaliers still searching for answers, the East seems ripe for the taking.

The Wizards aren’t as fun as Boston’s improbable rise to the No. 1 seed as underdogs. They aren’t as sexy a storyline as Toronto’s midseason turnaround thanks to their game-changing trades, nor do they stack up to the sheer star power for Cleveland’s Big Three.

Next: 10 Matchups We Want To See In The 2017 NBA Playoffs

But don’t sleep on them having what it takes to win the East when all is said and done.