Washington Wizards: How good does the defense need to be?

The NBA has been sliding into an offense-first league for the past couple of years. Included in that trend are the Washington Wizards, who are being forced to outscore their opponents to win games.

Aside from a wacky Los Angeles Lakers game, the Washington Wizards can perfectly separate their wins and losses this season strictly on their defense. Currently, the Wizards sit fourth in the Eastern Conference with a 5-4 record.

They’ve played some of the supposed top teams in the East in the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Toronto Raptors, and also some of the supposed worst teams in the league in the Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns.

What might already be clear in the East this year is that it could be an all-out dogfight for playoff seeding. But some teams like the Cavaliers seem to be less worried about how high they rank in the standings.

During the 2016-17 NBA season, the Cavaliers notoriously sat some of their stars towards the end of the season and ended up losing the 1-seed to the Boston Celtics. In their eyes, they’d rather have a more rested team than have home-court advantage (and they were right, considering they easily made it to the Finals).

But the Wizards don’t have one of the greatest players to ever play the game in LeBron James. In fact, the Wizards have to get past him to make it to the Finals, which is why they’ll need all the help they can get.

One thing that will definitely be of help will be home-court during the playoffs. In the 2017 NBA Playoffs, the Washington Wizards didn’t lose a single home game (they were knocked out by the Boston Celtics in a road Game 7). The Wizards, like many, are a better team at home than they are away, which is why having a good regular season record is so important this year.

So how do the Wizards win their games? At the moment, the easiest way to split up their wins and losses is by defensive rating. This season, the Washington Wizards are 5-1 when they’ve held their defensive rating to 107.1 or lower. Above 107.1, the Wizards are 0-3. What’s so interesting about the 107.1 number is just how high it is compared to the league-average. A team averaging a defensive rating of 107.1 would rank 24th in the league this year.

What we can conclude from this is the Wizards aren’t playing very well on defense, but making up for it on the offensive side. If their offense continues to produce at the rate it is, the Wizards will only have to maintain a 107.1 defensive rating to win a hefty amount of their games.

What if the Wizards can’t keep up their stellar production? What if Bradley Beal gets injured for a bit or Kelly Oubre Jr. stops hitting shots? Can Washington find lineups that get its defensive rating down? Looking at the lineups the Wizards have tested out thus far this season, they have only two combinations with a significant sample size that have a sub-100 defensive rating:

Lineup No. 1: John Wall, Bradley Beal, Kelly Oubre Jr, Otto Porter Jr, Marcin Gortat (91.9)
Lineup No. 2: Tim Frazier, Jodie Meeks, Tomas Satoransky, Michael Scott, Ian Mahinmi (97.9)

While the first lineup is essentially their usual starting lineup (with Markieff Morris out with injury), the second one comes as a bit of a surprise. That group doesn’t consist of a single starter and yet (in small sample size), it’s played well defensively.

This could in part be because this lineup is playing against opposing lineups without starters as well. But the Wizards can’t even rely on that second lineup to play well for them because of how poorly they play offensively. Lineup No. 2 has a Net Rating of -8.5, meaning the team is actually losing when their second-best defensive lineup is on the court.

Next: 2017-18 Week 4 NBA Power Rankings

In conclusion, it appears at the moment that the Wizards can only compete at a high level when all of their starters and scorers are in, and though the team may have some individually good defenders, they don’t have many lineup options that can defend and score.

Home/Washington Wizards