Wizards 125
Blazers 124 (ot)
March 11, 2017 - Moda Center, Portland, OR
What more can I say? What more can you do? Are you not entertained? Is this why you are not here!? Okay I totally spun this lede into the intro of a classic Jay-Z song but seriously. What is this team? The level of resilience, the ability to sustain, the strength to endure. These Wizards are special. These Wizards are for real. These Wizards cannot be stopped. No a large lead, no road back-to-back. Not Damien Lillard or CJ McCollum. Shit, not even a clear toe stepping out of bounds on a game-winning shot. With last night's improbable win (again), the Wizards are now 4-0 on this road trip, and 41-24 on the year.
Here's what stood out to me last night:
Quick Hits:
The sustenance is real.
I alluded to the remarkable perseverance of the Wizards on this road trip in my #WizBlazers pregame post and questioned how long the Wizards would be able to sustain this brutally earned success. It’s the reason why at halftime, when the Wizards were getting hammered 70-49, my emotions remained at ease. You think Scott Brooks is masterful at ATO plays? Well, let’s talk about Scott Brooks’ mastery of AHT (After Halftime) plays. Let’s face it. Getting a bunch of grown, yet tired and depleted egos to rise up and fight back from a 20+ point deficit on the tail end of a road back-to-back in the middle of a west coast road trip after having just fought back from a similar 20+ point deficit the very night before in Sacramento is almost impossible. This trip has literally become a Jigsaw death trap with the odds to survive minimal but the Wizards have defied every one of them. To be honest, I’d love to be a roach in the cracks of the Moda Center visitor’s locker room drywall just to hear what it is that Brooks tells these guys to sway them back in the game. I could probably use some of that scolding to apply it to my own life.
The battle of the backcourts.
This was a helluva match. Coming into the game, the combined season stats of the two tandems matched up pretty well:
Wall and Beal: 46.8 ppg, 14.8 assists
Lillard and McCollum: 51.2 ppg, 9.7 assists
Here’s how they finished last night:
Wall and Beal: 65 points, 15 assists
Lillard and McCollum: 67 points, 13 assists
The direction of the game for each team clearly began and ended with their respective starting backcourts, and it was clearly a tale of two halves for them. In the first half, Team Lillard/McCollum outscored Team Wall/Beal 36-26, with Wall (21) and McCollum (25) leading the charge. The Blazers as a team led the Wizards by 21, 70-49 at the half. The second half fared differently, as the tables turned and roles were reversed. A well-rounded Wall (19) and Beal (14) outlasted the Blazers tandem 33-21, and like clockwork, the Wizards outscored the Blazers by exactly 21 in the second half.
What changed in the second half?
Literally EVERYTHING, but perhaps the most critical adjustment of all for the Wizards was caging up CJ McCollum. CJ torched the Wizards in the first half for 25 points, making 4 of 5 three's. In the second half, however, the Wizards fenced off the perimeter from CJ, forcing him to plan B's and C's (which weren't nearly as good plans as A). See related video via J. Michael:
With the adjustments made on the Blazers' blazing backcourt, Portland as team struggled as their field goal percentage nosedived from a whopping 64 percent clip in the first half, to just 38 percent in the second. Side note: the Wizards shot 58 percent in the second half and hit 9 of 13 three's.
Additionally, the Wizards minimized their turnovers - 8 in the first half, only 3 in the second.
Highlights:
Keef steal -> Wall flush.
Panda with the clutch 3 late in the 4th.
16 third quarter points for Bradley Beal.
KEEF'S DAGGER!