Eastern Conference Round 1 - Game 5
Wizards 103
Hawks 99
April 26, 2017 - Verizon Center, Washington, D.C.
“I probably would have tweeted the same thing,” Bradley Beal said in response to learning that fans were expressing a sigh of relief following the Wizards Game 5 win.
Despite losing two straight games in Atlanta, Washington is back in the driver’s seat of their first-round series. Here are the five takeaways.
Washington finding non-shooting ways to win basketball games.
he Wizards were a solid 37.2 percent from beyond the arc in the regular season; averaging 9.2 makes a game. So far in five games of this series, Washington is shooting a miserable 40 of 135, 29.6 percent, and has only made more than eight three-pointers once, last game. Despite the lack of shooting where the offense looks Warriors-esque, the Wizards are doing other things to win basketball games.
One of those things: playing defense. “We are doing a great job defensively, that’s why we stay in the game every time,” Bogdanovic said. “That’s why we are 3-2 up.” Atlanta is only shooting 31.2 percent from beyond the arc in the series and tonight Washington forced 8 steals and 10 blocked shots. Beal alone had three steals and three blocks.
John Wall is also unfazed by the lack of shot making from his teammates. “Those guys can miss a thousand shots. If that is the right play to make, I believe in my guys in making shots,” Wall said. “But at the same time as us not making shots, we still defended at a high level and that’s the reason why we won three games so far.”
John Wall is a superhero.
Twitter blew up with DC’s point guard’s fashion choice of a cape-looking shirt. With 47.5 seconds to play, Wall hit a pull-up 21-foot jump shot to put Washington up four after Atlanta had just hit a three, Schroder’s fifth, to get within two. Not only did Wall drop 20 points, he also had 14 assists that resulted in 31 points. I can say, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Wizards would have advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2015 if he never broke his wrist. Regardless, that is in the past and Washington is on the brink of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals much in part to Wall’s consistently stellar play.
Bradley Beal had a super odd stat line, but finds other ways to contribute.
On paper, the shooting guard had 27 points on 50 percent shooting and you automatically are certain that he had an efficient game; and he did. The weird part is that Beal was a miserable 1 of 9 from beyond the arc. Despite the sweet looking stroke, Beal is just 12 of 50 from deep, 24 percent, which is perplexing and goes to the idea of Washington finding other ways to win because there shooting is not doing them any favors. From a health perspective, Beal not being limited so that he can start the second and fourth quarter for a few minutes after playing the entire first and third quarters is extremely useful.
And a reminder of just how dirty this Hawks team is:
“Brad is – I say this often and I don’t know how much traction it gets – he is one of the best two-way players in the league,” Brooks said. “He’s not going to tell anybody that he’s a great defender, but his coaching staff [and] his teammates know that he locks up defensively, gives you great effort, and gives you an honest day’s work. He has such a great, smooth game offensively and you’re kind of mesmerized by that, but he’s a two-way player and he’s one of the best at his position.”
Wizards find themselves a tertiary scorer.
In most games, like today, the House of Guards are going to be Washington’s top scorers. For the first time this series, the Wizards had three players score 15 or more points. Beal (27), Wall (20), and … wait for it … Otto Porter (17) were the trio tonight. Wall texted Porter yesterday to “just keep shooting, keep cutting to the basket” and that seemed to do the trick today as the wing made two three-pointers and had a career-high 10 free throw attempts.
Even Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer was puzzled with Porter’s frequent trips to the charity stripe. “That's the thing that stands out to me,” Budenholzer said. “I keep going to the free-throw line and keep seeing 10 free throws for Otto Porter, and I genuinely can't remember how he got to 10 but that's a big number. You look at John Wall, who shoots one free throw, you look at Paul Millsap who shoots six. Both of those guys are attacking the basket all the time, nonstop. That's a big, big number.”
How to keep Markieff Morris out of foul trouble?
Less than four minutes into the game, Paul Millsap tried to post up Markieff Morris. As soon as the four-time All Star forward turned his back, Wall raced across the court to supply a trap and double team. It resulted in a steal, but the reasoning was to prevent Morris from picking up cheap fouls early on as Scott Brooks explained.
“We wanted to try to save Keef [Markieff Morris] from getting in foul trouble – I don’t know if that strategy worked,” Brooks said. “[We] might have to go back and try something else. I thought it did work a few possessions. It’s something that we talked about and worked on and I give our guys a lot of credit, they executed it [and] it took them a little bit out of their rhythm.”
Morris escaped the first quarter without a personal foul, but then drew three in the second quarter. The power forward finished with five in the game and only played 20:18 because of the foul trouble. For what it’s worth, Morris believes he only committed two fouls and that his technical foul was unwarranted since he was simply diving at where he saw the ball. “Obviously, it was to protect me, to keep me on the court longer but that didn't work,” Morris said about the trapping. “Guess we had to make another adjustment.”