Nets 119
Wizards 84
December 22, 2017 | Barclays Center | Brooklyn, NY
Just ten days ago, the Washington Wizards suffered their seventh embarrassing loss of the season to these same Brooklyn Nets in New York City. In a run it back situation, three nights before an exciting Christmas Day matchup, Washington sh*t the bed again against the lottery bound Nets. Washington suffered their second worst loss of the season, 119-84, behind their penultimate worst shooting performance, 36.6 percent, both behind a 116-69 loss to Utah three weeks ago. "It was terrible," Bradley Beal simply explained after the game.
In a game where the Wizards never led, the first quarter was competitive even though it looked like the Nets might run away with it early. Brooklyn got off to a 19-9 run, but Washington responded with a 14-4 run to tie things at 23. That was the last time the game was ever competitive. The road team was down 10 at halftime and were embarrassed in the third quarter 38-15. Garbage time filled by play from deep reserves Tim Frazier, Jason Smith, and Chris McCullough occupied the majority of the fourth quarter that could not have ended soon enough.
Despite it being one of the team’s worst offensive performances of the season, and I will get to that, this game was primarily lost on the defensive end. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson looked like a Hall of Famer with 21 points, 11 rebounds, and 6 assists in 24 minutes (see shot chart below). He bodied anyone that was matched up on him whether it be Wall, Beal, Oubre, Porter, or Morris. Washington could not defend the ball without getting blown, which led to rotation that was consistently beaten by an extra pass leading to 48 points in the paint. Things could have really gotten out of hand if Brooklyn shot the ball at a higher clip from beyond the arc. In the first half, the Nets were a mere 4 of 17 (23.5 percent) from three despite several wide-open looks.
Now about the offense. Washington had their regular starters together for an extended period of time for the first time in a month. It was still not their regular mojo as John Wall played just 7:33 in the first half as the team put him on a 25-minute pitch count as he plays in his first back-to-back since returning from his knee injections. Brooks' staggering of those minutes was odd as Wall only ended with 16 minutes because of the nature of the game in the second half so the question begs why he did not front load those minutes in the first half and then worry about not having him later if the game was close. In addition, Otto Porter Jr. did not look like his usual self and seemed to be on a bit of a minutes restrictions in his first game in a week following a bruised right hip and thigh contusion.
There are a lot of statistics that point to how poorly the Wizards, who showed how brilliant their offense could be on Tuesday, were in scoring the rock. Washington only shot 13 of 31, 41.9 percent, in the paint and a miserable 1 of 8, 12.5 percent, on second chance points. Bradley Beal had one of his worst shooting performance, 2 of 15 (13.3 percent), of his career. Too often the Wizards settled for jump shots during the game. In the second quarter, they were in the bonus with 8:59 left in the frame, but only attempted four shots from the charity stripe in the session because of a lack of aggression. Mike Scott may have cooled off from his 123 points on 73.6 percent shooting over the previous eight games with a 8 points on 3 of 8 shooting performance tonight. No one on the team had more than 13 points (Oubre) and only two players shot better than 50 percent from the field (Gortat and McCullough). When you do not defend well and cannot buy a bucket, this is the kind of shellacking you are left with and obviously it was not pretty.
On the bright side, the Wizards are 17-15, which is still one-game ahead of last season’s pace after 32 games, and well positioned to make the playoffs, contrary to what irrational Twitter nobodies may tell you. The last time they had this embarrassing of a loss, at Utah on December 4, Bradley Beal came back the next night and dropped 51 points on the Portland Trail Blazers. I’m not saying that happens Saturday night against Orlando, but until they start consistently playing poorly against all team, I am not ready to say this team is going to miss the playoffs entirely.