
(Photo: Ned Dishman/Getty Images)
Wizards 102
Thunder 96
January 30, 2018 | Capital One Arena | Washington, D.C.
For the Washington Wizards, the penultimate day of January 2018, an ordinary Tuesday day for some, was extremely busy. In the morning, they announced that John Wall will undergo a procedure on his left knee that may sideline him six to eight weeks. Scott Brooks told his team not panic and convinced them that they still have more than enough talent to stay in the Eastern Conference playoff picture without their best player. His team listened and turned in one of their best performances of the season as they snapped Oklahoma City’s eight-game winning streak. The Wizards have now won two in a row since Wall’s most recent shutdown.
Limiting Russell Westbrook
Just five nights ago on national television, Westbrook showed the country why he won MVP last season with 46 points on 19-of-29 shooting, six rebounds, and six assists. He may have had some added motivation thinking that he was LeBron James’ last pick in the All-Star draft immediately after Wall, but that was not the case on Tuesday night in the Nation’s Capital.
The Wizards absolutely pestered one of the best players in the NBA by holding Westbrook to 13 points on 5-of-18 shooting and seven turnovers. “He missed a lot of shots – a whole lot of shots,” Markieff Morris shared which nearly identical to Westbrook saying “nothing, just missed some shots,” when asked the difference from five nights ago.
“Tomas really battled, and he was trying to stay in front of one of the fastest guards in the league, and with help from his teammates, we did a good job on [Russell] Westbrook,” Scott Brooks said about his former point guard. “He's a handful like we wanted to keep him under 46 and we did. We made some adjustments, and I thought our guys did a really good job of buying into it and executing it and not giving into it. At times when you play against guys like Westbrook, he challenges your schemes and you have to stay with it and trust the percentages, and I thought our guys did a great job tonight.”
“He's a playmaker,” Brooks continued. “We wanted to make sure that he saw the crowd. He can attack left, he can attack right, and [he's] just a great player. Like I said, he's going to go down as one of the best point guards ever to play the game but I thought our bodies... he was able to see not a lot of gaps, not a lot of openings, and he's one of the few guys that can--John [Wall]'s right there with him--they can get into gaps that there's no way they can get into but they find a way in. Our guys did a great job of walling him up and making him take some tough shots."
"That was our key," Beal said about Tomas Satoransky’s help defense. "We worked on it the last few days, getting back in transition because he’s one of the best, if not one of the best in pushing the ball, drawing fouls, getting easy buckets for his teammates. It was imperative for us to get back, let him see bodies, because when he does that, he has to give the ball up. We kinda forced him to do that and try to control the situation as much as possible."
"It was different," Paul George said about Washington's defense. "It was different, I thought, how they guarded us. They were aggressive on pick-and-rolls which they were trying to force out of our hands, out of Russ' hands, out of my hands and make our rollers make the plays."
Finishing Strong
With less than five minutes to play, the Wizards found themselves down 90-86 after giving up consecutive layups to Steven Adams and then Carmelo Anthony. They very easily could have phoned it in, but facilitator Bradley Beal would have none of it. The All-Star shooting guard handed out two of his game-high nine assists for a Otto Porter layup and Markieff Morris pullup jump shot to thing things up at 90 after the timeout.
Washington then traded buckets with Oklahoma City. Anthony had a tough layup isolated against Marcin Gortat, but Satoransky responded with an alley-oop pass to Morris. Adams had a layup that Porter countered with a midrange jump shot. Westbrook had an amazing move to get a tough layup conversion, but Beal came right back at him with a layup of his own. Then the home team clamped down. Josh Huestis had a bad pass turnover and then immediately, and incorrectly, gave a foul to Satoransky. Washington finished the game on an 8-0 run and 16-6 following a timeout with 4:45 left in the game to secure the victory.
“Our spirit,” Brooks said about the key to the game similarly to Saturday’s win in Atlanta. “I think our spirit won the game. We fought, we battled, we clawed. We didn't complain–we just played.”
Ball Movement Remains Efficient
No one expected for Washington to have another 40-assist game against Oklahoma City, but despite shooting 38.2 percent from the field, they had 27 assists on 34 made field goals. In the first 48 games of the season, 58 percent of the Wizards baskets were assists on, but in the past two games, without Wall of all people, the ratio has skyrocketed to 81 percent.
“How many times you can shoot 38 percent and have 27 assists?,” Brooks observed from the box score. “That means the ball was moving around and shot distribution was great: 13, 14, 12, 19 and Tomas [Satoransky] had four. Tomas played well.”
Everyone got involved for the Wizards as they preach that everyone needs to step up and be more aggressive without Wall instead of putting all of the five-time All-Star’s production on one player. Porter led the way with 25 points on 8-of-13 shooting, Beal did his thing with 21 points on 8-of-19 shooting, and Morris came through with 18 points on 7-of-14 shooting.
“We’re just playing for each other,” Porter said. “We’re just moving from side-to-side [and] it’s hard to move from side-to-side, especially for 24 seconds. That’s what we tried to do: swing and attack, draw and kick and spot open threes. We trust that. We know shots are going to start falling and we’re going to try and get it done.”
Bench Woes Prop Up
One of the reasons Satoransky serving as the primary backup point guard made sense was they were struggling to score with Tim Frazier running the second unit. It is same to assume his 14 assists performance in Atlanta is an anomaly as he came back to Earth on Tuesday night. The bench as a whole struggled as they scored just 23 points on 7-of-27 (25.9 percent) shooting from the field and four turnovers. Ian Mahinmi racked up fouls at an inordinate rate with five in nine minutes. The backup backcourt of Frazier and Jodie Meeks were 0 of 7 from the field for 0 points in 22 minutes on the court. Even Kelly Oubre and Mike Scott had rough shooting nights going 2-of-7 and 3-of-10 from the field, respectively. The unit as a whole was -56 in 71 minutes of play.
Protecting The Rock
Two games ago in Oklahoma City, the Wizards had 23 turnovers that directly resulted in 36 points for the Thunder. Russell Westbrook in transition is a dangerous thing and Washington realized that first hand as they corrected their mistake less than a week later. The Wizards had just 12 turnovers that the Thunder were only able to convert into 11 points. On the flip side, Washington forced Oklahoma City into a season-high 21 turnovers.
Next Game: Washington will host Toronto for the first time this season on Thursday in their third matchup of the season, all of which have been without John Wall.