Washington Wizards Falling Short in Bid to Become NBA Title Contenders
In an unbalanced Eastern Conference that's starting to personify a top-heavy Jenga tower, a thin line is separating contenders from pretenders.
Just ask the Washington Wizards, who are toeing that balance beam with a wobbly disposition.
Since starting 19-6, the Wizards have mustered a pedestrian 12 wins over their past 24 contests despite playing the league's softest schedule to date. And following Monday night's 92-88 loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Washington has dropped five of its last seven, including three straight.
Subsequently, Randy Wittman's club has dropped two games back of the Toronto Raptors, who have captured seven wins over their last 10 games. That includes a 120-116 overtime victory at the Verizon Center last Saturday.
Washington's slide has also coincided with the Cleveland Cavaliers' sudden awakening. While LeBron James and Co. have ripped off 11 straight wins, Washington's mustered five victories during that same stretch.
"We are not focused enough now," Wizards guard Bradley Beal said following Monday night's loss, according to The Washington Post's Jorge Castillo. "We are not hungry. We are not the same team we were in training camp and to start the year off. I don’t think we still have that heart and desire to prove ourselves and show that we are still about business. We haven’t been the same team that got up and was physical and tough on them. We are pretty soft right now."
While Beal stopped short of doing his best Kobe Bryant impression and making toilet paper analogies, his frustration certainly isn't unfounded.
The Wizards have experienced some very real offensive regression since their scorching hot start, and the backslide can be traced to a web of puzzling offensive distributions.
Interestingly enough, Washington's shooting woes Monday night against the Hornets served as a microcosm of the team's counter-intuitive approach.
CBS Sports' Matt Moore explains:
"The Wizards took 34 mid-range shots tonight. They shot 35% on them. They took 15 threes. They shot 40% on them.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) February 3, 2015"
All season long, the Wizards have been passing up threes in favor of taking mid-range jumpers. Only now, the scope of that inefficient problem has been magnified in conjunction with a slow descent down the Eastern Conference ranks.
This wouldn't be a major problem if Washington wasn't replete with capable long-range shooters, but the fact of the matter is they are—in spades. Not only is Beal knocking down a career-best 44.6 percent of his threes, but he's one of three players—Klay Thompson and Kyle Korver are the others—converting at a rate that high on at least four attempts per game, according to Basketball-Reference.com.
Combine his stroke with Paul Pierce's steady gooseneck (39.5 percent) and Rasual Butler's bat out of hell shooting display (43.5 percent), and the Wizards are knocking down threes at a 38 percent clip. That ranks No. 3 overall behind only the Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors.
The problem is Washington's attempting the fourth-fewest threes overall, shooting just 16 on a nightly basis. That's an issue compounded by the fact that the Wizards are hoisting 18 mid-range attempts per game and sinking 41.6 percent of them.
From a purely mathematical standpoint, the allocation doesn't make much sense. As ESPN Insider's Tom Haberstroh explained back in December, this is a case of understanding basic elementary arithmetic.
But it's not that simple from an X's and O's standpoint, as Wittman noted prior to the season.
“We’re going to take open shots,” Wittman said, per Castillo. “If a team wants to give us mid-range open shots, we’re going to take them. I’m going to tell a guy that has a wide-open 15-foot jumper to take three steps back and shoot a three? I’m not going to do that.”
The Wizards' offense is predicated around mid-range jumpers for good reason, and the logic has everything to do with John Wall and the bigs that flank him.
Over the last three seasons, Wall has embraced the laborious process of honing his jumper from the elbows and extended areas, the fruits of which are starting to shine through.
| 2010-11 | 30.8 | 31.6 |
| 2011-12 | 33.7 | 30.2 |
| 2012-13 | 37.9 | 37.2 |
| 2013-14 | 34.8 | 36.7 |
| 2014-15 | 45.0 | 39.1 |
Wall's also taking a career-high 33.9 percent of his total shots between 16 feet and the three-point line, a trend that's transferred to a more passive Nene, who's loading up a career-high 23.1 percent of his looks from the same range. The story's no different for Kris Humphries, who's experienced a revival of sorts living for pick-and-pop jumpers at the free-throw line.
So on a player-by-player basis, the Wizards appear to have the makings of a balanced and potent offense. But, as the past 24 games have indicated, the collective offerings have declined steadily. A two-point drop in efficiency over the second quarter of the season slots Washington comfortably behind the Raptors, Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls and Hawks in offensive rating at 103.7.
That doesn't mean the franchise's red, white and blue alarms should be sounded on F Street just yet, though.
Washington's defense still ranks third in efficiency among Eastern Conference teams, and there's only been nominal slippage in that department over the past month and a half.
And according to Wittman, the team took to the practice floor Tuesday morning to release some pent-up energy, according to the Washington Times' Todd Dybas:
"We just got to stay together, get our mental and physical edge back, especially on the defensive end," Pierce said, per Castillo. "I think that’s where we’ve regressed a little bit, in being consistent in that area, playing in spurts, and like I said all year long, we’re a defensive team first and that’s got to be the one constant with us."
If that sense of urgency can be parlayed into a solid five-game pre-All-Star break stretch that includes showdowns at Atlanta (Wednesday) and Toronto (Feb. 11), optimism can creep back into peripheral view.
But if Washington can't pass the litmus test, a bleak slew of questions will arise. Namely, is Wittman the right man for the job? And, is the Wizards' eventual postseason fate already sealed with the Cavaliers surging, Raptors holding steady and Hawks cruising?
With the Wizards spinning their tires for the time being, grouping them among the conference's elite will be an exercise in idealism should troubling tendencies continue to plague the Jekyll and Hyde impersonators in the weeks ahead.
All statistics courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com and are current as of Feb. 3 unless noted otherwise.
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