Washington Wizards Use Defense as Calling Card to Rip Through Eastern Conference
It's no surprise that the Washington Wizards are currently creeping toward pole position in the East. They won 44 games in 2013-14, but they looked like a far better team than that while nearly sneaking their way into the conference finals.
It also should not come as any shock that they're doing so on the strength of their defense, which ranks as the best of any in the Eastern Conference on a per-possession basis.
Last season, the Wizards defended at a top-10 rate, leaning on the youth and athleticism of John Wall and Bradley Beal to hound their opposite numbers into mistakes and on a sturdy frontcourt, led by Marcin Gortat and Nene, to collect their foes' misfires.
That formula has remain largely unchanged in 2014-15. The same goes for the results—at least as far as the most recent postseason is concerned.
Washington is already well ahead of last season's more-than-respectable pace. The Wizards are now 16-6, a full seven games better than their 9-13 opening from the previous campaign and just a half-game behind the Toronto Raptors for the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
As ESPN 980's Kevin Sheehan noted (via The Washington Post's Dan Steinberg), it's been a while since the Wizards were so good so early in the season.
"When’s the last time they were this relevant in December?" Sheehan said. "It would be one of the Gilbert [Arenas] years, it’s been that long, but I think it’s going to be deeper with this team."
The Wizards' latest win, a 104-96 showing against the streaking Los Angeles Clippers, was arguably their most impressive to date and stands as a testament to just how deep this team might go.
For one, it was just their second victory this season against a team with a winning record. The other came at the expense of the Cleveland Cavaliers, just a few days before LeBron James and Co. embarked on what would become an eight-game winning streak.
The Clippers were in the midst of a nine-game spurt of their own before they rolled into the nation's capital. Unlike Cleveland, L.A. arrived on Friday with an established identity, behind a core of stars who've been together for more than three years.
The Clippers didn't look anything like a well-oiled machine at the Verizon Center, though, thanks in no small part to the Wizards' standout defensive effort.
Wall hounded Chris Paul, the league's leader in assist-to-turnover ratio, into a season-high six miscues. Beal did his part to pester Jamal Crawford, normally the Clippers' bench savior, into a 2-of-13 shooting night.
Gortat, Kris Humphries and Nene combined to clog the middle of the floor, limiting the Clippers to just 24 points in the paint. That jam forced Blake Griffin to launch 10 of his 13 attempts from outside of the lane.
All told, the Wizards held the Clippers to 42.7 percent shooting and limited the league's third-most efficient offense to its fifth-lowest scoring output of the season—Washington now stands as just the second Eastern Conference squad, along with the Chicago Bulls, to figure into that particular quintet.
So far, Washington has made hay against both halves of the NBA. The Wizards victory over the Clippers was their fourth in five tries against Western Conference foes, on top of a 12-5 mark opposite the East.
Coincidentally, it was also the exact opposite of how things turned out against this same team at the exact same point of the season a year ago. The Wizards lost game No. 22 of their 2013-14 campaign to the Clippers in L.A., 113-97, as Paul eviscerated them for 38 points and 12 assists with just two turnovers.
Paul was precisely half as effective in Washington's 22nd game this season. The perennial All-Star had just 19 points and six assists this time around.
It's no coincidence, though, that Washington was able to clamp down on the Clippers' vaunted attack. On the season, these Wizards can now lay claim to the league's fourth-stingiest defense (99.3 points allowed per 100 possessions), the sixth-lowest opponent effective field-goal percentage and the seventh-best defensive rebounding percentage, per NBA.com—all key indicators of a squad that knows how to get stops.
And those numbers are even more impressive considering Washington swapped out the long-limbed Trevor Ariza for a 37-year-old Paul Pierce on the wing this past summer. Moreover, it was Pierce who took pride in promoting the Wizards' more physical brand of ball after the game, via The Washington Post's Mark Giannotto:
As a result of that signature style, the Wizards are now 13-0 when holding their opponents under 100 points and 8-0 when forcing 18 or more turnovers, as they did on Friday night.
Of course, it's no surprise that strong defense leads to regular-season success for the Wizards. And if they keep this up through the spring, they won't shock anyone should they wind up contending for the Eastern Conference crown.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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