Washington Wizards Picking Bad Time To Rest On Their Laurels

Washington Wizards were outclassed and embarrassed by the Golden State Warriors on Sunday night. They’ve picked a bad time to rest on their laurels.

At the start of the season, other teams saw the Washington Wizards as an easy win. Now that the Wizards have beaten both Golden State and Cleveland this season, Washington is now seen as a formidable foe.

Washington is nipping on the heels of the Cavaliers, forcing the rest of the league to take notice. Opposing teams no longer see the Wizards as practice or an insult if they lost to them.

But now that the Washington Wizards have secured homecourt advantage in the playoffs, they seem to have lost that fire.

After the Wizards beat the Warriors at home in March, the Warriors looked for payback on their home turf this past weekend. Washington went back to their old ways of not defending the perimeter and were thoroughly embarrassed in the process.

It’s as if the Wizards believe now that they’re in the playoffs, they no longer need to compete during the final stretch of the regular season and can now rest on their laurels.

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Legitimate contenders don’t save their competitive juices for the postseason.

The Warriors made a statement in Sunday’s win at the Oracle.

The Warriors tried to put the Wizards back in their place – that of being the 2-8 team that started the season.

Golden State said, although you beat us, you’re not a contender, that was a fluke.

Those who used to be regular contributors for the Washington Wizards, like Otto Porter and Marcin Gortat, have begun to disappear, too.

Porter was talked about as a candidate for the max contract, but that might not be the case now. He led the NBA in 3-point percentage for most of the season, but has slipped to third. If his recent struggles continue, he will find himself out of the top five.

There are complaints that the Warriors purposely tried to embarrass the Wizards. The Wizards couldn’t be embarrassed unless there was something to be embarrassed about.

Stephen Curry had Marcin Gortat chasing ghosts on the court, as he pivoted behind Gortat and took a wide open, clean shot.

Gortat didn’t crash the glass, but rather it appears that he has crashed and burned, and only pulled down three rebounds.

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John Wall, although he set a franchise record in assists, only scored 15 points. The starters, with the exception of Bradley Beal, didn’t come out to play.

Again, Washington’s bench kept it competitive and didn’t give up.

At one point, the second-unit cut the deficit from 20 points down to 10.

In the fourth quarter, one would think that the starters would have come back into the game. Alas, the bench was left to fend off the former champions themselves.

The remaining games of the regular season are not practice. It’s not preseason. It matters not just for playoff seeding, but for basic pride and respecting the game of basketball.

Washington can’t continue to play with the defeatist attitude that they displayed against Golden State.

If you want to argue that the Warriors intentionally embarrassed the Washington Wizards, that’s fine. But there are only two columns in basketball: W and the L. There’s no middle column for whether a team respected or disrespected you.

Next: Why the Wizards Could Get To the NBA Finals

With five games remaining in the regular season, the Wizards have to start building defensive momentum, otherwise they could quickly find themselves on the losing – and embarrassing – side of a first round series.