Washington Wizards’ Steps Towards The NBA Finals: Defending Home Court

As the countdown to the start of training camp continues, its time to look at the no.2 on my list of things that need to occur for the Washington Wizards to make themselves a true threat to reach The NBA Finals. First on my list was improvement from this team offensively. Next up; protecting home court!

What are you going to do, write a blog piece about how people don’t cheer enough or how we need to do the wave at Verizon Center?

Not now, dude. I don’t have time to get into it with you today, although the wave at a basketball game would be A.W.E.S.O.M.E. Why don’t you go away and figure out a way for us not to get destroyed in FIFA online?

Back to where I was going with this.

The Washington Wizards won 44 games last year despite a 22-19 home record, which worse than any other team that qualified for the playoffs in either conference. Let me repeat that; Worse than any other team that qualified for the playoffs in any conference.

18 teams in total had a better home record than the Washington Wizards did last season. The Wizards were able to overcome this because of their strong play on the road, which quite frankly, was stunning. The Wizards were one of 11 teams with 22 road wins. That came from a team that prior to last season had a 19-96 road combined road record in the past three seasons prior to their successful season.

The lowest win total outside of the Washington Wizards amongst this group was the Phoenix Suns with 48 wins in the superior Western Conference, and the Toronto Raptors with 48 wins, placing them in 3rd place in the East. While the strong road play carried over into the playoffs with a 4-2 road playoff record, the Washington Wizards’ performance at home unfortunately did as well, and in fact was even worse with a 1-4 overall record. What’s puzzling about the play at home is the Wizards had a similar 22-19 home record in 2012-2013, a season in which they started off 4-13 at home with John Wall sidelined by a knee injury for the season’s first 33 games.

A closer look at the numbers seems to point the attention towards the defensive end of the floor. After John Wall returned from his knee injury in the 2012-2013 season the Washington Wizards played 24 homes games, in which they averaged 100.5 ppg while their opponents averaged 92.6 PPG. That’s a 7.8 PPG differential. This past season’s differential was just 2 PPG.

The difference wasn’t on the offensive end as they averaged 100.3 PPG this past season, but on the defensive end where they went from giving up 92.6 PPG with John Wall in the lineup in the prior season to 98.3 PPG this past season. They regressed defensively by 5.7 PPG at home while plateauing offensively. Opponents coming into Verizon Center shot 45.7% from the floor this past season, a 2.2% increase from the prior year. Did Emeka Okafor’s presence make that much of a difference to this team defensively? It’s possible, but it doesn’t entirely explain the issue as opponents’ shot nearly 2% better from the 3-point line this past season.

Enough with the stats though, watching this team play it was evident that there was a clear issue at times with defensive intensity. We all saw it; Randy Wittman even colorfully made note of it this season on several occasions. Game after game, early on in particular, the Washington Wizards’ perimeter defenders would be late to contest shots and would let the opponent get hot early. Eventually they tightened up defensively, but by then it was too late. Once they allowed the opponent to gain a sense of confidence, they were in for a 48 minute fight. Quality players are going to play well, regardless of whose gym they’re in, so it’s not as appalling when Kyrie Irving goes off, but when Khris Middleton scores 29 for the Bucks, Jeff Green and Phil Pressey combine for 59 points, and Patty Mills scores 25 points in 20 minutes off the bench there’s a problem. Not to take anything away from those players, but for all except Patty Mills, that was their season high! In Khris Middleton and Phil Pressey’s case it was their career high.

OK, so the defense was a problem at home. What about the offense? In terms of points per game, the results were pretty consistent with how they performed with John Wall in the lineup the prior year but let’s take a little deeper look there too. Here is the home FG % for the top 5 scorers from last year’s roster who were also on the roster in the 2012 – 2013 season:

[table id=1 /]

With the exception of Nene, four of the five top returning players each shot worse at home in the 2013 – 2014 season. Trevor Ariza shot slightly worse at home in what was arguably his career season. Taking it a step further, here are the home/road splits from this past season:

[table id=2 /]

The Washington Wizards’ home woes were a problem throughout last season. Players on the team have covered the gauntlet in terms of trying to explain the troubles including the number of road fans, needing a “little more love”, intensity, and defense. When your starting center says “it’s unfortunate Game 6 is in Washington” before an elimination game in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, there’s an issue that needs to be addressed. All the excuses aside, the performance at home was a problem because the team lacked the defensive intensity required to create a home court advantage and just plain didn’t shoot the basketball well.  I

If this team is serious about being a contender to reach the NBA Finals, they have to improve at the Verizon Center, plain and simple. If they can’t figure out how, maybe Randy just needs to borrow this from Rudy.