Washington Wizards Mailbag Monday: Why Marcin Gortat Could Be Traded In The Off-Season
By Ben Mehic
and was Charlotte L a blip, a limit of j smith(Morris wud have ruffed kamisky) or a team wearing down from this hellish March?
— R33ves (@FunFactAttack) March 20, 2017
Teams – the best ones, even – go through droughts.
Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors hit periods when they just get hit anything. On Saturday night – the team’s second game of a back-to-back – Washington hit a drought.
John Wall found Bradley Beal behind the 3-point line, as he usually does, but the results weren’t the same. Beal and everyone else just couldn’t find their rhythm.
After a while, that sort of cold-streak is contagious.
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Wall was struggling, forcing shots inside with hopes of getting the officials to blow their whistles.
Otto Porter gave the team a spark to end the game, but he was missing open looks in the first half too. That’s out of the ordinary.
The Washington Wizards are third in field goal percentage and fifth in 3-point percentage.
The sample size is large enough to avoid concern, at least offensively. Wall, Beal, Porter and Bojan Bogdanovic are all very productive offensive players.
Washington has surrounded Wall with shooters and the team’s blossomed offensively.
Saturday’s game was determined by which team found a run first. Kemba Walker hit a few threes and Frank Kaminsky got under Wall’s skin. A few plays in a poor shooting contest will make all of the difference.
And as you mentioned, it hurt not having Markieff Morris on the floor.
Morris, even when he’s not hitting from the perimeter, is an impact player for the Wizards – literally. He’s the most physical player the Wizards have had since Nene. He would’ve stopped Kaminsky from getting hot and certainly wouldn’t have allowed the easy baskets inside.
The loss to Charlotte was a mixture of both abnormally poor shooting and Morris’ absence. In an 82-game season, you’re going to have outing like that. Elite shooters, like Beal, Porter and Bogdanovic, are going to have off nights. When one has an off night, you’d hope someone else would fill the void. But on rare occasions, everybody catches the bug.
There’s really nothing the Washington Wizards could’ve done differently. The ball movement was weak at times, but the Wizards were missing clean looks. When that happens, you just have to take the loss and move on.