Washington Wizards are slumping, but a win over the Atlanta Hawks showed the team beginning to get some of their offensive swag back.
Struggling and losing momentum before the NBA Playoffs begin isn’t ideal, but the Washington Wizards find themselves in a unique position.
For the first time since 1978, the Wizards are on pace to win 50-plus games, yet the team’s recent slippage makes it seem as if they’re underachieving.
Washington fell back down to the third spot in the Eastern Conference and maintain just a single game advantage on the fourth placed Toronto Raptors.
Since the All-Star break, the Wizards have been disjointed, losing most of the fluidity that made them a top offensive club this season.
Washington has been top-five in both field goal and 3-point percentage this season, but lately, Scott Brooks‘ team isn’t generating offense.
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Even more disappointing has been their defense, as they’ve consistently allowed over 100 points to teams that are bound for the NBA Lottery.
On Wednesday night against the Atlanta Hawks on national television, the Wizards escaped with a four-point win behind their backcourt’s combined 50 points.
Washington held Atlanta to 100 points – albeit while missing Kent Bazemore and Paul Millsap.
Given the circumstances, the win wasn’t particularly impressive – both Washington and Atlanta shot 40 percent from the field – but the Wizards did show flashes of the play that catapulted them among the best in the league.
John Wall, in particular, broke through a shooting slump, scoring all of his 22 points in the second half. Washington played with energy, moved the ball and got clean looks from the perimeter, even when they weren’t falling.
All elite offensive teams have an immeasurable element – a sort of confidence that’s seen when the ball whips around the 3-point line, leading to open shots.
Washington got some of that back on Wednesday.
“I think that’s what we’ve been missing,” said Bradley Beal after the game, who scored 28 points. “We’ve been missing out swag, just our energy, our fun of the game. Everything is just playing so tense; we just need to relax and just have fun playing the game.”
There’s a distinct offensive difference between successful teams and the ones struggling.
When an offense isn’t clicking, it appears rusty, usually ending with contested shots late in the clock. But when an offense is on, there’s a fluidity to it – an unselfishness that builds throughout the course of 48 minutes.
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“We just started having fun in the fourth quarter,” Beal said. “I felt like we were just tense with everything. We were afraid to make mistakes; we were passing up open shots, making too many passes, fastbreaks – everybody is running in the same plain, we were kinda all over the place in the first half a little bit. We just got back to having fun, getting after it on defense of course and that was leading us to easy buckets in transition.”