The Washington Wizards have played their best basketball of the season in the last 5 games. And they’ve done it without Bradley Beal.
The Atlanta Hawks, the Boston Celtics, the Denver Nuggets, the Miami Heat. That’s the impressive lineup that the Washington Wizards have bested in the last two weeks, including winning three of those in the last five games. And it’s left Washington fans both cheering, and asking the important question: Why?
Three out of those four teams are in the top three of their respective conferences and it’s particularly head-scratching (and exciting) because the Wizards have done this without the player widely recognized as the “best” on the 2019-20 roster, Bradley Beal.
How? What does it mean? Is it possible that the Wizards are actually better without the guy they just extended for two years on a max contract?
The answer, of course, isn’t so simple. There are a myriad of factors to consider in a team’s losing or winning streak, from the time in the season (the games pre all-star break are always a little bit of a dull period as everyone takes the all-star break to ramp up their playoff push), to injuries (the Celtics didn’t have Kemba Walker in our win, for instance), to players just simply playing above their average level for a string of games (Jordan McRae is shooting the 3-ball 4.1% better, snagging 1.8 more rebounds per 100 possessions, and blocking the ball 0.7 more times per 100 possessions over the last 5 games compared to his career). But one variable has stayed the same, and that is that Beal has been on the bench.
Last 5 Games Team Stats
Obviously, the Wizards have had a better record in the last 5 games compared to all season, with a win rate of 60% compared to 33% before that. But what isn’t clear is how they’ve been doing it.
In fact, the Wizards have been worse on the offensive AND defensive ends statistically over the last five games. According to NBA.com, they’ve scored 106 points vs. 114.8, shot the ball with 44.5% accuracy vs. 45.8%, shot 3’s with 32.8% accuracy vs. 36.2%, free throws 65.6% vs. 77.3%, dished out 21.4 assists vs. 25.7, and stole the ball 7.4 times vs. 7.8 in the last five games versus the season as a whole. The only two raw stats they have performed better in is rebounds (46.8 vs. 42.6) and blocks (5 vs. 4.2).
A deeper dive gives us a little more perspective on the defensive end, and looking at opponents numbers, the Wizards have given up 8.9 fewer points over their last five, and the biggest key has to be perimeter defense as opponents are shooting a dismal 25.2% from the 3-point line as opposed to 36.6% on the season.
The Wizards defense has been super bad all season, but it’s really tough to say in just five games if the defense can be attributed with this HUGE drop-off in opponent three-point percentage or if the Wizards have just been getting lucky with opponents missing open shots.
As someone who has followed basketball for more than two decades now (and with a minor in economics, statistics being a big part of that field of study), I would wager it’s a little bit of both, but I would fully expect opponent three-point percentages to start to creep more towards the norm. From this limited data set, I would probably deduce that the Wizards have been getting lucky in the short-term, but I have been known to be wrong in the past.
Beal vs. The Replacements
Beal’s massive 32.1% usage on the year had to be replaced when he went down, and that’s really extended to the entire roster, but I wanted to take a closer look at Beal’s performance on the year against the two that would mostly be considered his stand-in: Ish Smith & Jordan McRae. I’ll be taking the average of the two players when discussing their per 36 minutes numbers, and I’ll be referring to the duo from now on as Jord-Ish, for the sake of brevity. It’s important to note, however, that this massive usage has been partially eaten up by other guys like Troy Brown Jr. and Dāvis Bertāns too, so this is somewhat an incomplete story but will give us a general gist, especially since McCrae has had a shockingly similar 32.3% usage over the last 5 games. The combined usage rate of Jord-Ish is 29.1%.
Jord-Ish is shooting 42.6% from the field in the last 5 compared to 43.5% on the season for Beal. They are 35.2% from three-point compared to 31.5% for Beal. 65.2% from free-throw territory compared to 83.1%. Jord-Ish is at 23 points per 36 minutes compared to 27.5 per 36 minutes for Beal. They average 5.3 assists compared to Beal’s 6.5 per 36 minutes. They turn the ball over 2.5 times compared to 3.3 for Beal.
On the defensive end, Jord-Ish averages 1.3 steals and 0.7 blocks, compared to 0.9 steals and 0.3 blocks for Beal. They snag 5.2 rebounds per 36 minutes compared to Beal’s 4.7.
Are we better?
Ultimately, given these statistics, I’d have to go with Beal on the offensive end compared to these two (who are also punching above their weight in the short run, let’s be honest), but Beal’s defensive liability has to be a concern moving forward for Wizards fans. It’s something to keep in mind if our defense continues to struggle, as we currently rank dead last in rebounds per game as well as opponents points per game.
One other issue with this set of data is that all of it is without John Wall, and therefore all of it could change when you have a game-changer like that in the lineup. It’s time for Wizards Nation to acknowledge, also, that Wall may never return to the same all-star form when he returns either. A lot of player don’t after an achilles rupture, but only time will tell.
The best answer here is that Beal is still a good fit for the modern NBA, but we have to consider surrounding him and John Wall with defensive minded, tough players. As the roster currently stands, I’m not sure we have that on our bench right now and it’s something we need to look in the eye and admit, as fans of this team and these players. Because ultimately it looks like that is how we win basketball games.