Washington Wizards: Rapid Reactions to tonight’s win against the Bulls
By Keith Cork
Second quarter notes
Here’s an interesting question: Would you rather have Troy Brown Jr. or Chandler Hutchison on your team? The Bulls forward outplayed the Wizards’ young talent in this one up to about three minutes into the second quarter.
The Wizards continued to attack the basket, to great success against the weak interior defense of the Bulls, while Chicago reverted to the outside shooting. The Washington Wizards’ choice was much better.
Moritz Wagner found a nice rhythm with some finishes inside off of some excellent passing from the guards.
Coby White carried his aggressive offensive onslaught from the first quarter into the second, and the Bulls really needed it without a scoring punch for the Wizards to worry about at all on the floor. He ended the quarter with 12 points and 2-for-5 shooting from three-point range.
Troy Brown made me eat my words with a pair of nice steals, racking up 3 steals for the game by the 8 minute mark in the second quarter. He shot 0-for-3 from the field by the half though.
The Bulls continued to miss shots at an alarming rate, but the Washington Wizards could not snag a rebound with just Moritz Wagner surrounded with TBJ, Napier, Jerome Robinson, and Bertans. All the second chance points really hurt, allowing Chicago to score on possessions that should have been empty.
And then, as predicted, the wheels began to fall off and the law of averages took affect about halfway through the second quarter. The Bulls finally turned on a bit of the defensive pressure and the Wizards fell just a bit to shoot 55.6 percent from the floor. This makes me nervous, as I can only guess the next half will be worse.
Zach LaVine decided to finally turn it on, scoring 15 points in his first 15 minutes of this ball game (he ended the half with 17), and Beal had just 9 at this point. In addition, Tomas Satoransky decided he was just about done letting his old team beat the crap out of him, and he turned it on for 12 points and 6 assists by the half.
The Chicago Bulls rim defense went from like a 1 to a 9.5, with Chandler Hutchison and Thaddeus Young blocking the crap out of our big men seemingly out of nowhere. It was kind of fun to watch, with lots of plays that made you exclaim “Oh!”
Then Bradley Beal started to play. He ended the half with 16 points on 6-for-11 shooting, and a killer step back at the buzzer to finish out the half.