Washington Wizards: Rapid Reactions to tonight’s loss against the Bulls
By Keith Cork
Second quarter notes
With the Washington Wizards getting crushed by a rookie in minimal minutes, I was hoping they would come out and show some defense (ha) to begin the second half. Their answer was to put Jerome Robinson on him, which is interesting and shows a lot to see how much confidence Scott Brooks has in the new, young addition to this Wizards squad.
It’s interesting to note that Tomas Satoransky, who completely crushed us in our last meeting with this Bulls team, didn’t score his first bucket until about two minutes into the second quarter. So that was nice.
Both teams couldn’t help but turn the ball over a bunch, combining for 16 at the 9-minute mark of this basketball game, with 8 apiece. The teams would finish with 50 combined turnovers. Oof.
Zach LaVine decided to start playing basketball at about the 9-minute mark too, putting up some quick impressive jumpers and playing some pretty solid defense on Bradley Beal. He also just so happened to set the Chicago Bulls single season record for three-point makes in a season, surpassing Ben Gordon.
And then you had Sato posterizing Davis Bertans:
Sato throws it down against his old squad 😲@nbcschicago | #RunWithUs pic.twitter.com/GMRxW4kQie
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) February 24, 2020
The Wizards looked really lost here on offense and resorted to hero ball and long jumpers, getting bailed out by the shooting of the aforementioned Bertans and Beal. And they stayed sloppy with the ball, though they somehow committed less turnovers than the Bulls up through the 5-minute mark in the second quarter. That wouldn’t hold through the half.
At the 4:04 mark, there was a nasty hit on Beal from Thaddeus Young, but to be honest it didn’t look malicious at all. Still, the teams exchanged some words and Beal was left holding his face. They made up shortly afterwards, so it turned out to be nothing.
The free throws evened out in this one as the Washington Wizards began to get frustrated and commit silly fouls and to be honest the refs were absolutely letting things go the other way, with several plays where fouls should have been called on the Bulls and they weren’t.
Coby White broke the current season’s record for most points by a rookie in the half. Yay, Wizards defense. The wheels really started to come off towards the end of this half…