The Washington Wizards are losing ball games, and there are many reasons that’s happening. But this one reason may be the biggest one yet.
The Washington Wizards probably aren’t making the playoffs this year, and that’s a fact. Their chances now have slipped to 0.9% according to ESPN, and they’ve dropped their last two ball games against very beatable teams.
They’re sitting on a 22-39 record, which is a whole lot of losses that just seem to keep piling up in spite of having the league’s second leading scorer, sitting at 6th in the league in team points per game, and the 9th best three-point shooting percentage in the league.
Defense is obviously not great as they rank dead last giving up over 120 points per game to the opponent, but I’ve already bagged on their defense plenty, so I wanted to focus an another statistical shortcoming that I’ve found: Rebounding.
We are 28th out of 30 teams in rebounding, and I have to wonder how much of that has to do with just the overall lack of rebounds available. When your opponent is shooting 48.9 percent from the field, there aren’t a whole lot of rebounds left on that side of the ball. 5th place and 28th place are only separated by five rebounds, for example, and that could easily be made up by forcing a few misses on the other side of the ball.
But as Jack wrote recently for Wizard of Awes, the Washington Wizards are going to face a big question at the center position. Thomas Bryant just isn’t playing well when he’s on the floor, and it’s even lead to some run ins with his coach.
Moritz Wagner and Ian Mahinmi have not been able to pick up the slack either. TB, Mahinmi, and Wagner are three of the top four rebounders on the team with 6.9, 5.7, and 5.3 respectively. Rui Hachimura is second on the team, actually with 6 rebounds.
But take the centers on the 8th seeded Brooklyn Nets for example with how short our centers are falling in this one statistical category. DeAndre Jordan is averaging 9.9 rebounds per game, and Jarrett Allen is averaging 9.6. Between those two, they’re grabbing more boards than all three guys that the Washington Wizards have tried at center.
And if you look at NBA.com’s Adjusted Rebound Chance Percentage, the three guys on the Washington Wizards are performing even more poorly, with Thomas Bryant at 64.5 percent, Moritz Wagner at 59.5 percent, and Ian Mahinmi at 57.7 percent.
To compare, DeAndre Jordan sits at 71.5 percent, and Jarrett Allen sits at 62.2 percent in Adjusted Rebound Chance Percentage.
While defense may be the biggest shortcoming, the biggest shortcoming that we can statistically quantify on this team is rebounding. It will be interesting to see whether or not our big men can turn it around to close out this season and give Wizards fans some relief thinking about the possibilities of next season.