Washington Wizards: 4 stats that show the Wizards are better than their record
By Ethan Smith
The Washington Wizards are 4.0 games out of home-court advantage.
If you were experiencing this Washington Wizards season in a vacuum, you might have given up already. Sure, the recent success has been great. But the team is far from perfect, and those early-season struggles were just too much to overcome. Time to start looking towards the lottery, right?
Well, not exactly. While the Wizards may be better served in the long-run with a high-draft pick over a low-seed playoff spot, their season is far from over.
At the All-Star break, the Wizards are thirteenth in the Eastern Conference standings, two spots out of the expanded ten-team playoff for this season. Yes, they’re on the outside looking in. However, they’re not far from the rest of the pack.
At 14-20, the Wizards are 4.0 games behind the Boston Celtics, who are currently the East’s fourth-ranked team. There’s more than enough time for the Wizards to make that ground up, especially if they continue on the winning trajectory they’ve been on for a little over a month now.
The Wizards also have a bit of an advantage heading into the second half of the season. Because the Wizards had six games postponed in the first half of the season, they have more games than any other Eastern Conference team on their second-half schedule (38).
If they can take advantage of their loaded back half, the Wizards could make up valuable ground in a playoff race that is surprisingly wide open at the halfway point.