(Photo: Black Sports Online)
Throughout the John Wall and Bradley Beal era, the Washington Wizards have been a team that can score the ball with the best in the league, but at times they fail to remain locked in on the defensive end. Wednesday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns, a team without their best player in Eric Bledsoe and opening night head coach in Earl Watson as well as playing on a back-to-back, highlighted Washington’s lack of defensive intensity. Here is what they had to say about the reoccurring problem and how they plan to potential address it.
After a first quarter that saw the Wizards lead 32-15, it seemed that they had carried over their mentality from Sacramento in terms of putting away lottery bound teams early without even giving a chance to challenge. Phoenix only made five field goals in the 12-minute period and missed all eight of their three-point attempts. Then, things changed for the worse as the Suns would go on to score 107 points over the final three quarters on 59 percent (36 of 61) shooting.
“It is defense, man,” Bradley Beal said about the difference in the second half. “Plain and simple. It is us defending. It is our aggressiveness on the defensive end, just allowing guys to get to where they want to go, score any type of buckets, fouling way too much. We disagree with calls but at the end of the day, they are calling and they are not going to change it so we have to put that in the back of our heads and defend, stay solid with everything. We were not that. We were undisciplined. We were too cool. We thought it was going to be a cake walk and they bust our ass, plain and simple.”
“We didn’t guard the rest of the game from the three quarters on, I think they had 106 points, so we didn’t play no defense,” John Wall stated about the game’s turnaround. “When you don’t continue to do the things that you do to get you the lead and you start to get comfortable, then you start to lose games like this.”
“Then we relaxed,” head coach Scott Brooks said after a first-quarter that he described as the ‘best basketball of the season’. “You give a team confidence, it’s hard to turn it off. We couldn’t stop Warren. Back-door, his right hand, offensive rebounds, he was having his way with any of our players that were guarding him. If we don’t have the defensive urgency you’re not going to have success. We have to change the way we approach every possession. You can’t just pick and choose possessions. We were shorthanded and guys didn’t lock in. They had their way. Back-doors, transition, we didn’t turn them over. … We didn’t have the defensive intensity the last three quarters, and it showed with the outcome of the game.”
“Just unacceptable,” Mike Scott said. “Just got to be able to take teams out. [We] should've took out the Lakers, Warriors, now tonight so it's unacceptable.”
TJ Warren, the Sun's second leading scorer at just 14.9 points per game, dropped a career-high 40 points at Capital One Arena on an efficient 16 of 22 shooting. “I was really surprised,” Warren said about Washington giving him space. “Usually guys know if you give me a little bit of space, it’s always a bucket.”
“He was moving, cutting, putting the ball on the floor, he only made one three so it was not his outside game, it was him attacking, getting to the basket, getting to the free-throw line and it hurts us,” Beal explained. “We cannot let anybody come in here and score 40. That is just unacceptable.”
“He was getting back door layups,” Wall said. “He just has a knack for the basketball and when shots were going up he was getting the offensive rebounds and being in the right position. He’s always cutting. He’s kinda like Otto (Porter), always cutting and doing things like that and in the third quarter I think he had like six, seven layups that got him into a rhythm and he starts to see the ball go into the basket.”
Speaking of Otto Porter Jr. who would have probably drew the assignment of Warren were it not for a stomach virus, Beal would not use that as an excuse for the defensive showing.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Beal stated. “We have enough guys in here to step up and make plays, enough guys in here to win a ball game. We were up 20 and Otto was not playing. That is no excuse. That is no excuse at all. It does not matter who we are playing, we have enough guys in here to be able to step up and win games.”
Brooks discussed how he is not necessarily worried about repeated blown leads, including tonight’s wasted 22-point advantage, but the reason behind them. Yes, you guessed it, defense.
“I’m not cornered with the leads, I’m more concerned with the defensive intensity,” Brooks said. “We keep talking about it. It’s going to come down to guys being able to do what they are capable of doing. I’m not asking them to do something they’re not capable. I’m going to have to figure out how we can get our guys to be more consistent with the level of urgency. We didn’t have that tonight. It’s disappointing because we came out. We probably played our best basketball of the season. Both ends of the court. We were a two-way team. We talk about doing that and we stop doing it. That’s a concern. It’s early, that’s the good part, but it shouldn’t happen.”
It has become a broken record talking about this team’s inconsistent defense, so I tried to probe Beal and Wall to reveal how exactly they intend to rectify their extended woes.
“We have to challenge ourselves,” Beal said about how to straighten things out on defense. “That is all it is at the end of the day. We cannot worry about offense. We score enough points every game to win the game. It is just a matter of us stopping guys, getting stops. We do not do that. We get so caught up in missed shots and not getting the ball or whatever it may be and we are not defending. When we do not defend, we cannot outscore everybody. That is a team who can score.”
“That’s how every game is going to be. Everybody is going to give us their best,” Beal said. “For us to sit here and act like we’re somebody; we’re not jack-ish right now. We haven’t proved nothing, we haven’t done nothing. We’ve gotta stay aggressive at all times. We’ve gotta realize that we’re a targeted team. Teams want to beat us. Until we get that into the back of our heads, we’re going to continue to play this way. We got to play with some confidence, some sense of urgency and aggressiveness on the defensive end, not offensively, straight defense because we are not defending a soul. Period.”
“I think it is individually,” Beal said about the reoccurring issues on defense. “We have to challenge us individually. It is up to us as leaders, John [Wall] and I, we have to do better jobs at holding guys accountable as well, especially myself, I have to guard guys who are hot and vice versa, he has to do the same. We are going to start holding guys accountable, holding ourselves to a higher standard than what we are, because it is unacceptable. We come to the huddle every timeout and say we need to do this, we need to do that, but until we really get our point across and really get up under guys and get up under one another, like we have to do it we have to.”
“Everybody,” Beal said when I asked how he envisions holding the team accountable. “1 through 5. 1 through 15. Me, John, all the way down the line. We have to hold each other accountable. Whether someone is missing an assignment, get on him, that’s where we at right now. There is no reason why we should be giving up a lot of the points we give up. It’s a lot of no helping in situations and leaving guys on islands, not boxing out, those are all little things, like all those little things add up and when you do that, that gives teams confidence, which is what they had and they end up killing you.”
“We talked about it on the bench,” Wall said about trying to hold the team accountable. “At times where we get leads or at times when we don’t have a lead and we try and do stuff, sometimes we are worried about scoring more than guarding our man and trying to get stops. We are a team that doesn’t worry about who is scoring the ball or moving the ball, and make shots and make plays. When we get these assists, we are a better team. When we start to stand and don’t do that and worry about who is scoring, who is going to get the next shot, that’s when we get in trouble and then like Coach said in the fourth quarter, they had gotten into a rhythm and felt comfortable and whoever shot the ball it just felt like a big ocean and every shot they took, it went in.”
“Just got to play defense,” Wall responded when I asked how to change the defensive output. “The first 12 minutes, we played great defense, held them to 15 points, moving the ball, getting out in transition, being the team that we are capable of, but you can’t do that for only 12 minutes, you have to be able to do that consistently for 48 minutes and till we figure that out, we are going to have these ups and downs.”
The Wizards hope to become a clear-cut contender in the NBA, but they are clearly not there yet. If they were, these issues would not be happening, and they are aware of that.
“We could easily say we’re 7-0 or 4-3 like we are” Wall said. “We had leads in all these games and opportunities to close them out. We had leads, but we let those fall and collapsed. In the past we might have been able to get away with those, but now teams know what we’re capable of. They know we’re a good team. To take that next step and become an elite team, we’ve gotta close them out.”