Wizards jump out to huge lead, then waste it in 2-point loss to Pacers

The Wizards connected on their first seven shots of the game against the Indian Pacers and used that blistering start to open up a 22-point lead at Verizon Center on Thursday night.

They led 51-31 at the half, but the Pacers were a different team after the break, and so were the Wizards. Indiana chipped away at the lead, and ultimately pulled ahead with 50 seconds to play. The final seconds were as bad a stretch as the Wizards have had all season: The Pacers got three offensive rebounds right under the basket and took a two-point lead with nine seconds remaining.

John Wall even hit a last-second shot, but he released it after the buzzer sounded, and the Wizards suffered another heartbreaking loss, 85-83, to drop to 11-35 for the season.

“That’s us taking shortcuts, them denying us … it’s hard to say what, but those are the things I saw,” Wizards coach Randy Wittman said as he struggled to explain how the Wizards let the game slip away.

“He held onto it a second too late,” Wittman said of Wall’s shot.

It was the kind of loss the Wizards have been through before, all too many times, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

“This [isn’t] the first time we did this, we did this a couple times this year,” Wall said. “We know how it feels to come back and get a win like that. Just no execution, no spacing in the second half. They just pounded away and chipped at the lead, and we didn’t get good shots.”

Jordan Crawford led the Wizards with 21 points, Wall added 16 (with nine assists), and Chris Singleton matched his career high with 16. For the Pacers (27-18), Roy Hibbert paced the team with 19 points and Danny Granger chipped in with 16.

For Nene, it was a learning experience of a different sort with his new team than the one he experienced the previous night in New Jersey.

“There’s a little sour taste in my mouth right now,” Nene said. “But that’s a big part of the process, to learn in this kind of loss. That’s how you learn. We deserved to win. We were amazing in the first half, but they worked hard, they worked better than us, and they won the game.

Nene didn’t put up the same kind of numbers against the Pacers as he did against the Nets on Wednesday (six points, five rebounds), but as he and his teammates continue to learn to play together, the center believes that lessons learned will ultimately lead to wins.

“In a loss, you need to learn something, and I hope we learned something tonight,” Nene said. “You saw the potential, we went up by 20 points over Indiana. But like I said yesterday, it’s a step by step, and I hope we learned something tonight.”