Randy Wittman is back to his familiar refrain about his team’s play: They’re selfish and their basketball IQ is lacking. The Wizards lost their second game in a row, which on the surface isn’t a big deal, but they blew a third chance to return to .500 and finally get past that barrier.
“You can’t dictate the game yourself and make it play out the way you are. You’ve got to let the game dictate that and then be willing to do that,” said Wittman after Friday’s 101-88 loss to the Toronto Raptors, a game that was such a bad performance that the score wasn’t indicative of how one-sided it truly was. “’They’re going to take me away tonight? You’re going to be the bonus baby. We’re going to feed you.’ We’ve got to do that and we didn’t have that.”
The Raptors wouldn’t allow Bradley Beal and John Wall to get open looks. They combined to shoot 10-for-31. No other player attempted more than nine shots. The Wizards (14-16) shot just 41.5%, after making 37.5% in a home loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday.
“I guess what he was talking about was body language and attitude, more so than guys not passing the ball, at least that’s what I interpreted they were saying,” Beal said. “I mean you can sense it here and there, but I still think we had a chance to win the game regardless of what our attitude was. He’s right. That’s definitely something we have to stay away from and hopefully moving forward we can eliminate that. Like he said, we lost a couple of games that were winnable. We’ve got to get back on the right track.”
Wall’s take on Wittman’s claim of selfishness: “I don’t think so. I think we try and play the right way. I just give them a lot of credit, they took away things from us and then we didn’t make a lot of shots.”
Next up: Sunday vs. the Golden State Warriors (22-13), winners of eight in a row (CSN, 6 p.m. ET).
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