The Wizards are back on the East Coast after landing in New York City. They play at Brooklyn on Tuesday night, wrapping up one of the stranger road trips in NBA history. That game should also end their time without John Wall.
When they left California, the Wizards were confused. The on-court explanation and execution of the final 1.2 seconds against the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday left Bradley Beal and coach Scott Brooks wondering why multiple things had happened. Afterward, when the referees explained themselves, they only added to the confusion, admitting a mistake took place during the original confusion. Confused? You are not alone.
That game was preceded by 1) the second-worst loss in organization history, 2) Beal scoring 51 points, and 3) Wall rejoining practice on the precipice of his return. Long strange trip, and all that.
Washington is 4-4 since Wall was taken out of the mix because of platelet-rich plasma and viscosupplementation injections in his left knee Nov. 25. Akin to the situation before he left, the Wizards have blown multiple games against mediocre — or worse — opposition. In Los Angeles, they opened the game with a 13-0 lead. They trailed by 13 at the half before losing by a point. This occurred despite the Clippers missing three starters and not receiving a positive plus/minus from any of that day’s first five.
Afterward, Brooks seemed more irked by his players than the bizarre refereeing process that closed the game.
“You’ve got to be ready to play,” Brooks said. “Everybody … without calling names, that’s not my style. My style is as a team, we have to be ready to play.”
He repeated the phrase multiple times. Brooks’ decisions during the game made apparent one player he was talking about. After Markieff Morris turned the ball over and followed with a foul, he came out with 7:50 to play in the third quarter. He did not come back in.
Washington is 14-12. Several of its underlying statistics and even more advanced ones suggest it should have a better record. A little more than a quarter into the season, there are already six games that could easily be labeled as ones that should have been won. Flipping those games would vault the Wizards to 20-6 and competitive atop the conference.
Instead, they are in the middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference. There have been good quarters, not good games. Bad starts, good starts, bad closes, good closes (but mostly bad). Beal is tired of it.
“It’s frustrating,” Beal said. “It’s a little bit beyond frustrating, at this point. Like I just told Tim [Frazier], we should be tired of coming [into the locker room] and saying, ’On to the next one, on to the next one.’ You run out of games eventually. We continue to drops in seeds … These games matter. We play [the Clippers] two times a year, but these games still matter on your record. These are important games, games that we need to win, we should have won. [Brooks is] right. He’s going to start calling people out, he’s going to start playing people that he thinks needs to play and that’s what’s going to start happening.”
Wall is expected to soon be among them. He said Saturday morning that his knee felt “great” the day after his first practice Dec. 8. He practiced again Monday in Brooklyn. The Wizards did not commit to him playing Tuesday. Wall said Saturday that he could be ready by Tuesday or Wednesday at home against the Memphis Grizzlies. It would be surprising for Wall to play the front end of a back-to-back set upon his return.
“I’m just going by the protocol they gave me,” Wall said Saturday.
When Wall returns, he will have to balance getting back into the flow with keeping Beal in one. Beal is averaging 26.2 points per game in December without Wall. He averaged 38 points per game in the last three games.
Whoever ends up on the floor will be drawing extra scrutiny from Brooks and the rest of the team. Three-quarters of the season remains, but multiple people are already fed up.
• Todd Dybas can be reached at tdybas@washingtontimes.com.
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