The Washington Wizards were tough, confident and exhausted
By Seerat Sohi
On Monday night, the Washington Wizards sunk, finally, at the hands of the Boston Celtics. The Wizards were tapped out, devoid of the smashmouth badassery that, despite falling in an early 2-0 hole, earned them a seventh game. The moment that defined them instead came early in their first playoff game.
The third possession of Game 1 against the Atlanta Hawks began with Dennis Schroeder driving against John Wall, and kicking the ball to Millsap, who was immediately greeted at the 3-point stripe by Markieff Morris’s protracted arm. He bit on Millsap’s pump-fake, but recovered by the end of his first dribble, clipping the ball — or Millsap’s arm, no one will ever really know — and knocking the ball loose.
Millsap had the inside track, though, and corralled it, but not before Otto Porter smelled blood and tried to knock it loose. Millsap hung on once more, for dear life at this point, and now Bradley Beal took a crack at it. By some measure, Millsap zipped the ball to Schroder in the corner, who shoots just 34 percent beyond the arc even when Morris isn’t charging toward him. He dribbed into the worst shot in basketball, and just as Millsap snatched the brick and give the Hawks another chance, Porter was there. He knocked the rebound out of his hands and the Wizards were off to the races while Millsap limped to midcourt, holding onto his face.
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It was after this game that Millsap infamously accused the Wizards of playing MMA, while the Hawks were trying to play basketball. To his credit, there was definitely a foul there — hell, maybe there were a couple — but that’s beyond the point. This was Morris — who gave rise to the no-holds-barred Death Row DC moniker, an attitude that propelled the once 2-8 Wizards to the playoffs — anchoring a play that was a microcosm of the new-year-new-me Wizards; the style that emboldened him to respond, “If that’s MMA, then what we do next might be double-MMA.”
These were the guys who showed up to a January matchup against the Celtics in all-black funeral attire, and won. (When the Celtics showed up to Game 6 donning the same attire, the Wizards survived and Morris bragged, “They want to be us so bad.”) Guys with the audacity to believe in themselves after falling in a 2-0 hole, a guy who shook off a high ankle sprain in Game 1 like it was a paper cut, and after losing Game 2, implored his team to be tougher.
A guy who smoked Stephen A. Smith’s like he was a victory cigar.
Morris scored just 12.9 points per game against the Celtics, but he shot 40 percent from beyond the arc. More importantly, he anchored the backline, protecting the rim against the Celtics pick-and-roll attack. When faced with perimeter duties, he often closed out on multiple shooters per possession, and recovered to crash the boards. When he was on the floor, the Wizards outscored the Celtics by 8.2 points per 100 possessions, posting far-and-away the best net rating on the team.
For the better part of a season, the Wizards were defined by the defiance of Morris and John Wall — that incredible a rarity, an All-Star guard on a middling team who is actually deserving of the obligatory chip on his shoulders. You could tell they always played like they thought they were the best team on the floor, and the undue confidence did them a whole lot of good.
There are defining plays, though, and then there are the constant barrage of run-of-the-mill moments that, in time, begin to wear you down.
The writing was always on the wall, beginning with the bench. The Wizards sported, by far, the worst second unit in the league among competitive teams, and their performance in the series was further crippled by coach Scott Brooks who, for all his wacky, fun, player-coachy likeabilityness, continued to make mind-boggling rotation decisions. He didn’t stagger Wall and Beal’s minutes so that one of them would always be on the floor, he often played Brandon Jennings — the scary breed of ball-handler who can’t do anything anymore, but still thinks he can do everything — alongside them instead of trying out Satoransky. He benched Kelly Oubre Jr., Washington’s best bench performer, for the entirety of Game 7, and despite putrid outings from Ian Mahinmi and Jason Smith, he refused to give small-ball a chance.
As far as Game 7 goes, here’s the imperative stat: Kelly Olynyk alone outscored Washington’s bench by 19 points. The Celtics were absent a reliable fifth starter, but they could count on key bench cogs to fill in the blanks, while the Wizards were relegating to running with their main guys down the stretch.
Fatigue addles our abilities. It constricts our best selves, and we retreat to habit. It was there that you could see Wall, the best two-way point guard in the league, failing to get around screens late. A whole team, really, willing to leave one of Morris or Marcin Gortat on an island against Isaiah Thomas, the most deadly fourth quarter scorer in the NBA. Posting up big men — even Mahinmi!! — on the Celtics guards, even though that’s a losing proposition because, hey, I guess Marcus Smart is sort of short to be defending in the paint. The inability of Gortat, late in games and late in the series, to catch in traffic and finish bunnies.
Whether he was exhausted, from averaging 39.1 minutes per game and pushing in transition all through the first half, or whether he cowered against the weight of the moment, in the final junctures of Game 7, Wall possessed none of the bravado that vaulted his notoriety throughout the playoffs. The same guy who nailed the game-winning 3-point shot in Game 6 went 0-9 in the fourth quarter, firing off listless 3-pointers and converting easy drive-and-kicks into turnovers.
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The Wizards, of course, were occasionally prone to magical thinking — Oubre telling reporters that Morris is better than Millsap comes to mind. But they weren’t blinded by delusions of grandeur. They needed 50/50 balls and sound execution, not a miracle. They floundered in both categories, though, and the reality of the post-season — the way every weakness is keyed in on to the point of causing a rupture — caught up to them.
The Wizards, in the end, were the Grizzlies of the East: the arbiters of pain, but doomed to be the victims of attrition.