- Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN takes a look at the Wizards‘ experiences through nearly two full weeks of contact tracing and postponed games. Coach Scott Brooks said he had little contact with his players, other than waving to them from inside his car as they arrived for their COVID-19 tests each day. “(The NBA is) learning things as we are going. And I am assuming they learned a lot from us,” Brooks said. “I see that more often now, somebody has (the virus) and they shut it down for a couple of games. Because I think it is better to miss two than to miss six.”
- The Wizards are big losers so far in the trade that brought Russell Westbrook from Houston in exchange for John Wall and a draft pick, contends Zach Lowe of ESPN. Westbrook’s stats are down across the board and he’s averaging 5.2 turnovers per game, which would be one of the worst marks ever if it lasts the entire season.
The NBA is facing competitive fairness issues stemming from pandemic-related disruptions to the schedule, writes Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today. The league has postponed 22 games through the first five weeks of the season, and the effects of health and safety protocols are showing up in the standings.
The Wizards are the most obvious example, holding the league’s worst record at 3-11 after roughly half the roster was forced to quarantine. Washington had just one practice before returning to action Sunday after two weeks off. The result was three straight losses by a combined 57 points. The Heat, defending Eastern Conference champions, are off to a 6-12 start while playing with a depleted roster. The teams at the top of the standings — the Lakers, Clippers and Jazz — have been relatively unaffected by the virus.
The Wizards and Grizzlies both had six games postponed and face a difficult road ahead to reach 72 games. Washington is looking at 39 games in 67 days when the NBA releases its second-half schedule, although the league is trying to alleviate that by moving some games to the first half.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- The Pistons‘ Jerami Grant and the Hornets‘ Gordon Hayward are the biggest surprises of the early season, according to John Hollinger of The Athletic. Both signed huge free agent deals during the offseason that were questioned around the league, but they have emerged as their teams’ best players. Hayward has gone back to the leader he was in Utah, Hollinger notes, while Grant has taken his game to another level.
- FIBA will hold the draw ceremony for this year’s Olympic basketball tournament on February 2, the organization announced on its website. Eight men’s teams have already qualified, including Team USA, and the final four slots will be filled by the winners of tournaments to be played this summer in Canada, Croatia, Lithuania and Serbia.
- At least 12 NBA teams have started research on Jonathan Kuminga, a projected high lottery pick in this year’s draft, writes Adam Zagoria for NJ.com. Kuminga, part of Team Ignite, will make his G League debut in the Orlando bubble next month. Ignite coach Brian Shaw compares him to Jaylen Brown and Paul George.
- Former Net Josh Boone is the latest player to commit to Team USA for the AmeriCup qualifying tournament, according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype. Boone, 36, plays for the Illawarra Hawks in the NBL and was last in the NBA in the 2009/10 season.
The NBA has announced several adjustments to its upcoming February schedule, JD Shaw of Hoops Rumors tweets. Four games will be moved up in the NBA’s schedule. The start times of 16 games have been affected thus far, to accommodate for same-day RT-PCR molecular test results for the novel coronavirus.
The Celtics–Raptors game initially penciled in for February 12 will be moved up one day to February 11. The Celtics’ next contest, hosting the Pistons, will move up from February 14 to February 12.
Finally, Boston’s trip to D.C. for a game against the Wizards – which had been expected to transpire in the second half of the 2020/21 season – has been moved up to an afternoon Valentine’s Day time slot. A Pistons home bout against the Pelicans that had been set for the second half of the compressed year has now also been moved up to February 14.
Fred Katz of The Athletic adds (Twitter link) that, with their rescheduled Celtics game now moved, the Wizards are now set to play 16 games, with five back-to-backs, for the month of February. The club was severely hamstrung by COVID-19 health and safety protocols this month, resulting in six postponements.
A triumvirate of Wizards big men in Dāvis Bertāns, Rui Hachimura and Moritz Wagner have cleared the NBA’s health and safety protocols and will be joining their teammates in a battle with the Hawks tomorrow, per Fred Katz of The Athletic (Twitter link).
Bertāns, Hachiumura and Wagner represent crucial additions to Washington’s frontcourt rotation, especially given the absence of injured starting center Thomas Bryant, who tore his left ACL and is out of commission for the rest of the season. With Bryant out, second-year starting power forward Hachimura, the No. 9 pick in the 2019 draft, becomes the team’s third-leading scorer at 13.6 PPG.
Bertāns will add much-needed outside shooting for the Wizards. The team expected him to be a key contributor when it re-signed him to a lucrative five-year, $80MM contract during the 2020 offseason. Bertāns is averaging 36.0% from long range on 7.8 attempts per night this season.
Katz notes that Wizards rookie forward Deni Avdija, reserve small forward Troy Brown Jr. and backup point guard Ish Smith are still in the league’s coronavirus health and safety protocols and will be unavailable for the immediate future. Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington adds that Avdija, Brown, and Smith will need to log practice minutes once they clear protocols before a return to game action.
The depleted Wizards saw several games postponed for 13 days after the club was unable to field eight healthy players. At 3-11, the team currently holds the worst record in the NBA by percentage.
- Rockets guard John Wall, who suggested earlier this week that he was disappointed by how the Wizards handled his exit from the franchise, got a chance on Tuesday night to show his old team what it’s missing, as Fred Katz of The Athletic writes. Wall had a team-high 24 points in 24 minutes en route to a 107-88 Houston win over Washington.
Wizards star Bradley Beal scored 47 points on Wednesday, but it wasn’t nearly enough to topple the Pelicans, who won by a score of 124-106. The Wizards’ record dropped to an NBA-worst 3-11, and the outcome made Beal the first player in NBA history to lose 10 consecutive games in which he scored 40 or more points (Twitter link).
Asked after the game if he’s frustrated by how things are going for the team as of late, Beal replied rhetorically, “Is the sky blue?” (link via Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com).
When trade speculation about Beal was beginning to heat up in 2019, the All-Star guard quieted it by signing a two-year, $72MM contract extension to remain in Washington through at least 2021/22. However, the team has a 28-58 (.326) record across parts of two seasons since then, which aren’t exactly the results Beal was hoping for.
“It’s tough,” Beal said, per Youngmisuk. “I am not going to sit here and be naive. … We want to win, and I want to win. This is why I stayed. I want to win. I figured this is the place I can get it done. It’s tough. Last year was what it was. We had a lot of guys out. John (Wall) was out. It was just a rotten year. COVID hit.
“This year it’s the same thing. Like in a mini-bubble outside the bubble. No fans, no nothing, no practice time. It’s been tough.”
The Wizards have had some bad injury luck this year. Starting center Thomas Bryant suffered a season-ending ACL tear, while newly-acquired point guard Russell Westbrook – who sat out the second half of a back-to-back set on Wednesday – has also been limited by health issues, including a quad injury.
Additionally, Washington has been hit harder this year by the coronavirus pandemic than perhaps any other NBA team. Seven of the Wizards’ players have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 since the 2020/21 season began.
While Deni Avdija, Davis Bertans, Troy Brown, Rui Hachimura, Ish Smith, and Moritz Wagner all remained sidelined due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols on Wednesday, Wizards head coach Scott Brooks said last night that he thinks there’s a “great chance” the club will get a few of those players back soon, perhaps as early as Friday (Twitter link via Fred Katz of The Athletic).
Those reinforcements could help stabilize the Wizards’ rotation, and with 58 of 72 games still to play, there’s plenty of time to turn things around. Beal said on Wednesday that the group’s confidence level remains high (link via Katz), while Brooks expressed hope that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and stressed that Beal’s desire to win is “critical to our future success” (Twitter link via Ava Wallace of The Washington Post).
Still, it’s safe to assume teams around the league will continue to monitor the situation in Washington in the coming weeks or months. For now, Beal’s frustration hasn’t risen to the point where he’s seeking a change of scenery, but he’d instantly become the NBA’s most sought-after trade target if he’s made available at any point this season.
Some of the 22 games that have been postponed due to COVID-19 will be rescheduled for the first half of the season, writes Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press. The decision was made “with a specific focus on the teams with the most postponed games to date,” according to a statement from the NBA.
The league wants to avoid overloading teams such as the Wizards and Grizzlies, who have each had six games called off so far. If all those games had been made up in the second half, as originally planned, Washington and Memphis would both have been required to play 41 times in 67 days. The second part of the season will run from March 11 through May 16.
The first change will take effect Tuesday when the Wizards host the Trail Blazers in a game that had been intended for the second half of the season. A Portland-Charlotte game on February 7 has been replaced by a Wizards-Hornets matchup that was originally scheduled for January 20. The Blazers’ game against the Hornets will be put on the second-half schedule.
No other schedule changes have been released so far. A complete list of the postponed games can be found here.
John Wall isn’t hiding his desire to prove something to the Wizards when he faces them tonight for the first time since being traded, writes Chase Hughes of NBC Sports. Wall, who spent 10 seasons in Washington before the December 2 deal that sent him to Houston, believes the organization lost confidence after injuries sidelined him for the past two years.
“Just seeing everybody that’s over there, a lot of people that’s on that side that probably didn’t believe I could come back to be the person I am. And probably some people that had a little say so into me being traded,” Wall said. “I feel like it was a whole process and it wasn’t just something that happened overnight. I think this was in the works. That’s my motivation. Who wouldn’t want to beat the team that traded them and felt like I was done?”
Wall has shown flashes of his old self during the first month of the season. He has played in eight of the Rockets‘ first 15 games and is averaging 17.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 5.5 assists per night. He has also adopted a leadership role and was one of the team’s most vocal players when James Harden was forcing his way out of Houston.
Wall’s comments are from an in-depth interview with Chris Miller that NBC Sports Washington will air before tonight’s game. Wall admits he considers the contest to be personal.
“I feel like it is. I definitely feel so because, I know I had my say so and my responsibilities with what I did off the court and things I (did), but I owned up to those. I said my apologies and that’s the best I can do,” Wall said. “Nobody’s perfect. We all live and learn from our mistakes. I wish it would have never happened, but it happened, yes. I moved forward from it. My mindset was to come back and compete at a high level in the one jersey I only knew for 10 years.”
Wall’s is likely referring to an offseason video of him at a party where he allegedly displayed gang signs.
“I just wish I would have known up front and not have to beat around the bush to figure things out,” he continued. “That’s just my motivation there. They thought I was done. Basically, that’s how I feel. This is my opportunity to show them that I’m not done. But the most important thing for me is get the win. I don’t care how many numbers I have, it’s about getting the win. That’s the most important thing because if I get 40 and then we lose, the trade don’t look as bad from their aspect because they beat us that one game they did play us. So my ultimate goal is to try to get a win for my team.”
Wall adds that he would have appreciated more honesty from the Wizards heading into the deal, which sent him and and a protected first-round pick to Houston in exchange for Russell Westbrook. Hughes notes that rumors of the trade began a week before it happened, and that it was the first time in his career that Wall’s name has been floated in trade talks.
“Most importantly, all I really wanted from the start of all of it was just to be told the truth,” Wall said. “That’s the most important thing and what made it so hard for me to understand what was going on because I wasn’t told the truth. I understand it’s a business and things go on and people move on and you get traded, organizations in different ways. When I heard the rumors, I called and asked are these true or are these something not to worry about? From that day forward, all I heard was ‘no, those rumors aren’t true, don’t worry about it.’ In all reality, it was true.”
- Alex Len was an ideal addition for the Wizards, who needed to fill a hole in their frontcourt and didn’t want to give up anything to do so, says Fred Katz of The Athletic. As Katz notes, the veteran big man was able to assume a rotation role immediately and looked comfortable in his first game with the team on Sunday.
- While the Wizards were back in action for the first time in nearly two weeks on Sunday, it’ll be a little while longer before things are “back to normal” for the team, writes Ava Wallace of The Washington Post.
It hasn’t been a smooth transition since the Nets formed their Big Three, but Kyrie Irving remains confident that the group will eventually work, writes Brian Lewis of The New York Post. Brooklyn is 3-2 since James Harden joined the team, including a pair of losses this week in Cleveland.
“Don’t trip. It’s a long journey,” Irving posted on Instagram. “We will be on that stage. The stage where the best of the best meet. … You know. The main stage. Where those who can, do. And those who cannot talk about those that are doing. If you rolling with us, great. Let’s rock. If you’re not, you know you wanna talk about our greatness anyway.”
There’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- As promised, the NBA is cracking down on post-game interactions between players to minimize COVID-19 risks, notes Liz Roscher of Yahoo. Irving and Miami’s Bam Adebayo were interrupted by a security guard Saturday night as they attempted to exchange jerseys. “I’ll give Kyrie the jersey on my own time,” Adebayo told reporters.
- Sixers stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are committed to getting the most out of their partnership, according to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. They are interacting more off the court and trying to mesh their talents together on a Philadelphia team that has the East’s best record at 12-5. “We both see different things, so now for me and Jo, I think the relationship continues to grow,” Simmons said. “We talk a lot more now in terms of being on the floor and certain things we say. Knowing where he wants the ball, all the sets, and just flying, getting into the flow of the game, and just trying to read it the right way.”
- After waiving Alex Len on Tuesday, the Raptors have a financial incentive to hope he stays with the Wizards, tweets Bobby Marks of ESPN. If Len remains on Washington’s roster past February 24, which is the last day to release players before their contracts become fully guaranteed, Toronto will receive a $126,029 offset on his $2.258M salary, which is still on the Raptors’ books.