Over the summer, Washington Wizards All-Star point guard John Wall said the Wizards should be included among the elite teams in the Eastern Conference. For the past few seasons, Wall and the Wizards have been the national media’s dark-horse East team that could make a run to the Finals. Year after year, however, Washington has failed to reach those expectations and usually underwhelm.
New season, same old Wizards.
Washington has started the year 1-7. They currently have the worst defense in the NBA, as the team is giving up 123.9 points per game.
The Wizards got blown out by the Oklahoma City Thunder Friday night at home, losing by a final score of 134-111. Owner Ted Leonsis, who always sits courtside at the game, is not happy about how his club has started the season.
“When you score 125 points and you're losing by 25, it usually says you need to play a little bit of defense,” Leonis told NBC Sports Washington. “Right now, we really have to get a structure in place and especially defend the three-ball.
“I hope the team isn't looking at the precedent we set when we started [2-8] a couple of years ago and went to Game 7 against the Celtics and almost went to the [Eastern Conference] Finals. We won 49 games that year. You don't want to just fall so far behind and more importantly, you don't want to fall into these bad habit.”
Washington signed Dwight Howard over the summer. A Big Three of Wall, Bradley Beal and Howard had Wizards fans really excited about the season. Howard, though, missed the first seven games of the season. He made his season debut Friday and registered 20 points in 23 minutes, but it didn't matter because the Wizards couldn't stop the Thunder all night.
There's still a lot of basketball games left in the season for the Wizards to turn it around. But like Ted Leonsis says, the team has to start playing some defense.
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