It was worse in the 2013 season. Almost everything was worse then. In Randy Wittman’s first full season as Washington Wizards coach, the team opened the season with 12 consecutive losses. The first win came a week after Thanksgiving. The team found scoring to be a diabolical challenge on the way to a 29-53 season that once again jettisoned them into the NBA draft lottery.
One thing they could do then, oddly enough, was defend. Washington was eighth in opponent’s points per game. It was fifth in defensive rating. The foundation for what Wittman wanted to accomplish was being put together amid all those losses.
Bradley Beal was a rookie then. John Wall was in his second season. But, defensive players like Trevor Ariza and Nene were in Washington, veterans suffering through top-end draft picks adapting to the league. Backup guard Garrett Temple, who became good friends with Wall and Beal, was also a defense-first player Wittman would come to rely on. They helped provide an early defensive education for the duo that would eventually receive more than $212 million from the organization to be its pillars for almost a decade by the time each has his contract run out.
Wittman’s milquetoast, grinding style was enough to flip the Wizards from 29 wins to the Eastern Conference semifinals in consecutive seasons. It also disappeared starting last season, when the offensive philosophy shifted focus to pace-and-space. The Wizards’ defensive identity evaporated.
Twelve games into this season under a new coach, Scott Brooks, who has talked defense since his opening press conference, the idea remains prevalent. However, it’s just that. An idea.
“We have to be better defensively,” Brooks said Saturday. “We’ve talked about this many times. It’s a process that we’re going through and we have to figure it out together.”
Washington is without defensive skill or an identity 12 games into the season. It is 3-9, just a half game in front of the Eastern Conference’s worst team, the Philadelphia 76ers. Philadelphia has won three games, too. One of those was a home win against the Wizards without its best player.
The league changed greatly in Wittman’s three-plus years as coach in Washington. Offensive players spread out. Even the tall drifted from the basket, undermining Wittman’s use of Nene and Marcin Gortat together as bruising bulk in the lane. Ariza left, heading to Houston after the 2014 season, the first peg pulled out of the defensive structure of the team.
Despite Ariza being replaced by a well-aged Paul Pierce, the Wizards’ defense maintained even as the league created more space. Pierce has scored more than 26,000 points, but he harped on defense when in Washington. He knew it was the core of what his 2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics did with Tom Thibodeau as an assistant coach who developed new concepts to counter the league’s mightiest scorers. The Wizards moved again to the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2015, where they lost to the Atlanta Hawks in six games. Wall missed three games in that series because of five broken bones in his hand. Otherwise, who knows?
Pierce did not return. He was replaced by an equally incapable defender, Jared Dudley. Nene and Gortat were split up. Nene became the backup center. The “stretch four” was Kris Humphries or Dudley for much of last season. The defense plummeted to a defensive rating that was 14th in the league and only that high because of a significant late-season improvement. Washington was tormented by teams from the 3-point line and in dribble penetration. The main trio was still Wall, Beal and Gortat. Otto Porter had moved from the bench into the starting lineup. They rarely stopped the other team.
When Brooks was hired, he talked about being a two-way team. But, defense was his prime topic. The Wizards had proven they could score when Wall and Beal were together. Temple became a free agent and did not return. Nene the same. All the peripheral parts that had helped make Washington a quality defense, and at times one of the league’s top defensive teams, were gone. What remained was the core group of Wall, Beal, Porter and Gortat. Markieff Morris was added at power forward. He has been a defensive upgrade.
And yet, the defensive results, once heavily influenced in a positive manner by this main group, are putrid. After Saturday night’s 114-111 loss to the scoring-challenged Miami Heat, Washington is 19th in pace, yet 20th in points allowed. It is 26th in defensive rating. It is 29th in defending the 3-point line.
Beal explained the Wizards’ defensive problems go well beyond the idea of help defense. The most basic issue is among their top problems.
“We’re not on the same page defensively at all,” Beal said. “Help? We just can’t guard our guy individually. Just keep him in front of us. We’ve got to work with that first and then — because I think we rely too much on our help. We’re putting too much pressure on our other teammates when we’re just letting our guy go buy us or we’re not having that effort or we’re slow from a rotation. It’s just a matter about just being locked-in on the defensive end. Not worrying about offense, not worrying about if we’re scoring, not worry about if you’re making shots, missing shots, just defend.”
Backing up his assessment that individuals are not doing their defensive part is a scroll through the ranks of guards in defensive rating. The first Wizards player to show up is Wall, who is 58th in the league, trailing Houston’s James Harden, among others. Beal is 81st (out of 112). Porter is 74th among forwards. Gortat is 36th among 48 qualified centers. At this point, there is not a league average defender among the team’s starting five through the small sample size of 12 games.
“We still have bad habits we can’t seem to get out of,” Beal said. “That’s all it is. We have to break our habits of getting lazy on defense and our effort. Just being committed for 48 minutes.
“Once we understand that we won’t win a game unless we defend, we’re not going to win.”
They have proven that for a more than a season.
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