Wizards sink in a blink

The deciding play will be debated until the end of eternity. The missed free throws won’t. Both were responsible for leaving the Wizards furious, utterly miserable, and one loss deeper into a rollercoaster season that continues to suffer more downs than ups.

Washington head coach Flip Saunders didn’t try to hide his frustration over the foul call that gave Indiana its improbable 114-113 win over the Wizards.

With five tenths of second remaining, Pacers guard Earl Watson inbounded the ball to Mike Dunleavy, who caught it above his head and sandwiched between DeShawn Stevenson and Brendan Haywood, leading to an immediate whistle by refereee Ed Malloy. After the officials reviewed the play, and ruled that Haywood had committed a foul with one tenth of a second left, Dunleavy calmly sank his two game-clinching free throws.

Saunders said he looked at the play ten times.

“If the foul was called on Brendan Haywood, the game was over,” said Saunders. “They could’ve said maybe there was contact earlier or whatever, but the call was on Brendan and I don’t even know if there was much contact. But if there was, it was after – he caught the ball, he came down, he tried to shoot it. It’s impossible to do that in five tenths of a second. If you look at it on the film, you can’t do it so that was a bad call.”

But fate had already intervened 6.1 seconds earlier, when Gilbert Arenas missed two free throw attempts that would’ve extended a Washington lead to three points, a shocking development after Arenas had done the same thing with a chance to tie Boston two nights before.

“I might’ve been thinking about it,” said Arenas, who despite his first triple-double (22 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds) since March 19, 2004, sat sunken and bleary-eyed in the chair in front of his locker afterward. “I don’t know.”

What the Wizards (7-14) do know is they dropped their fourth straight game by going from superb in the first quarter to awful in the second, which bore much of the blame for allowing the Pacers (8-13) to be close enough in the first place to erase a four-point lead over the final 22.3 seconds.

It didn’t matter that Antawn Jamison added 31 points and Caron Butler had 23 as Washington’s big three all topped the 20-point mark for the second time this season.

“You don’t put yourself down 15 at halftime, and you come out and play,” said Haywood, after connected on 16 of 18 shots during one stretch only to follow it up by missing 12 of its next 14. “You can’t keep putting yourself down double figures. You have to come with that same energy that you play with when you’re down 15. That needs to be the same when you start the game.”

Notes

Caron Butler turned his left ankle on a shot by Mike Dunleavy that missed and led to a rebound by Gilbert Arenas that clinched his triple-double. Butler had to be helped off the court but immediately returned. His status was not known afterward.

Troy Murphy had a season-high 28 points, including 14 during the second quarter. Dunleavy added 24, including a first-quarter buzzer-beating heave from six feet behind half court for one of four 3-pointers.

The Wizards racked up three technical fouls in the final three minutes of the first half, the first to Butler for arguing a call, the second to Arenas for grabbing the net and the last to head coach Flip Saunders with 1.3 seconds left, also for arguing.

In the second half, Earl Boykins (14 points) and Nick Young (10 points) combined for 22 points off the bench.