The Wizards are still trying to hold off on judging themselves. With a new coaching staff, new players, injuries and most importantly, their best player returning from injury this season, Washington has been determined not to take a hard look in the mirror until 20 games had been played.
With that threshold reached Thursday, here’s how the season so far can be summed up: down two points to championship-caliber Boston with 26.7 seconds to play, Gilbert Arenas – the noted best player – was at the line with two free throw attempts to tie the game.
And he missed them both.
The Wizards even had one final possession to tie, but again Arenas – and Randy Foye – were off on three-point shots, and Washington retreated away from the light at the end of the tunnel back into darkness with a 104-102 defeat in front of a sold out Verizon Center.
“The positive is that we’re in games,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders, whose team has lost three games in a row that have been decided in the fourth quarter. “We’re not getting blown out. We’re in games. We had a situation where we were down two. We had our best player with the ball at the free throw line. He was expected to make those and didn’t.”
Arenas (25 points, 8 assists) retreated to the practice court immediately, where he knocked down 48 of 50 free throw attempts in a desperate search to figure out why he finished the night 1 for 6 at the line.
“In a minute, it’s going to be called hack-a-Wizards,” said Arenas, as Washington was a combined 14 for 22.
That the Wizards (7-13) were even in the contest was remarkable given they had exactly zero rebounds during a second quarter in which they were also outscored, 37-22, by the Celtics (18-4), who improved to 10-1 on the road.
“It was awkward,” said Arenas. “Besides that, we were still in the game. If somebody had said that stat, you’d have thought they were getting blown out by 20 or 30.”
Washington also erased a 14-point halftime deficit thanks to Brendan Haywood, who scored nine of his 17 points during a third-quarter comeback, and Andray Blatche, who scored nine of his 17 points off the bench in the fourth quarter and had a career-high five steals.
But the Wizards took the lead only once in the third quarter – it was immediately reclaimed by Ray Allen (18 points) on with a three-pointer that put him over 20,000 points for his career – and tied things a trio of times in the fourth.
The third time, after Antawn Jamison’s putback over his shoulder made it 98-98, Rajon Rondo (season-high 21 points, 11 assists) rounded Arenas for a vicious baseline dunk, just the kind of breakdown that continues to prevent the Wizards from turning the corner.
“I think tonight we were facing a possible championship team and we played all the way down to the wire,” said Arenas. “I would say that’s progression.”
