Nuggets 108, Wizards 104 The Wizards came as close to having a two-game winning streak as John Wall did to earning his first triple double of the season. But while both benchmarks were in sight, each faded away down the stretch like a mirage in the desert while a backbreaking 3-pointer from Al Harrington and a 108-104 defeat to the Denver Nuggets were both no illusion.
The moral victory of a week’s worth of competitive basketball, including back-to-back solid games against Western Conference contenders, was all that was left to savor, and it’s a taste that never quite satisfies.
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After starting the fourth quarter with 13 points, nine assists and nine rebounds, Wall managed to add only a single assist in the final 12 minutes. After taking a 98-97 lead on Jordan Crawford’s 3-pointer with 4:07 to play, the Wizards could muster only two field goals the rest of the way.
“It would have been good to get [the triple double],” Wall said. “But it would have been better to get the win. Tonight was a tough night, not making shots, and then not really controlling the game like I did the other night, so we let it slip away from us in the fourth quarter.”
Down 100-98, the Wizards scrambled to protect every inch of their defensive end of the floor only to see the ball squirt out to Harrington, who launched a prayer that buried itself in the net for his fifth 3-pointer of the night and a five-point lead with 1:14 left to play. Harrington finished with a game-high 29 points on five 3-pointers, one fewer than the six he’d knocked down in last year’s visit to Verizon Center.
“We have a great defensive sequence and they throw it out to him at 30 feet, and he just throws it up there at the buzzer and it goes in,” Wizards coach Flip Saunders said. “But I can’t fault their effort. We played hard and did some positive things. We’re playing better than we were a week ago.”
The Wizards (2-13) shot out of the gate early, determined to match the fast tempo set by the Nuggets (11-5), and the first quarter was a resounding success. Having come into the night averaging the second-fewest assists in the NBA (16.1 per game), Washington had 13 by the end of the first quarter along with their highest-scoring period of year for a 37-27 lead. Nick Young flew in for a slam on a feed from Wall and piled up 17 points in the quarter. JaVale McGee stuffed a reverse slam alley oop for part of his 13 points, and Chris Singleton had 12 points with a pair of 3-pointers.
But the more Wizards kept running, the more they started running out of ideas while Denver never lost its stride. In his only hometown visit of the year, lightning quick point guard Ty Lawson scored 12 of his 21 points to bring Denver back to within two, 63-61, by halftime.
“The pace that they played at, that’s how they always play,” Saunders said. “We don’t always play at that pace.”
The Wizards have, however, gotten into the habit of hearing a chorus of boos at home every time Andray Blatche misses a shot, commits a foul or turns the ball over. He did plenty of each, going 0 for 7 from the field with five fouls and three turnovers, including a missed layup during an 8-0 Denver run that gave the Nuggets a 78-71 lead. While the crowd of 14,866 gave him a reprieve during pregame introductions – having booed him two nights before when he was introduced prior to facing Oklahoma City – they were on his every move and in his head with every touch of the ball.
“Booing is not going to help somebody play better,” Saunders said. “I know that. It’s showing displeasure, but I don’t think all of a sudden that by booing, all of a sudden he’s going to get 20 points and 15 rebounds because we’re booing him. If that was the case, everyone would do it. But hey, he’s who we are. He’s part of our family. We’re going to help him get through it.”
The most pressing task was a comeback, which was aided by 10 points off the bench from Rashard Lewis and nine from Shelvin Mack, who’s 3-pointer and driving layup made it 92-91, erasing what had been a five-point deficit at the end of the third quarter.
After Harrington’s massive 3-pointer, which celebrated by shooting his arms downward and thumping his chest, Crawford, who led the reserves with 18 points, cut Denver’s lead to 103-100 on a pull-up jumper with 1:09 to play.
Denver ran down the court where Harrington missed everything on his next 3-point attempt, only to see Lawson grab a career-high ninth rebound with no one around for an easy putback. When Wall stepped into a quick three at the other end to answer, he also shot an airball, but his just bounced out of bounds.
Wall recognized the mistake – the Wizards had timeouts and time on the shot clock – just as the Wizards recognized the opportunity missed and the lessons learned.
“We feel like we can win any game now,” Crawford said. “That’s what we took out of these last two. Even though we lost this one, I really think the team thought we was better than this team. It’s starting to hurt when we lose instead of expecting to lose.”
