Bobcats 93, Wizards 85
Front rim. Front rim. Front rim.
Three times in a row the Wizards went to Gilbert Arenas in the final minute Friday against Charlotte, hoping the rusty, recovering star could bail them out late with his signature 3-pointer. All three times Arenas came up short, and the Wizards should’ve known better.
More importantly, they needed to rebound better, a lot better, because that was what put them in the desperate hole before a familiar fourth quarter meltdown in a 93-85 loss to the Bobcats in front of 14,855.
“The amazing thing is how we can even be in the game,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders. “We’re in the game because we created 25 [sic 24] turnovers with our defense. You can’t get your butts kicked on the glass like that.”
Despite getting outrebounded, 48-30, the Wizards (2-5) and Bobcats (3-6) were locked up, 78-78, with just over six minutes remaining. But while Yi Jianlian, Arenas and John Wall each missed jump shots in succession at one end, Boris Diaw (19 points) and D.J. Augustin (17 points, 10 assists) sandwiched a pair of wide-open 3-pointers around a driving reverse layup by Gerald Wallace to create an insurmountable 86-78 advantage at the other.
“That was just poor defensive assignments,” said Andray Blatche, who led the Wizards with 22 points and nine rebounds. “People don’t know where they’re supposed to be. We can’t have that. Guys got to step in, know where they got to be and what they got to do. We can’t keep on having the same screw-ups in the fourth quarter. It’s costing us games.”
Wallace finished with game-highs of 25 points and 14 points, in part taking advantage of Al Thornton, who suffered a stomach injury in pregame warmups that cramped his style in the first half and ultimately put him back on the bench for the second.
“I want to say abdominal strain. I really want to say, but I’m not sure,” said Thornton, who turned Saunders down when asked to come back in the game late in third quarter, finishing with two points and two rebounds in 21 minutes on the floor.
Prior to Arenas’s final flurry, Washington thought it would have a chance to narrow the game to one possession when Yi appeared to draw a charge on Wallace in the lane with the score at 89-83. Despite the video screen replay overhead showing that Yi had established position outside the restricted area, the huddled officials still gave Wallace his bucket and sent him to the line, where he missed his free throw attempt – and grabbed another rebound.
“It was a terrible call,” said Saunders. “Instead of it going the other way, it ends up being an eight-point game. There’s a difference when there’s two minutes to go and it’s six than it is being eight.”
The Wizards set the poor rebounding night in motion by missing their first nine shots from the field. John Wall (13 points, 11 assists, four steals) was off-target with his first three attempts but still had nine assists by halftime en route to his fourth double-double.
After Wall opened the second half with a dunk, Wallace staged his own personal 10-2 run to build Charlotte a 56-49 third-quarter lead. He then tracked down Wall from behind on the fast break for a block. Saunders protested, earning himself a technical foul that helped the Bobcats stretch their lead to 59-49.
Arenas, who was 1 for 9 from beyond the arc and 2 for 14 overall, couldn’t toss a rock in the ocean from the beach, but made up for it by scrapping for six rebounds and a pair of steals. After pulling down his only offensive board of the night, he rose back up to shoot but instead dropped the ball down low to Blatche for a layup and the Wizards’ first lead since early in the third quarter, 75-76.
“You always think he’s going to make the next one,” said Saunders, who played Arenas for more than 31 minutes even though he’d intended to keep him under 30. “That’s just the way he’s been. I hesitated because Nick [Young] made some shots, putting him in, but the thing was, Gil was the one guy that was actually rebounding for us in the second half.”
But after missing much of preseason and the first three games of the regular season with injury, Arenas hasn’t regained the lift in his legs and the rhythm in his stroke – he also had four turnovers – and after the final buzzer he gave his jersey to a young fan and left the Verizon Center court with his undershirt pulled over his face.
“We’re young, and we’re going to have to learn,” said Arenas. “We’re going to have to learn how to shut teams down and stop having mental breakdowns at the end of the games. We’re playing hard, we can’t deny that. We’re just having mental breakdowns at the end.”
