The Wizards (7-22) were as impressive as they’ve been this season in last night’s 124-109 win at Portland – even if it was aided by LaMarcus Aldridge spraining his ankle when he landed on Trevor Booker’s foot.
John Wall was dominant, again, with 29 points and 9 assists. He’s averaging 18.0 points and 8.5 assists per game and shooting 49.1 percent from the field in the month of February.
Nick Young was simply unconscious, hitting 7 of 8 three-pointers and putting up a season-high 35 points, the third-best scoring performance of his career. Does he deserve to go to the 3-point contest in Orlando? It’s probably too little too late.
Jordan Crawford also regained some of the swagger that he’d seen go missing in recent games, with 21 points off the bench – four more than he’d had in the past three games combined.
JaVale McGee, meanwhile, might’ve matched the best three-game stretch of his career with 18 points and 11 rebounds. In the last three games, he’s averaged 21.3 points and 11.7 rebounds, showing signs that perhaps he might finally be getting his asthma under control. During a road trip out West last spring, McGee went for 21 points and 14.7 rebounds over a three-game stretch that included a 28 and 18 outing (with 5 blocks) against Golden State.
The victory over the Blazers (15-14) gave the Wizards franchise its first ever set of back-to-back road wins by at least 15 points – which demonstrates, well, more for the NBA than for the Wizards themselves.
According to Basketball-Reference.com, there have been five such streaks of 15-point plus road wins in the past three seasons, all of which were at least three games, before the Wizards’ current run. The four teams that had them: Miami, Chicago, Dallas and Boston.
Have the Wizards all of a sudden joined that group? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What’s more significant for Washington is its first set of victories in consecutive, back-to-back road games since March 26 and 28, 2008, when the Wizards beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 104-99, then traveled down the West Coast for a win over Sacramento, 114-108.
It was just a few games later when the Wizards would get what was their last three-game winning streak – a win at home over Miami (109-95), at Chicago (99-87), and home again vs. Boston (109-95) – before a three-game streak last spring. The Wizards could get back to that elusive three-wins-in-a-row mark with a victory later tonight against the Los Angeles Clippers (17-9), who were responsible for one of the three blowout, uncompetitive defeats that Washington has suffered since Randy Wittman took over for fired coach Flip Saunders. The Wizards are 5-7 under Wittman, with three road victories – the same amount that Saunders achieved in 41 road games last season.
