Washington rallies but comes up short against Warriors
The Wizards’ disastrous second and third quarters were all too familiar. The fourth-quarter rally was not. But against a Golden State team that struggled as much in the final period as Washington did in the middle two, the Wizards found a way to rally from a 20-point deficit only to fall just short in a 106-102 defeat in front of a half-full Verizon Center.
Nick Young scored 14 of his game-high 31 points in the fourth quarter, knocking down a miraculous 3-pointer from 32 feet to pull Washington within 103-102 with 6.3 seconds remaining. But after Stephen Curry (29 points) hit two free throws, Young missed a potential game-tying 3 from the top of the key, leaving the Wizards (15-45) to settle for their seventh defeat in a row.
“I’m proud of them, the way they fought back,” said Wizards assistant coach Randy Wittman, who guided the team while coach Flip Saunders was in Cleveland attending to his gravely ill mother. “The energy we had, to have a shot to tie at the end is a credit to them fighting. But we can’t afford to dig ourselves a hole.”
Washington actually started the defensively starved contest strong, with Young and Andray Blatche (20 points, nine rebounds, six assists) both getting into double figures scoring with ease in the first quarter, which ended with the Wizards ahead 33-32.
But the Wizards let the game get out of control in familiar fashion from there, allowing Curry to close the first half with a 3-pointer to put Golden State up 61-53, then immediately hit another right after the break. When Monta Ellis (21 points) soared to rim for a driving layup, the Warriors (27-33) had their biggest lead of the game at 85-65.
A pair of dunks by Young, the second a reverse jam after he managed to regain control of a threaded fast-break pass from John Wall (14 points, six assists), helped get Washington back into the game in the third. After the Wizards had been outscored 59-41, in the second and third periods and outrebounded 41-27 in the first three quarters, it was Golden State’s turn to go cold. The Warriors missed 14 of 17 shots in the fourth.
“When teams hit a couple shots, we drop our heads and start to panic,” said Wizards forward Trevor Booker, who pulled down eight of his team-high 11 rebounds during the fourth-quarter rally. “We got to get that out of our brains.”
