Washington hold on in OT to beat Celtics’ reserves
With the way the Wizards had played in April and the playoff-bound Boston Celtics resting four starters, Monday’s final home game of the season at Verizon Center was set up perfectly as an easy final exam for a young team expecting to graduate in the coming offseason from developing to competitive.
Instead, the Wizards found themselves in a scrappy, often ugly battle with the Celtics’ reserves but still passed the test with their own role players for a 95-94 overtime victory in front of 17,787.
“I think it’s a good grind-out game,” Wizards coach Flip Saunders said. “You always have people saying, ‘You’re winning games. You’re losing lottery balls,’ and those type of things. Last year we showed it really didn’t matter where you are.”
With Andray Blatche (16 points) and JaVale McGee (13 points, nine rebounds, five blocks) both out of the game with six fouls, Othyus Jeffers found Kevin Seraphin and Yi Jianlian fed an open Jordan Crawford (17 points, six assists) for the Wizards’ final two buckets, while Carlos Arroyo’s missed 18-footer clinched Washington’s 20th home win of the season. The Wizards also were fortunate when Von Wafer missed a wide-open dunk that would have put the Celtics up four in overtime.
“You’ve got to be lucky, but you’ve got to be able to take advantage when that luck is right there,” Saunders said.
John Wall led the Wizards (23-58) with 24 points, while Jeff Green (career high-matching 15 rebounds) and Glen Davis each had 20 points for the Celtics (55-26), who locked up the third seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs with the defeat.
“We played against the teams that’s in the playoffs,” Wall said, suggesting that the postseason was not out of the question next year. “We’ve beat some of them. We lost to some of them. We had close games against them. But I think we all going to be mature next year, learn how close out games and learn how to trust each other more like we’ve been doing.”
Before hitting the go-ahead basket, Crawford’s baseline jumper with 5.4 seconds remaining tied things at 84-84. He then picked off Carlos Arroyo’s pass at the other end to send the game to overtime.
In a surprising turnabout, the Wizards appeared to be the ones guilty of overlooking their opponent after starters Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo were all scratched before the game to rest up for the playoffs. Jermaine O’Neal (15 points, 13 rebounds) led the holdovers, scoring six quick points as Boston opened up a 12-2 lead.
The second quarter encapsulated the entire arc of the Wizards’ season. Moments after McGee plowed into Nenad Krstic for an obvious charge, he delivered a behind-the-back pass in transition to Jeffers for a dunk, then flushed a one-handed alley-oop from Crawford and later battled hard for a much deserved rebound and finished off the glass.
The basket would be the last in more than four minutes for the Wizards, who gave up a 19-4 run to end the first half. Washington had a similar run over the end of the first quarter and start of the second, holding the Celtics without a basket for 6:35 to turn a 23-12 deficit into a 28-23 lead.
The lead changed hands six times in the third period, but the quarter finished with the score tied at 60-60 after Jeffers rose for a putback dunk on Wall’s jumper at the buzzer.
