The Washington Wizards played awful and got blasted at home by the Orlando Magic. The final was 125-94, and the game really wasn’t as close as the 31-point margin might suggest. No, I’m not exaggerating.
It wasn’t all bad. The Wizards scrapped a bit in the first quarter, the Magic laid bricks, and Washington finished the first 12 minutes up three.
And then, they got outscored in the second quarter, 43-21. Which the Wizards followed up with 19 points in the third quarter and just 19 in the fourth. They couldn’t even win garbage time, getting outscored by nine over the final 5:59 of game time.
How bad was it? Washington allowed 125 points and a 116 offensive rating, and the Magic cannot shoot. Orlando was the NBA’s worst three-point shooting team last season, they rank 23rd so far this season, and they shot just 12-36 from three against Washington despite getting an abundance of good looks throughout the game.
As Magic analyst and former NBA player Jeff Turner said during the second half, “The Magic can get an open three any trip down the floor, if they want it.”
The Magic were not mesmerized into taking all those open looks. As assistant coach Joe Prunty told the sideline reporter at halftime, the team generated 48 first-half paint touches, which resulted in 61 points. The trend continued in the second half.
How bad was it? I’ve been watching and analyzing NBA games for many years now. I’ve been running single-game PPA (my all-around production metric — more info below) for at least the past 8-10 seasons. I don’t keep a database of these individual game score sheets, so I can’t confirm 100% that what I’m about to say is the first or only time this has ever happened. But I don’t remember it ever happening before.
What am I talking about? The Wizards had no one with an above average PPA for the night. Not one. I’m sure it’s happened before in NBA history. It’s probably happened in Wizards history. I just don’t recall seeing it.
Even when a team gets their teeth kicked in — like the Wizards did against the Magic —
someone has a decent game. That didn’t happen for Washington. The guy who came closest was Marvin Bagley III. For a stretch in the second quarter, Washington found offensive success by missing shots and having Bagley go get the rebound and score. That’s no way to run an offense.
Thoughts and Observations
- Washington wants to play fast, which…fine…whatever. Play fast, if you want. It’s just…there’s no correlation between fast pace and efficient offense. Transition possessions tend to be high efficiency, but that doesn’t call for a strategy of running down the court and flinging up the first shot anyone decides to take. The rules allow players to work together to score. Maybe the Wizards could give that a try?
- The Wizards’ perimeter defense is a problem. So is their interior defense, despite the presence of Alex Sarr, who’s actually a pretty good defender. I see two main things making their defense so bad: 1) Perimeter defenders are not consistently executing force rules, and 2) They’re over-helping, which leads to mad scrambles and wide-open looks.
- This is feeling a bit broken record, but I’ll say it again — Kyshawn George has to learn how to defend (well, also play offense) without fouling so much. He committed five more fouls (in 24 minutes) tonight, giving him 30 fouls through the team’s first six games. That’s the most in the NBA, surpassing Memphis Grizzlies big man Jaren Jackson Jr. (26 fouls through 6 games).
- For the uninitiated, “force rules” are foundational defensive principles. I first heard the term in a conversation with then-Detroit Pistons coach Rick Carlisle in the hallway outside the visitor’s locker room. When he describe the rules, I realized I’d read about them in an article written by Larry Brown for a book called “Coaching Basketball.” Basically, most teams in most situations seek to force opposing ball handlers to the sideline and then to the baseline. The principle is to keep the ball out of the middle, which is where an offensive player has the greatest number of options. There are other factors in effective defense, but most good defenses start with trying to keep the ball out of the paint by directing penetration to places where a big man can help. This is what Wizards defenders are failing to do.
Four Factors
Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).
The four factors are measured by:
- eFG% (effective field goal percentage, which accounts for the three-point shot)
- OREB% (offensive rebound percentage)
- TOV% (turnover percentage — turnovers divided by possessions)
- FTM/FGA (free throws made divided by field goal attempts)
In the table below are the four factors using the percentages and rates traditionally presented.
| FOUR FACTORS | MAGIC | WIZARDS | LGAVG |
|---|
| eFG% | 57.6% | 44.4% | 54.3% |
| OREB% | 21.6% | 19.6% | 26.3% |
| TOV% | 13.9% | 15.8% | 13.4% |
| FTM/FGA | 0.207 | 0.071 | 0.234 |
| PACE | 108 | 100.8 | |
| ORTG | 116 | 87 | 115.3 |
Stats & Metrics
PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).
PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.
POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.
ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average so far this season is 115.1. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.
USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.
ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.
+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.
Players are sorted by total production in the game.
| WIZARDS | MIN | POSS | ORTG | USG | +PTS | PPA | +/- |
|---|
| Alex Sarr | 28 | 63 | 99 | 17.8% | -1.8 | 68 | -17 |
| CJ McCollum | 22 | 51 | 89 | 25.7% | -3.4 | 80 | -20 |
| Marvin Bagley III | 15 | 33 | 133 | 18.7% | 1.1 | 93 | -7 |
| Khris Middleton | 20 | 46 | 115 | 12.8% | 0.0 | 64 | -21 |
| Cam Whitmore | 16 | 35 | 100 | 18.1% | -1.0 | 83 | -4 |
| Bilal Coulibaly | 27 | 60 | 104 | 19.9% | -1.3 | 40 | -18 |
| Kyshawn George | 24 | 54 | 102 | 25.3% | -1.8 | 32 | -8 |
| Bub Carrington | 22 | 49 | 77 | 23.2% | -4.4 | 17 | -5 |
| Tre Johnson | 25 | 55 | 49 | 21.4% | -7.9 | -55 | -9 |
| Corey Kispert | 15 | 34 | 32 | 14.7% | -4.1 | -152 | -7 |
| Justin Champagnie | 5 | 12 | 86 | 22.3% | -0.8 | 76 | -7 |
| AJ Johnson | 6 | 13 | 86 | 19.3% | -0.8 | 25 | -9 |
| Will Riley | 6 | 13 | 86 | 19.3% | -0.8 | 5 | -9 |
| Anthony Gill | 4 | 9 | 63 | 11.3% | -0.5 | 0 | -7 |
| Tristan Vukcevic | 5 | 12 | 0 | 22.4% | -3.0 | -266 | -7 |
| MAGIC | MIN | POSS | ORTG | USG | +PTS | PPA | +/- |
|---|
| Paolo Banchero | 26 | 59 | 136 | 33.0% | 4.0 | 342 | 19 |
| Franz Wagner | 31 | 69 | 124 | 30.9% | 1.8 | 278 | 24 |
| Goga Bitadze | 20 | 45 | 185 | 14.4% | 4.5 | 364 | 5 |
| Wendell Carter Jr. | 28 | 63 | 128 | 16.5% | 1.4 | 162 | 26 |
| Desmond Bane | 20 | 45 | 116 | 13.3% | 0.0 | 118 | 17 |
| Jalen Suggs | 19 | 43 | 62 | 28.3% | -6.5 | 94 | 22 |
| Tyus Jones | 15 | 33 | 153 | 10.2% | 1.3 | 119 | 4 |
| Jonathan Isaac | 16 | 36 | 112 | 17.3% | -0.2 | 98 | 3 |
| Anthony Black | 25 | 55 | 97 | 18.2% | -1.9 | 57 | 1 |
| Tristan da Silva | 22 | 49 | 41 | 10.6% | -3.9 | -32 | 9 |
| Noah Penda | 7 | 15 | 123 | 22.3% | 0.2 | 422 | 7 |
| Jett Howard | 6 | 13 | 133 | 23.2% | 0.6 | 289 | 9 |
| Jase Richardson | 6 | 13 | 0 | 5.8% | -0.9 | -61 | 9 |
