Washington Wizards VS Detroit Pistons (March 14)

I was watching the Wizards and Clippers game last night, so I decided to do something I haven't done in a while, a game breakdown. However, there will be tons of these once the playoffs start.

Now the first thing I want to get out of the way, is that the crowd in D.C., are horrible. So, if anybody goes to Wizards games, you need to step it up, that simple, because the atmosphere is horrible in that arena. Gortat threw down an alley-oop dunk and I heard barely anything from the crowd. The bench was cheering more than the crowd was. So step it up D.C., or else Washington could end up moving to the other Washington.

Now that I have that off my chest, let's get to the game, because the Wizards haven't played like this in a while. One thing I want to point out is that Markieff Morris is playing really well with this Wizards team. He had 3 assists and let me tell you something, they all were really great assists. He took great shots and looked really good in the offense. Morris looked so good last night and I'm very happy for his play.

I also want to point out just how great the Wizards defense was last night. The Wizards defensive rating was at a great number of 82.1. They also caused the Pistons to turn it over 20 times. But what really sent the Pistons home was them controlling the rebounding battle against the Pistons know that the Pistons are 4th in rebounding percentage.

The Wizards really contained everyone, but offensively, they were amazing as they had 34 assists, something that not many teams besides the Warriors have done this season. They moved the ball so well and it started with John Wall getting 12 of the assists. For some reason, the Pistons weren't able to defend Wall in the pick and roll and when they did, Wall would kick it out to a shooter and they would get a wide open shot. The Wizards limited their turnovers to only 10 in that game which is really good. 62 of the their points came from inside the paint. The Wizards just seemed unstoppable last night. Also, Nene provided great minutes off the bench, not letting the Pistons get any momentum as he ended with 20 points on the night. He will be a key player for the Wizards for the rest of this season.

A big reason why this Pistons' team lost was because they didn't get up enough shots. They got only 79 shots up compared to the Wizards' 90. That could have been 22 points alone if they had gotten as much shots up as the Wizards. The Pistons also didn't shoot well from the 3-point line or inside the paint. However, they shot really well from mid-range, but didn't put up enough mid-range shots. Take a look at the chart below provided by www.nba.com/stats .

Credit: www.nba.com/stats

So as you can see, their shooting was pretty bad and they kept settling for outside 3-pointer, which wasn't working. You can't take 23 three pointer if only 3 of them fall and expect to win the game.

Anyways, the Wizards are a big threat if they move into the playoffs as we have seen in this game. They can surely move up into a seed and nobody is going to want to play this team knowing their past 2 years of success in the playoffs, even thought they had lower than the 4th seed both of those last two years. The Wizards could cause a lot of damage if they play like they did last night.