Washington , D.C—
Usually when you dig a hole in a NBA game, it sometimes becomes challenging against the best teams to find a line to help pull you out and that is exactly what happened tonight for the Wizards against the soaring Phoenix Suns. They simply just got torched from start to finish, well except for a bit in the fourth quarter when they did make the game closer than the 25 points they had to battle off to even make the 99-93 score closer than the game reflected.
Phoenix was led by their impressive backcourt of Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe who combined to finish with 48 points, 13 assists and 13 rebounds.
“We don’t care what other people think,” Dragic said. “Before the season, they were saying we’re going to win 15 games.”
Dragic and the Suns a lot the Wizards have a lot to play for over the next few weeks and position is key. The Wizards are definitely in the playoffs, but with this series of losses, it could be at the bottom at this rate and the Suns could easily be looking from the outside all together as they battle Dallas for the 8th spot in their division.
John Wall, who led Washington with 29 points and six assists, and coach Randy Wittman seemed to both view the game in different ways tonight, but both putting some of the blame on poor defense that allowed Phoenix to shoot 50 percent on 3-pointers for the game (14 of 28).
Washington had a little scare in the game tonight when Bradley Beal had to leave the game at the end of the first half for a treatment of a hip pointer. He would return late in the third quarter, but struggled to find his touch tonight.
The Suns had lost their previous three games against the Wizards, including at Phoenix in January.
Tonight marked another milestone for Wall as he reached 100 3-pointers for the season for the first time in his NBA career, and he joins Bradley Beal, Trevor Ariza and Martell Webster to give Washington a franchise-high four players with at least that many.