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Wizards Drop Season Opener to Celtics 122-102 Despite Stellar Performance by Jordan Poole

The Celtics Jaylen Brown Had His Way with the Celtics in the Second Half in Route to his 27 Point Effort Tonight in a 122-102 Victory Over the Wizards

Story By: Sol Tucker

Photos By: Sol Tucker

Washington, D.C–

Tonight’s season opener for the Wizards was really a tail of two different halves of basketball. The first half was all about Jordan Poole and the Wizards staying even with the defending champion Celtics. The second half… well if that’s what you want to call it, was a 20 plus point deficit battle for most of the remainder of the game.

This game was really all about the Celtics Jaylen Brown. Brown dropped a game-high 27 points with eight rebounds, four steals, and three assists. He has scored at least 20 points in each of the three games he has played on his birthday during his NBA career. Not a stat that the Wizards had hoped for.

Washington who was led by Jordan Poole’s 20 points in the first half, just could not find the same energy in the second half and had just 6 points during that span.

The Celtics outscored the Wizards 34-19 in the third quarter put the game out of reach and with a little over 8 minutes in the fourth quarter it looked like a G League game for both teams.

The Wizards and Brian Keefe opted for a very young starting line-up tonight, the youngest in the NBA and the lack of veteran leadership later in the second half really showed.

One of the best things that we saw tonight was the play by Jonas Valanciunas, who added 18 in his Washington debut. Keefe opted to feed the ball inside to him and it seemed to work well when the outside shooting was just failing tonight.

The Wizards 7 for 36 effort from long range is one of the top worst performances from 3-point land in over 20 years. They finished the night at 19.6 percent on 3 pointers. Both Kyle Kuzma and Alex Sarr combined for a 0-10 final stat line from long range.

Washington doesn’t have much time to look at what they did wrong tonight, but more than likely will put this one aside and move on to Cleveland on Saturday night.

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