Story By: Sol Tucker
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
For as many good things that have happened to the Wizards this season, there is plenty of wrong that goes along with that too. Tonight, was no exception to what we have seen in quite a few games this season, a second half letdown.
The Wizards had this game well within range even deep into the fourth quarter and it was if all of the G League players and Jordan Poole couldn’t find a way to keep the Rockets off the board and like it was for most of the game, it was Jalen Green time.
Green tied his career high with 42 points while rookie Amen Thompson added a career-high 25 points as the Rockets turned a third-quarter rally into a 137-114 victory.
While we can say that the Wizards had their own set of issues that included more of their players in street clothes than those uniform tonight as the main reason the game was so lopsided late in favor of the Rockets, but that wasn’t the case. The Wizards just failed to score when they needed to.
Patrick Baldwin Jr. sank a 3-pointer that gave the Wizards their first lead at 65-62 and had this game well in control to possibly get another victory at home.. that was until Green scored nine consecutive points for the Rockets during a 16-2 run that coincided with Washington going three-plus minutes without a basket. Houston then closed the third with a 9-4 run.
Corey Kispert led the Wizards with a team-best 16 points, while Jared Butler added 15. With the loss, Washington has dropped 21 of its 23 games amid a five-game losing streak.
“Really it was the last six minutes of the third,” Wizards interim coach Brian Keefe said. “That game was back and forth, pretty much the whole game until that point. Obviously Green, we made a couple blown coverages on some of our pick-and-roll stuff and he got hot. And it was hard to turn him off after that.”
