The Washington Wizards are in trouble in their first-round playoff series against the Bulls.
Oh, and there’s that 0-2 deficit as well after Wednesday night’s 113-103 loss.
Washington’s problems, however, go well beyond the Bulls’ lead. The Wizards probably need a training camp to begin figuring out what to do in this series.
“We have to get everyone involved,” Gilbert Arenas said after scoring 39 points and taking almost one-third of the Wizards’ shots in Game 2.
“Kwame Brown needs to step up in Game 3. Brendan Haywood. Jared Jeffries needs to hit some shots. We need guys to do what they did all season, which got us this far. We have to get our bigs involved somehow. They have to be a factor. It can’t just be the guards doing it all.”
Haywood, Jeffries and Brown combined for seven shots and 11 points in Game 2 and had to make appointments to get the ball.
“We have to understand when things are not going well offensively, when the basket is tight, you have to play defense,” said Antawn Jamison, who scored 18 points. “I’m very disappointed. The playoffs is all about your defense.
“No matter what goes on offensively, you can always rely on being fundamentally sound and making it difficult for the other guys. Take them out of what they want to do.
“We know exactly what [the Bulls] like to run, and they did it anyway. In the playoffs, you’ve got to find a way to take them out of that and make it more difficult for them.”
Perhaps not making a third of your shots three-pointers would help.
And not checking the yearbook during the game to find out who Jannero Pargo and Adrian Griffin are.
Yes, consider the Wizards officially flummoxed.
Perhaps panicked and confused as well.
A perimeter-oriented team wants to look for scoring from its role-playing big men.
“That hasn’t been a huge success for us,” Washington coach Eddie Jordan conceded. “When other teams go small over a period of time, we have not taken advantage.
“We go so much from the perimeter. We try to exploit small matchups by hitting the offensive glass. We don’t have those types of weapons. We have good size, but we don’t have the weapons to exploit a small lineup on a regular basis.”
Now they’re supposed to figure that out by Saturday?
As well as become defensive-minded, if less absent-minded?
The Bulls scored more than 100 points for the second consecutive game. It wasn’t until late January in the regular season that they did that for the first time.
Only five times all season did they put together consecutive games of more than 100.
Even Jamison noticed the Bulls aren’t going to win many stuffed animals at the county fair with their shooting.
Just basketball games.
“This [Bulls] team, as far as field-goal percentage, they don’t shoot 48 percent,” Jamison noted. “We can’t allow that to happen. One guy (Kirk Hinrich) is 12-for-15 You look down the stat sheet, it’s like everyone is shooting 50 percent.
“This is the playoffs. It’s not like that. You have to play with a sense of urgency on the defensive end. Offensively, we did enough to be in the game. We’ve just got to be defensive-minded for 48 minutes.”
Where have you heard that one before? Right, the losers’ locker room.
“I really don’t want to comment on our defense,” Haywood said. “I don’t want to say anything that could be seen as a detriment to our team. But we let them get some easy shots. They got layups. We took 30-footers.”
It was the question hovering over the series for the Wizards, and so far they haven’t passed the test.
In Game 1, Jordan changed their strategy some.
He had his team lay back in the half-court, not wanting young players with less playoff experience than the Bulls to get overwhelmed by the home crowd.
The Wizards usually play a trapping defense to produce steals, which ignites their offense. But that can lead to runouts, so they tried to pace the game, which didn’t work.
In Game 2 they came out aggressively, forcing turnovers and getting fast breaks for an early double-digit lead.
But the Wizards are a team whose eye strays from the ball. When the Bulls substituted, they seemed to relax and lose control of the game after having a chance to steal it.
A team that doesn’t defend aggressively and relies on its perimeter can be capable of losing leads, which the Wizards did to the most unlikely of reserves.
“We had the starters under control,” Arenas said. “Then Pargo came in, [Eric] Piatkowski and they took over the game, hit some big shots. Pargo was the one who got them back.
“The guy didn’t play in the first game, for whatever reason, and has the guts to hit his shots. It got them back in the game.
“They were out of it. He didn’t have anything to lose.
“All of a sudden it’s a four-point lead, the crowd is back in it and then anything can happen. The starters come back and they’re up by 10 at halftime.”
Arenas just shrugged and offered a quizzical smile. A symbol of his team’s helplessness in this series?
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sasmith@tribune.com
