The Washington Wizards tries to drag out of a skid with postseason aspirations at stake on Tuesday, visiting an Orlando Magic group returning house from a attempting, four-game highway swing.
Washington (32-39) dropped its fifth choice within the final six outings with a 132-118 loss to Sacramento on Saturday. The current slide dropped the Wizards to 1.5 video games behind Chicago for the ultimate spot within the Eastern Conference play-in event, coming into Monday’s motion.
“No one’s pleased with where we are, or the struggles we’ve had, but I’ve said it all year: No one feels sorry for us. There’s no sense in sulking,” Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr. stated Saturday. “We’ve got to take something from this and we’ve got to learn and get better. We’ve got to be better. Tough without (Kristaps Porzingis), but there’s a lot of things we could have done better to kind of help ourselves.”
Porzingis, who’s averaging a career-best 22.8 factors per sport, sat in opposition to the Kings as a result of an sickness. He is listed as day-to-day forward of Tuesday’s contest.
Kyle Kuzma rebounded from a three-game stretch wherein he scored not more than 17 factors in anyone contest — bottoming out at seven in a 23-point loss Friday at Cleveland — with 33 factors in opposition to Sacramento.
Finding consistency from its main trio of Kuzma, Porzingis and Bradley Beal, all of whom are averaging greater than 21 factors per sport, will probably be vital for Washington in its closing 11 video games. The Wizards twice failed to succeed in 100 factors and scored fewer than its 112.8-point per sport common in three of the 5 losses throughout the present skid.
Orlando (29-43), in the meantime, comes into Tuesday’s matchup off a 1-3 highway swing via the Western Conference and a 2-6 stretch total. The Magic allowed a median of 124.3 factors in these six defeats.
The Magic closed that stretch by limiting the Los Angeles Lakers to 111 factors on Sunday, however Orlando mustered simply 105 — its lowest output since Feb. 27 — within the final date of the highway journey.
Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner every scored 21 factors within the loss. The six-point margin marked the fifth time during the last eight wherein an Orlando contest was determined by single digits. In one of many two exceptions, the Magic went to extra time in a 12-point victory in opposition to Miami.
“It’s valuable for sure, just learning how to win, learning what not to do in close situations,” the rookie Banchero stated of the carefully contested video games for a younger Magic roster.
“It’s been a solid season so far,” Banchero added. “I want to finish strong.”
Banchero is the presumptive front-runner for Rookie of the Year, averaging a team-high 20 factors per sport and the second-best rebounding common on the group at 6.6 per contest. As Banchero heads into the house stretch, he can change into the primary participant from Orlando to win that award since Mike Miller in 2000-01.
