Wizards Ejected from Los Angeles with Fourth Straight Loss

The competitive portion of this game seemed to end early. The Wizards fell behind by as much as 24 points in the first half, trailed by 19 at the midpoint, and then staged a furious third-quarter comeback to get as close as 89-88 late in the third quarter. At that point, the Los Angeles Clipper reasserted their superiority, the Wizards offense cratered and LA coasted to a comfortable 119-105 win.

The game was marred by an absurd ejection of Alex Sarr. He was called for a foul and slammed the ball hard enough for it to bounce above his head. For some reason, at some point in NBA history, this was adjudged to be an egregious insult to referees. Sarr got slapped with a technical foul for this apparently horrific act, got another one seconds later — I guess for saying something in “French” — and was sent to the locker room.

The whole thing was dumb on several levels, starting with the initial tech. I think any reasonable observer would think Sarr’s “slamming” of the ball was an expression of general frustration — he was not playing well and he didn’t seem to be arguing the foul call itself. That a player bouncing the ball over his head while by himself and not saying anything to the refs or another player would be hit with a technical…dumb.

One cool thing: when Sarr went to the locker room, Team Dad Anthony Gill went with him to make sure he’d be okay.

In terms of actual game play, Kyshawn George had a strong game overall. Like most NBA players over the past decade, he could do little to slow Kawhi Leonard.

Leonard scored 33 points, which included shooting 7-11 from three-point range. Hopefully, the Wizards staff will cut together some instructional videos for the younger players showing Leonard’s surgical approach to attacking the Wizards. He repeatedly identified weaker help defenders, and then attacked those areas — even when his primary defender remained engaged. He exploited switches ruthlessly.

Defensively, Leonard moves far less than he did in his youth but remains a superior defender. Last night, he got four steals — basically hoovering up any inaccurate or sloppy passes in his vicinity.

Perhaps as an addendum to the Leonard-based instructional video, staff could include some clips of Harden’s world-class grifting. He got Sarr early with a classic — going into a shot the moment Sarr put his hand out, creating contact and drawing a foul.

Now on a four-game losing streak, the feel-good winning binge is solidly in the rear-view mirror.

Thoughts & Observations

• Bilal Coulibaly lasted just under 10 minutes before leaving the game with what’s described as “lower back tightness.” Hopefully, it’s nothing that will keep him out of action. He’s played better since returning from his previous injury, and he needs the offensive reps.
• Strong game from George — 23 points on 15 shots, 5 rebounds, 4 assists. He was ineffective defending Leonard, but that’s pretty normal for all NBA players.
• Bub Carrington shot 1-11 from the floor and missed all six of his three-point attempts. He’s made 11 of his last 42 over the past seven games — a bit of a cooling off after a hot start. His average for the season is still above 40%.
• Someone needs to give the Wizards a late first round pick for Marvin Bagley III. Given more minutes because of the ridiculous Sarr ejection, he posted 15 points on 7-11 shooting, and 11 rebounds (5 offensive). In a game the Wizards lost by 14, the team was +4 in Bagley’s 27 minutes.
• When I wrote earlier the Wizards offense “cratered” in the fourth quarter, well…it wasn’t Vredefort Crater level, but it was big. Their offensive rating in the period: 64. They shot just 7-22 — 31.8%. They missed all eight of their three-point attempts. And they committed four turnovers. Ouch.
• Before his preposterous ejection, the Clippers shot just 5-13 when NBA tracking identified Sarr as the defender.
• The Clippers had one of those “veteran-laden team wins efficiently” kind of games. They made all 27 of their free throw attempts, shot decently, grabbed just seven offensive rebounds, and committed just eight turnovers. They got nine steals — mostly by being in the right place at the right time.
• For at least one game, Yanic Konan Niederhauser’s on-court play was as much fun as his name. He got minutes mainly because of injuries to Ivica Zubac and John Collins, and he’s been replacement level in his limited playing time this season, but he’s athletic and energetic and fun to watch.

Four Factors

Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

The four factors are measured by:

• eFG% (effective field goal percentage, which accounts for the three-point shot)
• OREB% (offensive rebound percentage)
• TOV% (turnover percentage — turnovers divided by possessions)
• FTM/FGA (free throws made divided by field goal attempts)

Stats & Metrics

PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.

ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average so far this season is 115.1. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.

ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.

+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.

Players are sorted by total production in the game.