Category: Sports News

The Tuesday night loss to the Atlanta Hawks was bad. The loss last night was worse. The Wizards fell behind quickly, made a first quarter run when the Hawks slacked off early, and then got their doors blown off. Again.

I’ve now written several versions of a sentence that communicates the idea that the competitive portion of this game ended early. They all landed wrong because in truth, there was no competitive portion. The players wearing Wizards uniforms tried. I have no reason to think Brian Keefe and his staff didn’t give a professional effort on the coaching front.

But the roster — designed to lose and lose badly — was missing several of its best players, and against a semi-competent team playing for something, there was no hope.

Less than four minutes into the game, Hawks legend/broadcaster Dominique Wilkins said it was going to be a blowout win for Atlanta. The score at the time: 14-2. It would be another minute of game time until Tre Johnson hit a three, which was Washington’s first field goal of the game.

Acknowledging the above is not complaining. Well, it is complaining because I love watching good basketball. This kinda begs the question of why I’ve spent so many years watching the Wizards and Bullets, and I don’t have a satisfactory answer. Over the past couple decades, I’ve taken to saying that I jumped on the bandwagon in 1978, and the exits are poorly marked.

In this one, the Wizards were annihilated by CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert — who they traded to Atlanta earlier this season for Trae Young, who may one day take the floor for Washington.

McCollum took his former teammates to school, pumping in 25 points on 19 shots in 26 minutes. The NBA mantra he got what he wanted was invented for games like this. Wizards defenders tried to slow McCollum. He was just better — routinely maneuvering them where he wanted to go and then pulling the trigger on the shot he wanted. If he’d actually been hot (9-19 from the floor and just 2-8 from three), the damage would have been worse.

Speaking of getting hot and causing worse damage, Kispert feasted on open looks to score a career high 33 points, including 22 in the first half — tying his career-best scoring output for a half. Kispert kept getting wide open threes, and I kept rewinding the action to see why.

Examples?

• With about a minute left in the first quarter, the Hawks had the ball in transition — two Hawks running up on offense vs. two Wizards back and in position to defend. Justin Champagnie picked up the ball. Will Riley for some reason just drifted back towards the basket — ignoring Kispert (a dangerous three-point shooter, especially in transition) sprinting to the corner. I jotted KYP (know your personnel) in my notes, which is pretty ridiculous considering these guys were teammates who went through training camp together.
• The very next possession — a Hawks transition possession — Anthony Gill was on an island needing to defend two. As the ball went to Kispert on the wing, Gill took his first step…towards Jock Landale in the corner. He redirected quickly, but Kispert got another open look (which he hit).
• To start the second quarter, Atlanta ran a basic pindown for Kispert. Jaden Hardy was trailing, but Gill was dropped way into the lane, so Kispert got yet another open shot.

The Wizards did react. About a minute later, they overplayed Kispert at the three-point line, and he responded with an easy drive for a layup. That bucket gave him 19 points with more than 10 minutes left in the second quarter. He’d been on the court for about seven minutes of playing time at that point.

Thoughts & Observations

• Tre Johnson has been guilty of holding the ball and not passing to open teammates when routine passes could initiate the offensive flow. Tristan Vukcevic gave a classic (but muted) “WTF?” gesture Tuesday night. Last night, other teammates had similar reactions. In addition to get the offense moving passes he missed, he either didn’t recognize or chose not to make simple passes to teammates wide open at the three-point line. Not something to worry about, but perhaps something worth monitoring.
• The Hawks had a giveaway going, which they decided to do by laying out t-shirts on seats. The result: pink seat backs that served to highlight how many empty seats there were.
• The Hawks broadcast is an often entertaining product at the intersection of interesting basketball insights, poor preparation, and mistakes.
• Atlanta play-by-play man Bob Rathbun (who I knew a little when he was calling games for Old Dominion University) very carefully mispronounces Vukcevic’s name. For the record, it’s VOOK-suh-vitch. Not VOOK-eh-vitch. Not VOOCH-eh-vitch. VOOK-suh-vitch.
• After saying the game would be a Hawks blowout, Wilkins watched as the Wizards went on a run. When they got the score to 20-18, Wilkins said, “I didn’t see this coming.” Atlanta immediately responded with a run of their own, and the game was never close again.
• At the 4:44 mark of the first quarter, Bilal Coulibaly hit a pullup midrange jumper. According to play-by-play data, about 4% of Coulibaly’s shots have come from that distance this season.
• Another Wilkins comment: “Riley has no idea what he’s doing on the floor right now.”
• More ‘Nique? After Johnson drove and dunked, Wilkins said, “He’s standing there posing. You just want to say, ‘Young man, you’re down 17.‘ ”
• At the half, Rathbun had a good line: “The old Wizards are sticking it to the new Wizards.”
• The Wizards developed a theme in my notes at the end of the first half and start of the second — “dumb” fouls. They included a pointless push by Johnson that resulted in a McCollum four-point play, an inexplicable take foul by Coulibaly, and then a non-flagrant foul that should have been a flagrant on Johnson.
• Bub Carrington is not a good lob passer.
• No one from the Wizards actually played well last night. Gill led the team in total production with a below-average 80 PPA. Johnson was the only player to crack average, and his game was just a 103. Average is 100.

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 listed in the Four Factors table above. 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%. Median so far this season is 17.7%.

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 115, the league — on average — would produced 23.0 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -3.0.

Players are sorted by total production in the game.

The Milwaukee Bucks play host to the New York Knicks tonight at Fiserv, eager to complete their third three-game win streak of the season. As I’ll get to, the Knicks haven’t looked like themselves lately, while the Bucks are flying. The season series between these two sides sits at one game apiece, with Milwaukee taking the first contest just four games into the season, and New York taking the most recent one.

Where We’re At

The Bucks have won eight of their last 10. Most recently, they lost handily to the Raptors, but responded by beating the Heat and (zombie) Cavaliers on a back-to-back. Not to demean anyone else, but Milwaukee’s return to winning has come primarily off the back of three players: Kevin Porter Jr., Ryan Rollins, and Jericho Sims. Porter and Rollins have been doing a great job of creating for themselves and others (while Porter, at least, has kept his turnovers down). Over the back-to-back, the Porter-Rollins duo racked up 91 points and 26 assists. As for Sims, he’ll never fill up the stat sheet, but anyone who’s been watching recently can tell how much of an impact he’s made as a defender and rebounder. This is evidenced by the fact that, over the past 10 games, the Bucks—who’ve been a bad rebounding team for most of this season—have the fifth-best defensive rebounding percentage and the 15th-best offensive rebounding percentage. Much of that credit goes to Sims, who’s had 10 O boards in the last three games.

The Knicks, on the other hand, are sputtering. Their overall record lately, going .500 over their last eight games, doesn’t look too bad on the surface, but context is needed. They lost to the Pacers, very nearly lost to the Bulls, beat the Rockets after Houston crapped the bed up 18 in the fourth, and got annihilated by the Pistons twice and Cavs once. They have the 15th-best net rating in the NBA over that eight-game span. Having said that, this team won eight in a row right before this most recent eight-game streak (which followed a horror stretch before that!). In short, New York has an equally low floor as it does a high ceiling—anything could happen tonight.

Injury Report

For the Bucks, Giannis (calf) and Taurean Prince (neck) are both out. For the Knicks, Miles McBride (core) is out.

Player To Watch

Let’s keep rolling with Jericho Sims. Going up against the rebounding beast that is Mitchell Robinson, Sims will need to keep doing what he’s been doing on the boards. Jericho actually seems like a decent matchup to cover the pick-and-pops from Karl-Anthony Towns (probably better than Myles Turner, at least). The bigs will play a huge role in who wins this game.

How To Watch

FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin at 7:00 p.m. CST.

For the second time this week, the Atlanta Hawks squared off against the hapless Washington Wizards in front of their home fans at State Farm Arena. After beating Washington handily on Tuesday, Atlanta delivered an equally emphatic 126-96 victory last night — though with Jalen Johnson (left hip contusion) and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (left foot sprain) watching this one from the sidelines, the manner of victory looked a little different than it did on Tuesday.

The Wizards have been one of the worst teams in the NBA this season, ranking 29th in offense and 28th in defense, still, with the Play-In race in the Eastern Conference heating up, it was important that the Hawks took care of business on Thursday evening.

Corey Kispert led all scorers with a career-high 33 points on 11-for-19 shooting from the field (6-for-11 from three) against his former team, while CJ McCollum added 25 points in 26 minutes of action. Dyson Daniels had a nice night, filling up the stat sheet with 13 points, 11 assists and five steals. Jonathan Kuminga, logging his first start in a Hawks uniform, chipped in with 17 points, nine rebounds and three assists.

McCollum had it going early on, scoring eight out of Atlanta’s first 14 points as the Hawks jumped out to an early 14-2 lead. A cold spell from Atlanta saw Washington cut the lead to two, before the Hawks pulled away towards the end of the quarter — thanks in large part to Washington turning the ball over four times over the final 3:00 of the period (and Corey Kispert going nuclear).

Here, after a chaotic sequence, Daniels pokes the ball free from Jayden Hardy leading to a Kispert triple after some nice ball movement by Atlanta.

A few plays later, Landale gets a paw on the entry pass, leading to a fastbreak opportunity for Atlanta and another Kispert three ball.

On the very next possession, a wayward entry pass from Anthony Gil leads to another Daniels steal. He finds Kispert with a nice hit-ahead pass for another open triple.

Adding insult to injury, Mo Gueye capped off the quarter with a steal and slam, and Atlanta took a 37-26 lead into the second quarter.

Another defining factor in the first quarter was the frequency with which Atlanta was getting out in transition and generating quality early shot clock looks while preventing them on the other end, with the Hawks outscoring the Wizards 16-0 in fastbreak points in the opening frame.

Here, Daniels grabs the rebound, races the other way and finds Kuminga for a wide-open corner three.

In the play below, Daniels glides right by Champagnie for a pretty transition finish off of a Washington miss.

In the second, Atlanta extended their lead to 20, facing little resistance from the visiting team. While they continued to shoot the ball well from the outside (with McCollum and Kispert knocking down two three-pointers apiece), they also did a good job attacking the paint — shooting 8-for-12 from the interior in the second.

Here, Daniels goes to his trademark spin move before dropping in the floater over Bilal Coulibaly.

In the play below, Risacher gets the handoff from Okongwu, then finds him underneath the basket for two.

A few minutes later, Daniels finds McCollum cutting to the basket for a silky smooth finish at the rim.

Even Zaccharie Risacher, in the midst of a rough February shooting-wise, got in on the action, throwing down a mean lefty slam over Coulibaly in transition.

Still, while the Hawks took a commanding 76-56 lead into the halftime break, it wasn’t all perfect in the second quarter, with the team suffering a handful of defensive breakdowns towards the end of the period.

Here, Risacher gets caught in no-man’s land, leading to a Coulibaly slam. After Carrington rejects the screen, Risacher has to try and shrink the floor, ideally positioning himself by the nail so he can keep an eye on Coulibaly and play the pass to Vukcevic. Instead, he’s out of position when Carrington passes to Vukcevic, and Coulibaly loses him with a backdoor cut.

Here, Tre Johnson loses McCollum around the screen from Vukcevic. Okongwu is in good position to wall off the drive while CJ recovers, but he abandons his spot way too early (rotating onto 28% three-point shooter Tristan Vukcevic camped out on the perimeter) and Johnson takes it right to the hole for a slam with Atlanta’s rim protection out of the way.

Here, Leaky Black clears McCollum out of the way before Coulibaly beats Kuminga off the dribble, taking it to the cup for an easy two. Far too easy.

The third quarter lacked the shot-making prowess that we were treated to in the first half. Atlanta — ahead by 20 — looked quite lethargic coming out of the break, managing just 22 points on 7-for-21 shooting from the field (7-for-11 at the free-throw line), while turning the ball over seven times* in the period.

_{*They turned it over just twice in the first-half.}

Here, after the air-ball from Risacher, Kuminga tries to thread the needle but throws it away.

A few plays later, Okongwu commits a careless turnover in the back-court leading to an easy two points for Washington, prompting Quin Snyder to call for timeout with the Wizards only trailing by 14.

Fortunately for the Hawks, Washington continued to struggle shooting the basketball in the third (10-for-28 from the field, 2-for-10 from three) and couldn’t find a way back into the ball game despite the lack of verve from Atlanta. A Kuminga-led flurry to close the quarter saw Atlanta take a 98-80 lead into the final period.

The fourth quarter was hardly competitive. Atlanta got the period started on a 6-0 run and led by 24 with just under six minutes remaining. Meanwhile, the Wizards kept up the miserable shooting (6-for-24 from the field, 0-for-9 from three) and managed just 16 points in the final frame.

When the buzzer sounded, the Hawks went home with a resounding 126-96 victory.

Searching for some overarching themes from this one, one big difference between the two sides was seen in the amount of free-throws the Hawks were able to generate, with Atlanta finishing the game with 37 free-throw attempts (29-for-37) — tied for the fourth most free throw attempts they’ve taken in a game this season — while Washington finished the game just 15-for-16 at the line.

Jonathan Kuminga, who has routinely ranked near the top of the league in shooting fouls drawn (per cleaningtheglass) over the course of his career, put a ton of pressure on the rim in this one*, tying his season-high with eight free throw attempts, converting six of them.

_{*Something Atlanta have desperately needed since the McCollum and Kispert additions.}

Another difference was that despite these two teams ranking near the top of the league in ‘pace’, the Hawks were the only ones able to consistently generate quality early shot clock looks, outscoring Washington 24-11 in fast-break points.

Of course, it was always going to be difficult for Washington to overcome the massive shooting discrepancy (58.7% true shooting percentage (TS%) for Atlanta vs. 47.5% Washington), but the fact that they were unable to gain on edge on the glass or in the turnover margin sealed their fate.

Postgame, Quin Snyder had the following to say on how the team responded to a difficult third quarter.

“I think the way we started the third quarter. I didn’t think we defended as well, but also, we missed some shots, and that makes it harder because they were in transition. But those are the times where we’ve talked about, we just can’t give up big runs, so we did a good job responding to that. NBA games get competitive, and I was just happy with the way we defended throughout the course of the game. We’ve got to do a better job on the defensive glass, and I didn’t think we crashed the offensive glass as consistently as we need to. So, that possession game is just crucial for us, and we need everyone to do it.”

On getting out to a fast start in the first quarter, Snyder said:

“We had a couple guys shoot it well in the beginning of the game, and Corey throughout the game, but you can’t count on that all the time. You need to be able to rely on getting stops and rebounding. That’s where our focus needs to continue to go.”

On Jonathan Kuminga’s second game in a Hawks jersey:

“The thing that’s impressed me as much as anything is just, his work. You saw that previous to him getting healthy and I think that’s carried over. There are some plays defensively where his strength stands out and he’s been focused. There was a — he lost it out of bounds — but there was a big play out of a timeout. I thought we needed to dig in, [and] he did a really good job just denying the entry pass and he almost had a dunk. So that to me is more impressive than the actual dunk — I know he can dunk. So those little things on the defensive end, he can be impactful”

“Then I think he’s really focused on moving the ball and being unselfish. I thought he made a couple passes tonight that were really impressive, just looking the guy off and seeing the court, and as he plays more, he’s going to be more instinctive.”

On Corey Kispert setting his career high in points (33), and if there were any conversations about feeding him the ball to help him get there.

“We weren’t talking about his career high. I don’t think he was focused on that. We were talking about him doing a good job spacing, which is I think where a lot of his shots came early. He’s someone that we’ll run an ‘ATO’ for because, those are opportunities that you get to take a stab at a three, or if someone overplays the situation, you get high percentage shots. But I don’t think anyone was thinking about that. Frankly, I wasn’t aware of it until you just said it.”

Snyder also spoke highly of Kispert’s ‘determination’ and ‘pride’ when asked about the chase-down block he had in the third quarter, which helped snap the Hawks out of their funk.

Looking ahead, Atlanta has one more game remaining on their homestand, taking on Vit Krejci and the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday evening. Tip off for that one is at 6 PM EST.

Talk soon.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner won the toss and elected to bat first in cricket's T20 World Cup Super 8 match against England at R. Premadasa Stadium on Friday.

A win will earn New Zealand the second semifinal spot from Group 2. Leader England has already qualified after beating Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Victory for England will leave Pakistan with a slim chance of getting into the semifinals via net run-rate if they beat Sri Lanka on Saturday.

South Africa has already qualified from Group 1. The second spot will be decided by the result of the match between India and the West Indies.

New Zealand fielded the same side that beat Sri Lanka comprehensively on Wednesday while England bolstered its spin attack by recalling Rehan Ahmed in place of Jamie Overton.

—-

Lineups:

England: Harry Brook (captain), Phil Salt, Jos Buttler, Jacob Bethell, Tom Banton, Sam Curran, Will Jacks, Rehan Ahmed, Liam Dawson, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid.

New Zealand: Mitchell Santner (captain), Tim Seifert, Finn Allen, Rachin Ravindra, Glenn Phillips, Daryl Mitchell, Mark Chapman, Cole McConchie, Matt Henry, Ish Sodhi, Lockie Ferguson.

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AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

In their last game of February, the Sixers picked up one of their most important wins of the season. With the Miami Heat coming into town Thursday just a game and a half behind the Sixers for the sixth seed and final guaranteed playoff spot, the Sixers knocked them off 124-117.

That seemed to take a backseat to a new franchise record. Tyrese Maxey passed Allen Iverson for the most made three-pointers in franchise history. He was three away from the record coming into the game and got it out of the way early, drilling five triples in the first quarter.

He was especially keen to get the record out of the way early — learning how close he was threw him off in the team’s previous game in Indiana.

“He was complaining that they told him too much the other night or something,” head coach Nick Nurse said. “He didn’t want to know, and he knew, and he was thinking about it a bit.”

Maxey explained that the culprit here was his close buddy Trendon Watford, who told him that Maxey might as well break it against the Pacers after hitting his first two threes in that game. Maxey didn’t make a three the rest of that game.

One game later against the Heat, Watford got to be apart of the record-breaking moment.

“It’s ironic, Trendon was the one that passed me the ball,” Maxey said, “so, we’ll remember that one forever.” 

Anyone who’s followed Maxey for any stretch of his career won’t be shocked to learn that he spent most of his time talking about the record thanking God, his family, coaches and teammates, past and present. Former Sixer Tobias Harris also got a shoutout from Maxey in his postgame presser.

“I gave a shoutout to Tobias earlier,” Maxey said. “In my rookie year he told me I was a great shooter even though I wasn’t shooting as well as I wanted to. He told me I was great shooter.”

Despite Maxey’s rise from a player drafted outside of the lottery to an All-Star game starter, there’s been a sense of humility that he’s never lost. Accolades seem like a nice byproduct of trying to get better every day.

“I didn’t know what to expect. I always said I was going to make it to the NBA, but I didn’t know what to expect, honestly,” he said. “Someone asked me at All-Star [weekend] if I expected to be an All-Star starter, and I was like, ‘Man, no, I just work.’”

The longer his teammates have been around him though, the less of a shock it is for them to see these accomplishments.

“It’s a surreal moment, but it’s not surprising,” said Kelly Oubre Jr., a teammate of Maxey’s for the last three seasons. “He puts in the work, he’s confident, he’s developing every year, and you know, I’m super proud of him and blessed to be alongside him.”

The hard work and leadership Maxey has shown since taking over that role for this team has created a positive feedback loop. It’s something he sees in those he goes to work with as well.

“I’m just appreciative of the Philly fans, appreciative of the Philly organization, and both my coaches who really pushed me to become better every single day,” Maxey said. “When you have your coaches that really believe in you and your teammates that have your back every single night, you can’t ask for anything better than that.”

That work ethic and ultra competitiveness Maxey has become famous for is seen often in his rookie backcourt running mate too. VJ Edgecombe had high praise for the record-breaker, but was able to use it to motivate himself as well.

“The record is going to be harder to break now, I’m gonna try, hopefully I can get to it,” Edgecombe half-joked, “but credit to Tyrese, man. He means a lot to me. Obviously, because of who he is as a person and who he is as a player.”

Three-point records are of course a tricky thing because of how the game has changed, but this achievement is a good mark of just how much work The Franchise has put in.