Denver at Washington
Time: 6 pm CT (NBA TV)
Spread: WAS -2.5
Total: 218
Odds c/o 5dimes
WASHINGTON WIZARDS NEWS & NOTES
The Wizards have four of its last 10 and are currently 40-31, but there is not much intrigue or mystery behind this team. It is still a team highly dependent on its backcourt of John Wall and Bradley Beal, and a team still bereft of depth on the bench, for the most part.
Wall and Beal really have done all that could be asked of a backcourt. Beal leads the team in scoring at 23.6 points per game and Wall is good for nearly 20 a night, in addition to his 9.2 assists, but Otto Porter is still falling short of expectations and sophomore Kelly Oubre Jr. is not radically improved from his rookie season a year ago.
The Wizards ultimately need to add another superstar to take any sort of monumental jump toward contention, and it may be that the team is able to make a play at DeMarcus Cousins to reunite him with his former Kentucky teammate Wall.
Outside of that, there is no reason to expect this team to do much more than be a “pretender” with the glaring holes in its roster, and the overwhelming mediocrity at 3 of the 5 positions on the court.
Former Orlando Magic player Marcin Gortat is a good center, and one of the best in the pick and roll, but Markieff Morris is an erratic head case and the Wiz’ bench is overall just poor. Another former Magic player, Jason Smith, has returned to earth some two years after his breakout season in Orlando, which now can be totally labeled a fluke, as he led the league in mid-range shooting that year.?The Wizards are still the Wizards, to be terse and dismissive of the team, once again.
NUGGETS NEWS AND NOTES:
The Denver Nuggets have won five of its last 10 games but are just 12-23 on the road this season. Denver ultimately will face a team with that homeport disadvantage, in the first round, so that does not bode well if the Nuggets cannot find a way to win away from the Pepsi Center in Denver (where it has gone 27-10, conversely).
Denver is a team that many have suggested need a point guard, but the Nuggets rank No. 6 in offensive rating in the NBA, and they get it done through the sharp (and sometimes wizardly) passing of center Nikola Jokic. Jokic leads the Nuggets in assists per game with 5.5, which ultimately reduces the playmaking load of Denver’s bevy of shooting guards. The team really has no true point guard on its roster, though
The Nuggets as a team post 24.1 assists per game with 14.7 turnovers per night, so to criticize the team’s success on the base of its offense would be incorrect.?Defensively is where the Nuggets need the most improvement.
Denver ranks just No. 21 in defensive rating and Jokic is part of the issue there, strangely. While the center is a demon with the ball in his hands, he is slowly rotating and the Nuggets seem to prefer to almost never use Kenneth Faried, who is a defensive game changer at times. Denver has some tradeable pieces, and Mason?Plumlee leaves plenty to be desired defensively, too.
Even so, the Nuggets are a high scoring team that can play with the league’s dominant teams and steal occasional wins, it is just probably in need of a better secondary playmaker to play with Jokic—and also probably a defensive forward who can “quarterback” its defense to call it switches and better the defensive communication.
