Let’s get nerdy. The Washington Wizards are 5-22 (how did they get five?).
As has been my practice, I track the team’s performance game by game to get a sense for emerging trends and things worth monitoring.
These are big picture items — offensive and defensive ratings (points scored and allowed per 100 possessions) and pace. For readers who don’t speak nerd, offensive and defensive rating are comprehensive measures of efficiency. It answers the question of how often your team scores when they have the ball and how often the other team scores when they have it.
Pace is a measure of how many possessions per 48 minutes teams get.
Below is a chart showing the Wizards rolling average offensive and defensive ratings, and their pace.
A few things pop for me.
- The team’s pace has been steadily dropping.
- The team’s offensive rating has been trending up.
- Their defensive rating has been basically flat — maybe some slender improvement over the past 3-4 games.
In other words, they’re slowing down, improving on offense and remaining about the same on defense. Don’t get too excited — the offense has still been below average and their defense has been atrocious. They could end up as the worst defensive team ever, relative to league average.
I wrote a couple weeks ago that I thought the Wizards might benefit by reducing their emphasis on playing fast. They’ve been doing just that, and their offense has gotten a little better. Slowing down may not have caused that offensive improvement, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Despite two wins in their last four games (I know, for some franchises that’s a bad week), and trimming their strength of schedule adjusted scoring margin, the Wizards are flirting with history. Their -12.7 adjusted scoring margin is the third worst mark in NBA history, more than a half point per per game worse than the fourth worst team. Which is the 2024-25 Washington Wizards.
Consecutive seasons with scoring margins worse than -12 make the Wizards strong contenders for the worst two-year run in NBA history. The Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets of 2011 through 2013 are the clubhouse leaders at -11.3.
Squeaking past Charlotte to avoid the ignominy is implausible. They would need to reduce this season’s scoring margin to -10.26. What would it take? An abrupt improvement from their current -12.7 to -9.1 over their final 55 games. That would mean playing better by 3.6 points per game — an exceedingly unlikely change in performance.
So, enjoy the better offense, hope for signs of life on defense, and keep in mind that we might be watching the Wizards make history.
