Bradley Beal dropped 33 points to lead the Washington Wizards to a 112-110 victory over the Denver Nuggets in the “Mile High City.”
Facundo Campazzo missed a rushed 3-pointer at the buzzer, as Jamal Murray passed up a good look at a three to find him in the right-wing for the game-winning attempt.
“I just should have shot it,” Murray said. “It’s a 4-on-1. We’ve got to score.”
A key stop in the game came roughly 10 seconds into the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, as Robin Lopez was able to contest Nikola Jokic‘s floater attempt just enough to force a miss despite “The Joker” having a step on him on the drive to the rim.
That proved to be a pivotal stop because the Wizards failed to put any more points on the board, as a Michael Porter Jr. dunk with 1:15 left in the game opened the door for the Nuggets to steal the win. Fortunately for the Wizards, the Nuggets failed to execute within the final minute.
For the game, Lopez once again stepped up defensively against the MVP candidate, as Jokic was only able to convert 2-of-6 of his shot attempts while being contested by the Stanford product. Lopez guarded Jokic for a little bit more than five minutes in this one.
The Wizards have won six out of their last seven games, as they have beaten the likes of the Boston Celtics, Portland Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Lakers and of course, the Nuggets twice in a two-week span.
“I’m happy as hell, I can tell you that,” Beal said.
A huge part of the reason why the Wizards have had much more success in the last couple of weeks has been that they’ve made dramatic improvements on the defensive end. Washington on the season is ranked as one of the worst teams in defensive rating in the league, but dating back to Valentine’s Day, when the Wizards got their first win of this current stretch of success, they’ve ranked 12th in the league in that very same metric.
“We take pride in realizing that we were one of the last (teams) in defense early on in the year, and that was horrible,” Beal told FortyEightMinutes and other media members after the game. “We knew we were better than that. We’re locked into guys. We’re locked into personnel. We’re locked into our game plan and how we wanna guard guys.”
“Everybody knows when they come into the game, they’re supposed to defend and play hard and let the rest of the game take care of itself and let the chips fall where they may.”
The Wizards got great contributions all around in this one, as Russell Westbrook posted yet another triple-double with 16 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. Raul Neto chipped in with 15 points, four assists and five steals. Rui Hachimura added 20 points.
Jokic put up 24 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists for Denver. Murray had 36 points and six assists. Porter Jr. contributed 18 points and 10 rebounds.
