The Washington Wizards came into this season hoping to wash out the bitter taste of a disappointing 2015-16 campaign, but six games in, they only seem to have squirmed their way deeper into the quicksand.
A 114-106 defeat at the hands of the Houston Rockets on Monday night dropped the Wizards to 1-5, and had shooting guard Bradley Beal looking to diagnose his team's mystifying struggles.
"We did not expect it to be like this," Beal told reporters after the game, according to Candace Buckner of The Washington Post.
"We got to get our toughness back, our identity back. We're playing with no toughness, no swag. We got to pick each other up. We've got to get something going."
If there's a silver lining for the Wizards it's that they've been right there going into the fourth quarter of every game. But time after time, they've collapsed in crunch time, their offense growing harried and their defense coming apart at the seams. They took a 95-94 lead with six-and-a-half minutes remaining in regulation Monday, and then the Rockets went on a 12-0 run in the span of three minutes and the Wizards never threatened again.
The game ended on an ugly note, with a decidedly frustrated John Wall getting ejected for allegedly hurling vulgarities at an official.
"By this point everybody got to look themselves in the mirror and come back and go to the drawing board (to see) what we got to do to get wins and get stops," said Otto Porter.
"We don’t want to be 1-5 right now," said Beal, who, after the Wizards' 0-3 start, said he felt they should've been 3-0.
"Everybody's frustrated. Everybody's mad."
