Wizards say players-only meeting ended up hurting team

The Washington Wizards have been chugging along slightly above mediocrity all season, and apparently the team felt a players-only meeting was in order. It didn't go well, according to John Wall and Bradley Beal.

"We had our team meeting," Wall said, as reported by the Washington Post's Candace Buckner. "A couple guys took it the negative way and it hurt our team. Instead of taking it in a positive way like we did in the past and using it to build our team up, it kind of set us back a little bit."

Wall didn't say when the meeting occurred, but brought it up in relation to a question about the Wizards' lack of consistency. Beal added the meeting solved nothing.

"Honestly, it was probably ... I won't say pointless," Beal said. "But we didn't accomplish what we needed to accomplish in that meeting."

The players-only meeting is often a touchstone in sports for under-performing teams. While that describes the 26-20 Wizards - a team with two-star-caliber players in Wall and Beal - well, forward Jason Smith said the botched meeting didn't create a locker room crisis, and Washington's problems come down to playing hard consistently.

"I don't think it was the team meeting that kind of created any dysfunction," he said. "I just think that we had that trouble this year overall."