The Washington Wizards’ playoff fate this season won’t be decided in the next few weeks… but it will be shaped.
Entering play on Monday morning, the Wizards sit in 12th place in the Eastern Conference. In terms of a games-back differential, the Wizards aren’t that far out of a playoff spot. At 11-14, they’re only two games out in the loss column. They do have time.
What matters in terms of the schedule, though, is that Washington won’t be able to avoid the many teams which stand in front of the Wizards in the East. Minimal game differentials offer some relief to coach Randy Wittman’s team, but having to climb past so many other ballclubs could become an obstacle… IF the Wizards don’t do something about it.
Starting in a week, they’ll have to… if they want to make their season easier.
*
Next week, the Wizards welcome back Paul Pierce to the Verizon Center when the Los Angeles Clippers make their one visit to the District of Columbia this season. That game will get some press, but it won’t be a conference game. After Pierce leaves, then the season gets particularly serious for John Wall, who is trying to carry a team without Alan Anderson, Nene Hilario, Drew Gooden, and — most alarmingly — Brad Beal.
On Wednesday, Dec. 30, the Wizards go to Toronto to face the Raptors. Thus begins a stretch of seven straight games against teams ahead of Washington in the East standings, carrying through January 11. The absence of any cupcakes — or games against Western Conference teams, good or bad — turns that 13-day period into an important one for the Wizards.
Washington plays Philadelphia four times in the final 10 weeks of the season, three times after the All-Star break. The Wizards play Brooklyn twice in the final week of the season. Naturally, merely making the playoffs is the first goal for the various East teams bunched up in the 2 through 12 positions, but avoiding top-seeded Cleveland is just as urgent in terms of having any realistic aspirations of advancing in the playoffs. If Washington can get through that seven-game stretch in good shape, such that it can enter late February at an even point in the standings relative to other competitors for the seventh or higher playoff seeds, the Wizards should like their chances of getting into the postseason and avoiding LeBron in round one.
Getting there is the challenge, and this upcoming seven-game sequence is a first foundational gateway on the road to the playoffs… or early tee times next April.
The plot complication in all this is that Beal — the one injured member of the team who needs to come back in order for this team to compete at the highest level — could return at the very end of December if his injury rehab goes as well as it possibly can. However, if Beal’s progress isn’t rapid, he could return to the lineup in the middle of this seven-game stretch, or perhaps not until the very end. Such a variable is worrisome in and of itself; that it dangles over this seven-game period throws Washington’s season into even more uncertainty.
*
Washington will need John Wall and Otto Porter and Marcin Gortat to be at their best, but injuries have clearly taken a toll on the Wizards’ season. Washington isn’t yet in what one could call a desperate situation, but the time is coming when the Wizards will have to confront the fact that 11 teams stand in front of them in the Eastern Conference.
