Washington Wizards: What are their postseason prospects?

The Washington Wizards and a potential playoff push

The NBA is back! Well, at least it soon (July 31) will be. The Washington Wizards will be one of the 22 teams that will be in action when the season resumes. Nine teams in the Eastern Conference and 13 in the Western Conference were selected to continue their season and try to compete for an NBA Championship.

In the case of the Wizards, those championship prospects are lower than most. They are in ninth place out of nine teams and have only an eight-game regular season to try to make up some ground on the eighth-place Orlando Magic.

The Wizards are currently 5.5 games back of the Magic and need to get to within four games to force a play-in series for the final playoff spot. Assuming that they can close that gap, they would have to beat Orlando twice and Orlando would only need to beat them once.

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The prospect of making up 1.5 games against a relatively mediocre Magic team is certainly doable but far from a given. Magic forwards Jonathan Isaac and Al-Farouq Aminu, both out with injuries when play was suspended, seem unlikely to return. Unfortunately, for the Wizards, star point guard John Wall is also not expected to play.

This means both rosters should look exactly the same as they did prior to the quarantine. In their last 10 games, the Magic had gone 6-4 and the Wizards were 4-6. We have no way of knowing what level each team will be at when they return but their pre-pandemic form at least highlights that this won’t be an easy road for the Wizards.

They are also only six games back of the Brooklyn Nets who will be without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant for the remainder of the season. Brooklyn had gone 5-5 in their last 10 games and might actually be more vulnerable than the Magic. However, that extra half-game makes it even tougher for the Wizards to gain ground on them.

Is this playoff push actually realistic for Washington Wizards?

The NBA has stated that they intend to use a team’s original remaining schedule to help determine their new revised eight-game schedule. Unfortunately, for the Wizards, they were supposed to have one of the toughest remaining schedules of the teams that made it into the 22-team field.

If their new slate of games includes their matchups against playoff-caliber teams then they will be facing quite an uphill battle. They could potentially have to play the Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Lakers, Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, and Philadelphia 76ers. Playing each of those teams could easily translate into five losses, which would likely eliminate them from contention for the eighth spot.

Let’s say the Wizards do close the gap and force a play-in series for the final playoff spot. This new playoff format essentially grants a 1-0 lead to the incumbent. Even on a neutral floor, it’s no easy feat to have to beat the same team twice in a row. Considering that the Wizards were winless against the Magic in four games this season, I wouldn’t bank on them being able to suddenly sweep Orlando with everything on the line.

Should the Washington Wizards want to make the playoffs?

John Wall is not likely to play again this year regardless of circumstances. If they don’t make the playoffs, the Wizards would have a lottery pick to look forward to. Ending up in the playoffs would knock them out of the NBA Draft lottery. Adding both Wall and a top-10 pick next year would drastically increase the team’s chances for playoff success next year.

Is driving Bradley Beal into the ground over a few weeks just to try for a long-shot playoff bid really worth it? Especially when you consider their first-round opponent would be the Milwaukee Bucks. Milwaukee has already beaten them twice this year and one of those games was a blowout win for the Bucks without Giannis Antetokounmpo in the lineup.

The benefit of making the playoffs would just be to get their younger players some postseason experience in hopes of preparing them for a deeper run next season. But once again, everything comes back to next season for the Washington Wizards. It may be more valuable for the team to give heavy minutes to younger players like Jerome Robinson and Admiral Schofield to better gauge how likely these players are to contribute next season.

Davis Bertans and Shabazz Napier are both impending free agents that the Wizards will have to make financial decisions on. Heavily featuring those players is likely to help their playoff prospects and give the team additional data points to help drive free agency decisions. Based on that, I would expect to see Bertans and Napier on the court a lot.

The most likely scenario is for Scott Brooks to play his key players a lot of minutes early on to see if they can string a few wins together. If the team loses games despite their best efforts they could throw in the metaphorical towel and allow the younger players to take over. Beal has already indicated that he is looking to shut it down for the year if the playoffs are no longer attainable.