The San Antonio Spurs will look to shrug off consecutive one-point defeats and rediscover their winning ways when they square off on Monday against the host Washington Wizards.
The Spurs captured the first game of the season between the teams 139-130 at home on Nov. 13, but there have been plenty of changes since. Both squads welcomed new faces at the trading deadline, most notably De’Aaron Fox joining the Spurs and former defensive player of the year Marcus Smart now a member of the Wizards.
Washington remains at home for the third contest of a five-game homestand before the All-Star break but has dropped its past two contests, most recently a 125-111 setback to the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday.
Bub Carrington paced the Wizards with 23 points in Saturday’s loss while Jordan Poole added 21.
The Wizards have just nine wins on the season but three of those have been produced since Feb. 1. The loss Saturday – on the second game of a home back to back – was their second in a row after a season-best three-game winning streak.
Washington trailed by 23 early in the fourth quarter but trimmed its deficit to 112-104 on a Poole basket with 7:10 left but never got closer than seven points the rest of the way.
“We’re playing a lot more together,” Carrington said. “But that was gonna come. No one knew each other on the team. We’re just getting a lot more comfortable with each other and playing more together on both ends of the floor, defensively especially. We’ve had a lot of growth on that end.”
The Spurs head to the nation’s capital after a 112-111 loss at Orlando on Saturday. Devin Vassell led San Antonio with 25 points while Harrison Barnes scored 21, Victor Wembanyama added 16 points, nine rebounds and four blocks.
The newly acquired Fox had just nine points for the Spurs on 3-of-11 shooting in his third game with the team.
The Spurs led by seven points after a Fox free throw with 3:36 to play but was outscored 10-2 down the stretch. After the Magic went up by a point with 25.3 seconds left, San Antonio had a final possession but Wembanyama missed a 20-foot jumper with 2.2 seconds to play.
San Antonio has dropped three of its first four games on its six-game road trip. The loss to Orlando dropped the Spurs to a season-worst six games under .500.
“Crunch time execution is just something that we have to continue to improve upon because that’s how close the games are in the balance,” Spurs acting coach Mitch Johnson said. “Whether it was a free throw block out in the first half that didn’t feel like that had the attention or the last play, it’s a possession, right?”
Said Barnes: “It comes down to the details. It is little things like that. Obviously, you can always nitpick last possessions and over-analyze those but there are fundamental things that we are not doing that in game 50 we should be doing.”
–Field Level Media
