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Time to see how the Wizards respond when they're behind in Game 4

Happy Mother's Day, everyone! On Sundayr, we'll see if the Wizards can answer the bell when they are behind in a playoff series.

Rob Carr

I was glum after watching Friday's game against the Indiana Pacers. The Wizards weren't able to score consistently and made little effort to push the tempo, all things that played to Indiana's advantage. In addition, the John Wall and Bradley Beal backcourt, for the first time in a long while, "showed" their inexperience, which was frustrating. And for the Pacers, Roy Hibbert seems to have found his mojo back, having played his best two games in quite some time.

So far in the playoffs, the Wizards have never played while being down in a seven-game series. It's one thing to play when a team is ahead or tied, but it's another thing to play when they are behind in a series, 2-1. If they win Game 4, the series will be even once again, but if they lose, they will play in Indy down 3-1 on the road. Sure, the Wizards have played well on the road this season, but it will be really tough to beat the Pacers, or any other team when they are down by this much in a series.

On Sunday night, we are going to get an opportunity to see how they will respond to the bad performance they had this past Friday. After many deflating losses in the regular season, or after a player got injured, like Nene back in the regular season, it sometimes felt like the team was ready to pack it in.

Yet somehow, someway, the Wizards have persevered. But that was the regular season. Can they turn things around on this Mother's Day Sunday? To this point, the Wizards have played their best basketball late in the season. Sure, they had a bad game last Friday, but the team has improved as the season went on so I expect that they will answer the bell when being behind in this playoff series.

Hopefully, the Wizards will win this game so they can even up the series for Game 5 back in Indy. But if nothing else, at least winning tonight will guarantee that rescheduling Lady Gaga's concert wouldn't have been useless from hindsight.