Keys to the Palace: Wall, Beal lead the way and Oubre continues to impress

The Wizards won three straight home games to claw their way back to a 12-14 record after last Sunday’s big win over the Los Angeles Clippers.

I know the Wizards lost on Monday to the Pacers, but in the interest of keeping the Keys consistent, I’m only considering the four games they played between December 12 and December 18. Let’s dish some virtual hardware!

Keys to the Palace

John Wall and Bradley Beal

Both Wall and Beal averaged a combined 54.3 points a game in the four games last week and shot at least 48 percent from the field. Beal’s biggest performance was on Sunday when he scored 41 points against the Clippers, while Wall dished 10 or more assists in each of Washington’s wins.

Kelly Oubre Jr., 9.3 ppg, 5.3 rpg

Oubre shot 43.5 percent from the field and played starter level minutes throughout the week. He could have shot better from three, but I’m glad to see that he has come into his own recently.

Guest Passes

Markieff Morris, 14.7 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 3.3 apg

Morris’ best performance was also on Sunday when he scored 15 points, grabbed 9 rebounds, and dished 3 assists. He did not play in the Charlotte game last Wednesday due to injury.

Marcin Gortat, 11 ppg, 11 rpg

Gortat remains a consistent rebounding and scoring force. He also grabbed double digit rebounds in every game except last Sunday. He isn’t the best low post defender in the world, but be thankful because Ian Mahinmi is still out.

Otto Porter, 10.8 ppg, 5.3 rpg

Porter’s numbers were a bit pedestrian, but he still was a positive force for the Wizards this past week when it’s all said and done.

Jason Smith, Trey Burke, Marcus Thornton

Last week, all three averaged 6.3 or more points each per game. They all shot 50 or more percent from the field. Hopefully, this is more of a trend than a collective positive blip on the radar.

Lockout

Andrew Nicholson, 1 ppg, 0 rpg

Nicholson played in all of the Wizards’ wins, yet shot 25 percent from the field and couldn’t grab a rebound in nearly 24 minutes of playing time. Sorry, you gotta be able to grab one rebound as a post player with that amount of time.

Not enough playing time

Tomas Satoransky and Daniel Ochefu only played two of the four games last week while averaging 6.7 or fewer minutes a game.

Get well soon

Ian Mahinmi and Danuel House, we miss you!