Washington picked up their second straight win — a 109-99 win over the Suns on Thursday night — on the back of another spectacular performance from Bradley Beal. Although he didn’t need to log 43 minutes and get up 37 shots like he did Tuesday in Portland, he still did plenty to get the job done.

After the Suns jumped out to an early 24-12 lead in the first quarter, Beal led a meticulous charge to get Washington back in the game before the end of the quarter and helped them keep Phoenix at arm’s length the rest of the way. He finished with 34 points on 13 of 22 shooting.

Much like Tuesday’s game, Beal didn’t get much help from the rest of the starting unit. Otto Porter, Marcin Gortat, and Tim Frazier combined for just 15 points. However, Markieff Morris had a good showing against his former team, scoring 21 points on 12 shots and adding 6 rebounds and a pair of steals for good measure.

Takeaways

Bradley Beal is still in the zone

Beal didn’t have a lot of success shooting from deep, but he made up for it by completely dominating inside the arc. Even though the Suns’ defense was honed in on him throughout the night, he was still able to get to the rim with ease, and even on the few occasions he didn’t he was able to get the tough shots to fall:

Over the past two games, he’s scored 85 points on 34 of 59 shooting (56.7 percent) while only committing two turnovers. He’ll get another chance to pad his numbers on Saturday against the Clippers, who currently rank 27th defensively.

Mike Scott is caught in a tricky place

After going through a bit of a rough patch to after Thanksgiving, he’s been great the past two games. He was perfect from the field against Portland and a big part of why the bench had so much success there. He stayed perfect tonight, going 3 of 3 from the field and adding a couple nice assists to boot.

You could make a case Scott has been the team’s seventh-best player this season, behind the starters and Kelly Oubre. Problem is, he’s still clearly the team’s third-best power forward behind Otto Porter and Markieff Morris, which makes it hard to see him playing a meaningful role once the playoffs start and rotations tighten up.

It will be interesting to see how that factors into whatever decisions the team makes at the trade deadline. You don’t want to make a move just for the sake of making a move, but it might be good to find a way to spread their depth around, instead of keeping it all tied up at the 4 spot.

Game Notes

• It was an uneven night for Kelly Oubre. He had some nice moments scoring and rebounding the ball, but got caught on the wrong end of some foul calls that kept him from having the kind of impact he’d like.
• Marcin Gortat passed Jeff Ruland for 9th-most rebounds in franchise history. Next up on the list: Juwan Howard, who he should catch later this season.
• Since Otto Porter’s big night in Minnesota last week, he’s averaging just nine points per game over the last five contests while shooting 33.9 percent from the field and 3 of 12 from deep. Those blistering hot shooting numbers he was posting at the start of the season couldn’t last forever.

Next up: The Wizards are back in action Saturday afternoon as they head to Los Angeles to take on the Clippers at 3:30 p.m. ET.