Keys to the Palace: Just another great performance as usual for the Wizards!

The Wizards won all of their games last week, whether it was the Knicks, Lakers, or Pelicans. Sure, these teams weren’t exactly championship contenders. But the bottom line is that the Wizards are on a roll. They’ve won seven in a row, and face the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight!

It feels good to be a fan. That makes me want to play this song on repeat:

Let’s hand out some hardware for last week’s performances.

Keys to the Palace

All the Wizards starters averaged double figures in scoring. They also all earned a key!

• John Wall averaged 24 points, 12.3 assists, and 2.7 steals per game last week. His best performance was his 33 point, 11 assist performance against the Lakers last Thursday.
• Bradley Beal averaged 21 points and 3.7 assists a game. He shot 55.3 percent from the field last week, with his best performance coming last Tuesday against the Knicks when he scored 28 points on 12 of 18 shooting.
• Otto Porter didn’t have the uber-efficient scoring performances we’re used to. But he still scored in double figures every game and grabbed six rebounds or more each game.
• Markieff Morris continued his scoring and rebounding binge as he averaged 18 points and 8.3 rebounds. His best performance was against the Knicks where he scored 24 points on 9 of 14 shooting.
• Marcin Gortat’s best performance was a 21 points, 14 rebound, 3 assist effort against the Lakers last Thursday. The Polish Heritage Night game was a very close second though.

Guest Passes

The bench players who saw significant time all earned guest passes. They performed well, but no one had a super breakthrough performance that would earn them a key:

• Kelly Oubre has emerged as Washington’s sixth man as he played about 24 minutes a game last week. He did score 14 points against the Knicks last Tuesday, was much quieter against the Lakers on Thursday. The main thing I’m looking from Oubre is to be a consistent scorer while improving his defensive form.
• Jason Smith showed the most consistency among the bench players on the rebounding end (5 boards each game). I was quite pleased with his 4 of 4 shooting performance on Saturday agains the Pelicans.
• Trey Burke didn’t have a great week shooting the ball (33 percent overall, but he has at least been contributing as an assister when he was on the floor.
• Tomas Satoransky also was a consistent performer, but he’s often too hesistant to shoot the ball.

Not enough time for an evaluation

Andrew Nicholson, Daniel Ochefu, and Sheldon McClellan played a couple minutes in the Knicks game, but otherwise had courtside seats to the remaining contests. Marcus Thornton on the other hand hasn’t played in over a month.

Out due to injury

Ian Mahinmi is still out due to knee injuries, but he’s closer to coming back than not. And Danuel House is still out due to a wrist injury, but he’s been in shootarounds lately.