The Wizards fell to 1-4 on the season with a disappointing 116-112 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Friday night.

If you didn’t stay up to watch this one, don’t worry, odds are you’ve seen this game a dozen times or so over the past few years. Washington got out to a sluggish start on the road against a lottery-bound team, they clicked for a few minutes to jump out to a bit of a lead in the second quarter, then they went flat in the third, and stumbled out of the gates in the fourth. Then, just for funsies, they mount a mini-comeback to spice things up in the final minute, but right when it looks like there’s a chance they can steal the victory, they fumble it away again.

All the typical B-plot stuff was there as well. Markieff Morris picked up a technical after finishing an alley-oop, which gave the Kings a free point in a game that went down to the wire. Nemanja Bjelica hit six threes. Otto Porter played under 22 minutes. Washington lost the rebounding battle by double-digits for the fifth time in five games.

The scenery and the characters might change, but we’ve seen the plot recycled plenty of times in recent years with no sign of it stopping any time soon.

Takeaways

Scott Brooks and Otto Porter aren’t on the same page

Porter failed to reach the 30-minute mark for the third time in five games this season. He barely got past the 20-minute mark in this one, and only played 9:36 in the second half, even as Washington struggled to find a rhythm most of the night. Clearly, Brooks just isn’t willing to trust Porter as much as he has in previous seasons.

Still, it has to be said Porter isn’t doing much to help his case for playing time right now. He has more turnovers than assists on the season and he’s only 5-of-21 from deep. It’s probably just a blip, but it’s not a good blip.

Whatever the problem is, they need to crack it soon because they can’t afford to have one of their max players playing fewer minutes than Jeff Green while healthy.

Kelly Oubre is still humming along

Playing on the West Coast has done wonders for the funk Oubre was in to start the season. He racked up 22 points on 8-of-13 shooting and 5-of-8 from deep. He hit the glass, avoided turnovers, and threw in a long bomb at the end of the third quarter for good measure:

The Wizards set a franchise-record for threes attempted in a game with 42

yay

Next up: The Wizards take on the Clippers at 9:30 pm on Sunday.