When a depleted Wizards travel to New York to take on a depleted Knicks, you know it’s gonna be a barn burner.

So, both teams were missing key players due to Covid and injury. For the Wizards, Bradley Beal and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were in health and safety protocols, Rui Hachimura remains out, and Thomas Bryant is sidelined as he recovers from last season’s torn ACL. Absent from the Knicks lineup were Immanuel Quickley, Nerlens Noel, Miles McBride and Kevin Knox (health and safety protocols), and Derrick Rose, ankle surgery.

Kemba Walker reentered the Knicks rotation when Rose hurt his ankle. He’d been dropped because of poor defense. And while his defense was still crummy last night, he put on an offensive show that kept things close — 44 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists, 7 threes, zero turnovers.

The Wizards won behind stellar performances from Corey Kispert — 20 points on 7 field goal attempts — Spencer Dinwiddie — 21 points on 14 shots, 7 rebounds and 12 assists — Aaron Holiday (15-3-5 on 11 fga), and Montrezl Harrell — 15 points on 7 fga, 4 rebounds and 2 assists.

Missing Beal and KCP, the Wizards had an excellent offensive night (132 ortg) and were terrible on defense (124 drtg).

The Wizards got flat-out torched by Knicks guard Kemba Walker, who scored 44 points on 27 shots, and added 9 rebounds and 8 assists. Fortunately for the Wizards, Walker got little support from teammates.

Four Factors

Below are the four factors that decide who wins and loses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

I’ve simplified them a bit. While the factors are usually presented as percentages, that’s more useful over a full season. In a single game, the raw numbers in each category are easier to understand.

Key Stats

Below are a few performance metrics, including the Player Production Average (PPA) Game Score (very similar to the one I used to call Scoreboard Impact Rating). PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).

Game Score (GmSC) converts individual production into points on the scoreboard in this game. The scale is the same as points and reflects each player’s total contributions for the game. The lowest possible GmSC is zero.

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. But some readers prefer it so I’m including PPA scores as well. Reminder: in PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples producing weird results.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.

PTS = points scored

ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average last season was 112.3. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.

ORTG and USG are slightly modified versions of stats created by Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified slightly by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.