Missing All-Star guard Bradley Beal for a second night, the Wizards lost to the Atlanta Hawks again despite another outstanding performance from Russell Westbrook.

In their last matchup with Atlanta, the Wizards fell behind by as much as 19 before rallying to lose by one. Last night, they held a 13-point lead in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t hang on for the win.

The Hawks didn’t take the lead in the second half until John Collins hit a wide-open three with 24.8 seconds on the clock.

For the Wizards, Westbrook was excellent — 34 points, 5 rebounds, 15 assists, 3 steals. His overall shooting performance wasn’t great (12-28 from the floor) but he hit 4 threes, went 6-8 from the free throw line and committed 4 turnovers. His offensive rating (points produced per individual possession x 100) was 110, which was exactly the Wizards average for the game.

Daniel Gafford had one of his high-octane explosion games — 16 points on 8-11 shooting with 4 rebounds, an assist and a steal in 17 minutes.

Alex Len was solid, grabbing 10 rebounds in 24 minutes and making some good defensive plays.

After that, the quality of production fell. Rui Hachimura (11 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists in 30 minutes), and Davis Bertans (14 points, including 4 threes, and a couple steals) were okay.

With the win, the Hawks clinched a spot in the playoffs for the first time since 2017. The Wizards will have to wait at least one more game to lock in their spot in the play-in. That should be doable — I have them with a 75% chance of beating the Cleveland Cavaliers Friday night, and a 56% chance of beating the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday.

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.

PACE is possessions per 48 minutes.

Scoreboard Impact Rating

Below are Scoreboard Impact Rating (SIR) results from last night’s game. It’s based on my PPA metric, but it shows each player’s TOTAL contribution for the game in terms of points on the scoreboard. This may make more sense for a single game — PPA is a per possession metric, which probably makes more sense over a larger sample size.

Since SIR is based on the PPA metric, it credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, play-making, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls). The scale is points.

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 this season is 112.3.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.

ORTG and USG were created by 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.