The Wizards entered the All-Star break with a solid 117-103 win over the Brooklyn Nets. Washington was missing its top two players, Bradley Beal and the newly-acquired Kristaps Porzingis. Brooklyn was missing its top three, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the newly-acquired Ben Simmons.

It was a true team win for the Wizards. The only players who had subpar games were Daniel Gafford (in his return from Covid) and Kyle Kuzma.

For the first time all season, the Wizards have been getting solid play at PG since the trade deadline. Raul Neto may have rediscovered his three-point shot, and Ish Smith has transmogrified into Chris Paul since arriving from Charlotte.

Thomas Bryant was terrific in his 14 minutes. He hit 5-6 from the floor for 12 and offensive rating of 187, and the team defense was excellent when he was in the game.

Corey Kispert scored 16 points on 9 field goal attempts. He’s very much in the Wizards’ feast-or-famine tradition. There doesn’t seem to be much to his game aside from scoring. Last night, he made shots and was therefore helpful. In 33 minutes and 65 possessions, he managed just 1 rebound, 1 assist and 2 steals. The steals weren’t exactly stellar defense — on the first, Kispert gave up blow-by penetration to Jevon Carter, who made a bad pass back that went to Kispert. On the second, Seth Curry lost the ball driving to the basket and it bounced straight to Kispert.

Rui Hachimura scored 20 points in 27 minutes on 8-15 shooting, including 2-2 from three-point range. He joined Kispert on the All-One Dimension team — just 1 rebound and 1 assist (as well as 1 turnover and 1 foul).

Next up for the Wizards: trips to tropical islands for a few days of relaxation.

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 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.