Wizards close the year with another loss, fall to 0-5

Instead, they kicked off New Year’s Eve with another defenseless, head-scratching loss, this one by a 133-130 margin. The Wizards will start 2021 still looking for their first win of the season.

Despite 48 minutes of shaky defense, the lasting image of this loss was Bradley Beal, driving to the basket with 14 seconds to play, his team trailing by one, only to lose control of the ball at the rim. Beal fell to his knees; the Bulls sprinted upcourt. Soon, the loss was sealed.

For the first time this season, Washington’s roster was fully healthy Thursday when forward Rui Hachimura made his early return after missing two weeks with pinkeye. The Bulls were missing starter Lauri Markkanen and a trio of bench players, all of whom were held out by the league to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.

But the Wizards failed to take advantage and fell 0-5. For all the myriad issues Washington has dealt with this season, Thursday’s fatal flaw wasn’t hard to pinpoint. Their defense did them in, with a little help from poor late-game execution.

Coach Scott Brooks and General Manager Tommy Sheppard said multiple times during the offseason that the team’s No. 1 priority was to get better on defense — improvement Brooks believed could happen within the group the Wizards already had.

But if strides have been made, they have been tough to discern, a problem never more evident than Thursday, when Washington scored 68 points in the first half and still trailed by three. The Bulls shot 54.3 percent from the field.

Beal had 28 points, including 12 makes at the free throw line. Starting center Thomas Bryant had 28 as well on a stellar offensive night, shooting 10-for-11 from the field.

Russell Westbrook logged yet another triple-double for naught, scoring 22 points with 11 assists and 10 rebounds.

None of it was enough to outpace their poor defense.

Otto Porter Jr. led the way for the Bulls with 28 points on 10-for-14 shooting, including 5-of-9 from three. Chicago surrendered its 11-point lead in the third quarter when Raul Neto made back-to-back three’s with just under five minutes to play, but Washington again couldn’t create any space and its defense wilted in the final stretch.

Beal’s miscue on a nice backdoor feed on the team’s penultimate possession was the most costly.

Down three with three seconds to go, Hachimura overthrew an inbounds pass three-quarters of the way down the floor, one final turnover.

The late-game flubs were fitting for a game Washington hadn’t had control of since the second quarter.

The Wizards started the night with the offensive issues from Tuesday’s game seemingly solved, but their defense was off from the get-to.

Washington gave up 71 points to the shorthanded Bulls before halftime, heading into the locker room trailing by three despite its own high-octane offense. Hachimura apparently needed no time to ease back into play and started things off with 10 points in the six minutes he saw in the first quarter (he had 15 in the first half), clearly helping spacing from the start.

Bryant shot 8-for-8 from the field for 22 points in the first half and Beal added his usual, tallying 14 points before halftime. The Wizards should have been encouraged — they got to the free throw line much more than they had been and shot 53.5 percent from the field.

But a slim first-quarter lead slipped away with four turnovers in four possessions to start the second quarter. It was separation Washington couldn’t afford with the team providing hardly any resistance for Chicago on defense.

Porter earned the start with Markkanen out and lit up Washington with a trio three-pointers in the first half, as did Coby White. From closer range, it was Daniel Gafford — who scored three points and played less than seven minutes in Tuesday’s matchup — doing damage, scoring 13 points.

The Bulls shot 58.3 percent from the field and 57.9 percent from three.