Beat the Losing Teams, and the Playoffs Will Be a Lock

Wizards' Gilbert Arenas (28 points) drives to the basket against the Nuggets' Earl Boykins (13 points, 8 assists). (Jonathan Newton -- The Washington Post)

The Wizards don't have to beat the Nuggets to stay on track for a playoff season. Don't get me wrong, Washington could have and probably should have beaten Denver at MCI Center last night. If the Wizards had played a lick of defense in the first half, they would have won their fifth straight game and remained atop the Eastern Conference. And if the Wizards are to keep evolving, they'll be angry they lost to the Nuggets on a night when their best player, Carmelo Anthony, was very good, but at least mortal. Still, the Wizards don't have to beat Western Conference playoff teams to build on their great start and be a better than .500 team this season.

All they have to do, for now anyway, is exactly what they've done, which is beat the Bulls, Nets, Hawks and Raptors -- and teams of their ilk -- over and over and over. After last night's 111-105 loss the Wizards are 1-5 against teams with winning records and it shouldn't deter them a bit. They don't need to beat the Spurs and Timberwolves. Not yet. Have you seen how many lousy teams there are in the NBA, with most of them residing east of the Mississippi River? All the Wizards need to do is beat two of them at home this week -- the Knicks on Friday and Hornets on Sunday -- to improve to 12-6.

"When I came into the locker room," Antawn Jamison said afterward, "I could hear guys saying, 'Dog, we cannot go backward. We just cannot do that.' And I could feel the sense of urgency. I can tell you this. We will come in here tomorrow and we will go to work."

Probably, the Wizards will go to work first and foremost on playing better defense. They've got firepower and plenty of it, offensively. On a night when they didn't pass the ball very well and had stretches of poor shot selection, they still managed to shoot 47 percent and get four players in double figures. Jamison had 27, Gilbert Arenas had 28. Jarvis Hayes and Larry Hughes didn't have big scoring nights against Denver, but each can score 20 in his sleep.

But the problem often with teams chock full of scorers is playing good defense. If the Wizards are going to contend in the Eastern Conference they'll have to do better than letting a visiting team make 49.5 percent of its shots. They can't let Andre Miller go for 34 points. They can't let teams outscore them 58-40 in the lane and 28-17 on fast breaks.

"We just didn't play defense," Jamison said. "Pick and rolls -- we didn't show. Transition -- we didn't get back. Backdoor cuts. We had lots of holes, lots of breakdowns. Defensively is where we hurt ourselves. Too many breakdowns at crucial points of the game."

There's no arguing with Jamison's diagnosis. Every time the Wizards shot their way back to within four, they couldn't come up with a defensive play to stop Denver. The better the opponent, the better defense the Wizards are going to have to play. And for a change, they're capable, at least on the perimeter, where Hughes is leading the league in steals and Arenas can trouble other point guards. Most nights, playing in the East, they're not going to play a team as good as Denver, either. The Nuggets have won 10 of their last 13 games. Anthony has started cookin'. They were a playoff team last season and added Kenyon Martin. Nene, all 6 feet 11, 260 pounds of him, comes off the bench, and he's more physically talented and imposing than anybody the Wizards have on the roster.

But Denver, remember, plays in the West. The Wizards don't have to beat the teams in the West. Coach Eddie Jordan and GM Ernie Grunfeld certainly don't want their players reading that sentence, but it's true. Of the 30 games the Wizards play against Western Conference teams, they could go 8-22 and still win 45 games. I've only got the Wizards winning three Western Conference road games all season -- at Memphis (already done), at Golden State on the upcoming road trip (time for Jamison, Hughes and Arenas to show how they've grown) and at sorry, no-account New Orleans.

But that doesn't alter my thinking that the Wizards can do better than .500. They play 11 games against expansion Charlotte, pathetic Atlanta and pitiful Chicago. You win 10 of those and you're nearly one-quarter of the way to your necessary victory total to reach the playoffs. And the Wizards are clearly better than the Knicks, Bucks and Celtics -- perhaps even the struggling 76ers. There's lunch money to be taken, bro.

"If we can win Friday and Sunday," Jordan said, "going 3-1 at home before we go out west is not a bad thing for us."

The first 16 games have been a good thing for the Wizards, because they're 10-6, because Jamison has emerged as dependable on the court and in the locker room, because Brendan Haywood can throw up a double-double more than occasionally, because the bench is deep, because Jared Jeffries embraces the notion of trying to take on big scorers defensively. "For a new group," Grunfeld said, "it's important to taste success early. We wanted to create a hard-working, team-oriented environment. But we still have a lot of work in front of us."

Something else could help this team, in the short-term while trying to bounce back to beat the Knicks here Friday, and in the long-term of trying to build a winning team. The knucklehead factor appears to be very, very low. Close to non-existent. Other people will tell you Arenas is one, but you won't read that here. Okay, he colors outside the lines a little. But on a team that is otherwise very serious and purposeful and vanilla, Arenas is the flavor. He's the guy who has to be settled down now and then, but who has the bravado to want to challenge any and everybody. He's a work in progress, but Arenas has the goods. And if and when he needs a little toning down, Jamison is there.

"He's a very efficient player and a very good leader. I'm not sure anybody knew he had the ability to step up and lead," Grunfeld said of Jamison.

Not many people had the Wizards playing this well and feeling this confidently about themselves either. The thought that they can keep it up more often than not doesn't seem at all preposterous.