Painfully Predictable

By Michael Wilbon
Saturday, May 6, 2006

To give away one, as precious as playoff games are, is demoralizing. To give away three in one series is a sin. The Washington Wizards will spend the entire offseason -- probably years beyond that -- feeling like they were the better team in this series with the Cleveland Cavaliers. But they didn't prove it. The Wizards blew a 14-point lead at home in Game 3, a one-point lead in Cleveland in the final three seconds of Game 5 and, just for the sake of consistency, a 14-point lead in Game 6.

Damon Jones, who played all of 14.1 seconds, touched the ball only one time and put the Wizards out of their misery with a jump shot that erased yet another Washington lead. The final score last night was 114-113 Cleveland, just as Wednesday night's Game 5 final was 121-120 Cleveland.

"The basketball gods weren't with us in this series," Gilbert Arenas said afterward. "To lose three on game-winning shots . . ."

In the Wizards' case, they were game-losing, series-killing shots Cleveland hit. And you have to start with Arenas's pair of missed free throws with 15.1 seconds left that could have pushed the Wizards' lead to three, but instead left them only one point ahead and wide open for another Cavaliers game-winner.

It's very difficult to paint Arenas as the goat for missing the free throws because it was his 36-point performance that led the Wizards into position to win it, and since it was his remarkably bold and deep three-pointer with a few seconds left in regulation that sent the game into overtime. The 31-foot shot was such a stunner, LeBron James said it "felt like the Titanic . . . like the ship was almost sunk," even though the game was tied. "He shot it from the ESPN booth, from where Hubie Brown and those guys were sitting. It was an unbelievable shot."

But it didn't win the game. It didn't get the Wizards back to Cleveland for Game 7.

"Still," Arenas said afterward, "I missed 'em. . . . An 80 percent free throw shooter and you miss?"

After the first miss, James walked to the foul line, put his hand on Arenas's shoulder and said, "If you miss both of those free throws, the game is over."

"It was something I would have said," Arenas said with his usual candor.

And then the Wizards did what they've done all season: relinquish the lead once again. They gave it up despite the best intentions and a sincere effort. They double-teamed James, who had already beat them twice in the series, and "blitzed" Larry Hughes, to use James's word. Hughes shot a pass to Jones, the sunglass-wearing, three-finger flashin', self-proclaimed greatest shooter who ever lived, and he fired up the 19-footer for the lead with 4.8 seconds to play.

It was too fun a series to end like this, without a Game 7, without more drama and more trash-talking and more shot-making from James and Arenas.

Nothing in the Eastern Conference was more fun in this first round than Cavaliers vs. Wizards.

Take, for example, Arenas's three-pointer that tied the game and took it to overtime. During the preceding timeout, Arenas said he told his dear friend and former Wizards teammate Hughes, "I have one shot left in me." Hughes, who struggled through a 3-for-17 shooting night, shot back, "Well you'll have to pull it from the 'W,' " meaning the first letter of "Wizards" on the hardwood floor. And Arenas recalled saying to Hughes, "You know I'll do it."

And he did. Arenas took and made a shot he practices all the time, stunning everybody in the building except himself.

It would have made for a beautiful story, heading to Cleveland for Game 7. But he went and missed the two free throws and now heads into a summer of agonizing "what-ifs." Not that Arenas will be the only one carrying that around. It's not that the Wizards have anything to be embarrassed about or ashamed of; they were the No. 5 seed and lost an airtight playoff series on three dramatic plays to the No. 4 seed with a superstar in the making in James.

But asked which of the dramatic endings he most regrets, Arenas thought for several moments and decided on Game 5 two nights earlier in Cleveland. "I can't take 'em all back?" he asked. "Well, probably Game 5 . . . that was a hard one. We had 'em cornered . . . only a couple of players in the league can [dance] down the baseline and still squeeze their way into that [layup]."

Of course, the Wizards were confident they could play their way back to even back at home for Game 6. And they couldn't have played with any more passion or purpose to start the game. They made the additional pass to find better shots. They drove hard to the basket, jumped on loose balls and grabbed their own misses. They started offensive possessions by dumping the ball to 7-foot Brendan Haywood, who scored more than usual (17 points on 7-for-8 shooting) and in the process attracted extra defenders and opened up space for his teammates around the perimeter.

Very quickly, almost too easily, the lead grew from 4-2 to 13-4 to 24-10 on an Antonio Daniels three-pointer. Thing is, the Wizards get knocked off their stride much too easily, which is partially why they've lost so many games this season after having double-digit leads. This time, it appeared that three errant Jared Jeffries jump shots stopped the Wizards' considerable momentum. First, he shot an air ball on a three-point attempt, and that was followed by two regrettable hook shots that clanged off the iron. Predictably, the Wizards' lead shrunk to 24-17 by the end of the first quarter, then to 28-24. Before the second quarter was four minutes old, Cleveland had tied the score at 30 on Flip Murray's layup off an inbounds pass.

And the pattern of the game was established then. The Wizards would nudge ahead, only to be caught by the Cavaliers. James got a huge helping hand from reserves Donyell Marshall and Murray. For the Wizards, Caron Butler grabbed 20 rebounds.

The Wizards, as was the case in Game 2 in Cleveland, really made James work for his points. But the Wizards also committed 13 turnovers in the first three quarters, which helped Cleveland to a dozen points. For every advantage you could find for Washington, there was another advantage for Cleveland.

There were 24 lead changes through three quarters, and the game was tied 15 times.

The Wizards found themselves with an eight-point lead that should have been 10 in the fourth quarter. But it's always "should have" with the Wizards. Antawn Jamison missed a flying layup, and instead of reaching double digits, the lead was down to three after five quick points from Marshall.

And you couldn't escape the inevitable, that the lead wasn't big enough for the Wizards, that while they were even more desperate than Cleveland they didn't have that intangible thing that a club might feel is granted by the basketball gods. The Wizards have a long time, more than five months, to figure out what it is and how to get hold of it.