Reversing Run of Collapses Gives Wizards a Morale Boost Heading West

A home win over the New York Knicks wasn't going to cure everything that ails the Washington Wizards, nor was it going to lead Wizards fans to start dreaming of a playoff run, but Friday's 96-89 come-from-behind victory was therapeutic nonetheless.

It snapped a six-game losing streak for the Wizards (8-31) and gave the team a boost heading into a challenging four-game road trip that begins tomorrow afternoon at Golden State.

The locker room emptied out quickly Friday night, but for once, it wasn't because players were frustrated over another loss. Instead, they were eager to head out and take advantage of a rare day off.

Interim coach Ed Tapscott had originally scheduled a practice for yesterday morning but opted to give his team, which had played five games in eight days, a day to rest up and/or enjoy some of the inauguration-week festivities before hopping a flight to the Bay Area after practice.

The trip also includes games at Sacramento, at the Los Angeles Lakers and at Portland.

"The schedule has been pretty busy and it's going to stay that way even after the trip because we play right away when we get back and then go right back on the road, so whenever you can give them a day off, it helps," Tapscott said after Friday's win. "I always use the old coaching adage: When you win you reward, when you lose you teach. I am so happy not to be teaching" yesterday.

The truly impressive aspect of Friday's outcome was not so much that the Wizards won for the first time since beating Cleveland on Jan. 4, but that they did it by executing down the stretch. With only a handful of exceptions, it has been the Wizards who have blown late leads or allowed winnable games to slip away in the fourth quarter this season.

The team was 4-19 in games decided by 10 points or less entering Friday's game and had lost 15 games when it had either held a lead or been tied in the fourth quarter.

On Friday night, Tapscott's team flipped the script by erasing a six-point deficit with 4 minutes 35 seconds to play with a 15-2 game-ending run. An announced Verizon Center crowd of 17,526 was so stunned by the unexpected result, it celebrated as if the Wizards had won a playoff game, or earned a rare win over the LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

Wizards players felt the same way.

"All season it feels like we've been losing games like this," said second-year guard Nick Young, who came up big down the stretch with a blocked shot and a 22-foot jumper that gave Washington a one-point lead with 1:42 to play. "It feels good to be turn it around and pull one of these out. I think this can give us a little boost going into the trip."

For once, a Wizards opponent was left feeling ill over a late-game breakdown.

"I feel like somebody hit me in the stomach," Knicks Coach Mike D'Antoni told reporters.

The outcome was especially tasty for veterans such as Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, who are once again putting up all-star numbers but stand little chance of appearing in the Feb. 15 game because of the team's poor record.

Even with Friday's win, the Wizards are still on pace to post one of the worst records in franchise history and appear to be headed directly for the draft lottery for the first time since 2003-04. Also, the win kept the Wizards out of the league's basement. Oklahoma City earned its eighth win with a 89-79 home victory over Detroit on Friday night.

Tapscott relied heavily on veterans such as Jamison, Butler, Darius Songaila and Mike James down the stretch Friday night and it paid off as they made a series of plays to turn the game around.

"We got some stops, got some rebounds and we hit some big shots," said Jamison, who was as down as he's ever been as a Wizard following Wednesday's loss to the Knicks in New York. "I still don't think we're executing to our satisfaction and we still have to improve on that but, we made some plays to pull out a win. That is something we haven't been able to do for awhile. Hopefully, we can build on this and carry it over into the games we have coming up."