A promising five-game win streak for Paul Pierce and the Washington Wizards came to an abrupt halt over the weekend, when they fell to the Los Angeles Clippers and Sacramento Kings, then dropped a third straight road contest to the NBA’s top team, the Golden State Warriors.

The hot-shooting Clippers made 52.3 percent of their shots and went 12-for-23 from beyond the arc en route to a 113-99 win on Friday night, then the Wizards couldn’t contain Rudy Gay, DeMarcus Cousins and the Kings and fell 109-86 on Sunday. Then on Monday, an ice cold third quarter, in which the Wiz scored just eight points, spelled the end in a 107-76 defeat in Oakland.

“It’s a terrible road trip,” The Truth lamented. “You lose three games in a row by an average of 20 points. There’s 11 games left, we got back home for a couple days and hopefully we can get back on our feet.”

Washington Wizards v Golden State Warriors

Disgusted by his team’s defensive performance over the weekend, Wizards head coach Randy Wittman refused to even answer questions about the offense.

“If we don’t come out with any more focus at the defensive end than we have the last two games, we don’t have a chance. That’s pretty much it, guys,” Wittman told reporters after Sunday night’s blowout. “You can ask me why that is, I don’t know. To have the effort we did in Utah from a defensive standpoint, then the last two—we just played the game. We were doing things from and Xs and Os standpoint that we’ve never even talked about doing from a defensive situation. And that’s just a lack of focus. It’s a lack of focus. And we can’t play that way, it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter who we play.”

The Wizards offense was completely out of sorts in both games, shooting just 72-for-173 from the field and 9-for-36 from three-point range through the weekend.

Washington Wizards v Los Angeles Clippers

Paul was not an exception, as his shots simply couldn’t find the basket in either game. He finished with 10 points, five rebounds, four assists and a block in 47 minutes against the Clips and Kings. On Sunday, he played just 17 minutes due to early foul trouble and a score that quickly became lopsided. He then played just 23 minutes in a one-sided game Monday night, scoring seven points along the way.

The Truth seemed to be ready to continue his recent hot streak on Friday when he drained a three for the first points of the game, but it was all downhill from there as he couldn’t buy a basket from there on out. The offense was stagnant for much of the game, and despite forcing 16 Clippers turnovers, the Wizards scored just nine fast break points.

Washington is at its best when point guard John Wall is pushing the pace and keeping defenses on their heels, yet that up-tempo game was nowhere to be found over the weekend. Without Wall pressing, the offense was forced into its halfcourt sets, which were ultimately ineffective with both The Truth and Wall struggling from the field.

Sharpshooting guard Bradley Beal had a dominant second quarter, scoring 13 of his 18 points on 4-for-5 shooting, but he went just 1-for-5 in the other three quarters. His exceptional performance was enough to bring the Wizards to within six midway through the second period, but he was the only one who could hit any shots and Los Angeles quickly pulled away again.

After that game, Beal tried to explain how the Wizards allowed the Clippers to double them up from beyond the arc, making 12 triples to Washington’s six.

“I wouldn’t say they surprised us, they just came out and were just shooting threes, and they were making threes,” he told reporters Friday night. “We knew that’s what they were going to do, We knew that they were all capable shooters and they knocked down shots. We didn’t run them off the line, we didn’t contest a lot of them, we gave them a lot of open ones that they probably shouldn’t have had.”

Two nights later didn’t go any better for Paul and the Wizards.

No. 34 picked up a foul in the first period, then two quick ones in the second, limiting him to less than 13 minutes of playing time in the first half. Just a few minutes into the second half, The Truth was whistled for his fourth foul and came out of the game with his team trailing by 14.

Washington Wizards v Sacramento Kings

That ballooned to 19 within seconds and hovered in that range for the remainder of the game, getting as high as 24 in the fourth quarter with Paul on the bench.

Again, Wittman and Co. kept using the word “focus,” saying game-planning wasn’t the problem but rather the execution wasn’t there.

“It’s just a lack of focus, man,” Beal said Sunday night. “We can say what it is all we want, but we have to do it. We’re just not doing it. We’re in the huddle talking about it, we know what we’re supposed to do, we just don’t do it. It’s a matter of taking action instead of just talking about it.”

“It definitely starts with defense, but we weren’t locked in, we weren’t communicating, we weren’t talking,” the young guard added. “On offense, we weren’t aggressive, we weren’t doing what we were supposed to do. We were just really careless and kind of just lackadaisical.”

The coach echoed his player’s sentiments.

“You’ve got to get focus back, whether you win the game or not, you’ve got to get playing the game the right way again.”

The next night started out much better for the Wizards while they faced the NBA’s best ballclub. An excellent first half saw D.C. down just 52-49 at the break.

Washington Wizards v Golden State Warriors

However, that poor third frame gave the Warriors a 29-8 jump that they didn’t need. Afterward, Paul talked about how that rough 12 minutes doomed his squad.

“We struggled a lot in the third quarter, I thought we didn’t move the ball from side to side,” The Truth, who contributed seven points and a pair of assists, told reporters after the game. “They’re a great offensive team, but they’re also a great defensive team. I thought our offense got a little stagnant, we turned the ball over, we probably played a little bit too much isolation, and they made a run. Their offense opened up, and I thought our lack of offense really discouraged our defense. And it can’t be like that. We’ve got to somehow find a way to defend all night, but we just didn’t execute well in the third quarter offensively.”

The Wizards didn’t make their first field goal in the second half until the 1:02 mark of the third period, and that was the only basket they made for a stretch of more than 15 minutes. Credit is due to the Warriors, who played exceptional defense and contested nearly every shot Washington took, but the Wizards fell victim to poor ball movement as well as a helping of bad luck.

The Wiz shot just 1-for-18 in the third stanza and turned it over five times, compared to the Warriors’ 9-for-20 with just two turnovers.

“We didn’t come out with the same energized people that we had in the first half,” head coach Randy Wittman explained to reporters after the game. “That leads to missing shots, turning the ball over, defensive lapses. It’s a troubling trend that we’ve had for the last 20, 25 games. We play one good half and just an exact opposite awful one half or the other, where we’ve scored 64 and then the next half scored 30. It’s just happened too much, and it begins to make you—are we committed to play a full game? That’s what I asked our guys, ‘Are we committed?’”

Washington Wizards v Golden State Warriors

Paul echoed his coach’s feelings that effort and commitment were the primary reasons for the loss, refusing to accept any excuses.

“I thought a lot of the time we had a good game plan, but we’ve got to stick with it,” he said. “A lot of times we deviated on our own instead of sticking with the game plan and what worked in the first half. So that’s something we’ve got to learn, especially if we want to go deep in the playoffs, we can’t make up our own thing. We have a game plan, we’ve got to stick to it.”

No. 34 also put some of the blame on himself for the loss. For just the third time this season, The Truth failed to grab a single rebound, something he said is unacceptable, but he said the whole team needs to work together to make sure it wins the rebounding battle.

Washington was outrebounded 62-38 in the game, including 20-11 in the first quarter, and the 62 rebounds was not only the most the Wizards have allowed in a game this season, but also a season-high for the Warriors. Golden State’s 19 offensive rebounds was also a season high in both regards.

“I think the guards have to do a better job rebounding in particular,” Paul said, including himself among the guards. “They spread you out, they keep about four guys behind the three and a lot of long rebounds happened that we didn’t chase down. We had to do a better job of that, to come from the guards tonight.”

NEXT UP

Paul and the Wizards return home after a 1-3 road trip having lost three games in a row while in California.

Washington is blessed with a five-game homestand to get things turned around, and a visit from the 30-40 Indiana Pacers could be exactly what the Wizards need to get their confidence back. The Wizards have won both times they’ve played the Pacers this season, which came in a three-day stretch in early November.

In the previous two matchups, No. 34 totaled 23 points, nine rebounds, five assists, a block and a steal.

The game is scheduled for a 7 p.m. ET tip on Wednesday night and can be seen locally on Comcast Sports Net.

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