TORONTO,CANADA (WUSA) — The Washington Wizards will be heading to Toronto to face the Raptors in a pivotal Game 5 of the best of seven series.
With each team doing what they were suppose to do by taking care of business on their respective home courts, the series has now shifted into a best of three games and Washington carries all of the momentum heading north of the border.
Lead by their two All-Stars, John Wall and Bradley Beal, the Wizards were able to tie the series up with a critical Game 4 win.
It wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t pretty, but the Wizards showed the resolve of a team that has been here before.
When Bradley Beal fouled out of the game with just under five minutes left, the victory seemed to be fleeting, but John Wall scored 10 of his 27 points during that stretch to allow Washington to pull away from the Raptors.
Wall did a lot more than score in that game, he also distributed 14 assists in that game, a number of them going to Marcin Gortat.
A lot was made about the relationship between Marcin Gortat and John Wall back in February when the Wizards were in the midst of a 10-3 stretch without their starting point guard and Gortat lit Wizards twitter ablaze with a spicy tweet emphasizing a great “team” win, insinuating that the style of play was more conducive to winning basketball.
This prompted Wall to go on SportsCenter and defend his honor by saying he was surprised that Gortat would say that given the fact that “he gets the most spoon fed buckets from me.”
Well they say winning cures all because after the Game 4 victory Gortat told a group of reporters “He’s spoon feeding me and I’m getting fat now.”
The Polish Hammer is indeed eating as he averaged 14 points per game in the two home games versus only averaging five points per game on the road in the first two games.
The Wizards will need a strong contribution from Marcin Gortat in Game 5 if they want to pull the upset against the Raptors.
Another Wizards ancillary player who will need to step up will be Markieff Morris who has done a good job of setting the tone for the team emotionally and started the wave of “bully ball” in Game 3 against the Raptors that saw the Wizards players being more physical and taking the fight to the Raptors instead of waiting to be hit first.
Morris will be matched up with Serge Ibaka once again and will do his best to limit Serges shot attempts by staying close to him throughout the game and not allowing him the space to operate freely.
