Mavericks at Wizards
The Washington Wizards are battling for the No. 2 spot in the Eastern Conference and fell a half-game behind the Boston Celtics in that race with a rare loss on Monday. The Wizards will try to bounce back and earn their eighth win in 10 games when they host the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday.
Washington played back-to-back overtime games on Friday and Saturday and finally ran out of gas in the finale of a five-game road trip Monday with a 119-104 loss at the Minnesota Timberwolves. “I don’t make excuses but I’m not going to sit here and act like we’re not tired, we're not a little bit exhausted. We are," Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal told reporters. "But it is the league. We're not the only ones who go through it and play this many games in so many short nights. It is what it is. We take this loss like a man and we move on from it." The Mavericks are trying to climb into the No. 8 spot in the West but dropped their last two games, including a rough 100-78 setback at Toronto on Monday in the opener of a four-game trip. "It’s a lot tougher to play on the road," shooting guard Seth Curry told the team's website. "You have to play with a little more energy on the road, find ways to get to the free-throw line and things like that. We have to figure out how to get better. We play well at home, and we just have to transfer that to the road and get off to good starts."
TV: 7 p.m. ET, FSN Southwest (Dallas), CSN Mid-Atlantic (Washington)
ABOUT THE MAVERICKS (28-38): Monday's setback dropped Dallas 3 1/2 games behind the eighth-place Denver Nuggets with 16 games to play and marked the team's second straight poor shooting performance. The Mavericks shot 36.5 percent from the field against the Raptors after shooting 37.8 percent in a 100-98 home loss to the Phoenix Suns on Saturday. Curry is just 3-of-16 from the field, including 1-of-7 from 3-point range, in the two losses for a total of eight points after scoring at least 18 in each of the previous six contests.
ABOUT THE WIZARDS (41-25): Washington will play its next two games at home before finishing out the regular season with 10 of 14 on the road and knows it didn't play its best at the end of the just-completed trip. "We didn’t have our best stuff offensively, we didn’t have our best stuff defensively," coach Scott Brooks told reporters after the loss in Minnesota. "At times we hoped that they’d miss instead of making them miss. When you do that, you’re not going to have much success in this league." All-Star point guard John Wall managed to continue his strong play with 27 points on Monday - his fifth consecutive game posting at least 25 points.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Mavericks SG Wesley Matthews (calf) and PF Nerlens Noel (knee) are both day-to-day.
2. Wizards SG Bojan Bogdanovic is 3-of-17 from 3-point range over the last four games.
3. Dallas earned a 113-105 home win over Washington on Jan. 3.