SAN ANTONIO — The Washington Wizards’ losing streak in San Antonio is almost fully grown. It’s not old enough to buy a drink or blow money at a casino, but it’s nearly an adult, and that makes nights such as Sunday even more frustrating. Even as the Wizards appear to be coming of age, competing against the Spurs as peers and not as little brothers, the streak persists.
Already shorthanded and then ending up down a pair of rotational players, the Wizards played alluring basketball for a half and proved to be formidable challengers against a team with more depth, but their defense was lacking after halftime of their 132-119 loss at AT&T Center.
With Sunday’s defeat, Washington has lost 19 straight road games to the Spurs, a skid that began Feb. 15, 2001 — nearly 18 years ago. The Wizards have not won here since Dec. 11, 1999. At that time, LeBron James was a freshman in high school, Bill Belichick had yet to take over as the New England Patriots’ coach, and the Spurs still played at the Alamodome. The franchise has since moved to a new arena, but nothing has changed. When the Wizards match up with players in black-and-white jerseys, they leave San Antonio with the blues.
“The third quarter kind of killed us,” Bradley Beal said of the 12-minute stretch in which the Wizards missed 17 of 24 shots and were outscored 29-17.
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The Wizards haven’t reached the sadness of the Louisville Colonels, who hold the longest road losing streak in Major League Baseball history: 32 straight defeats at the Baltimore Orioles (from June 1894 to July 1899, per Elias Sports Bureau). And the Wizards’ skid is just the second-longest active road losing streak in the NBA: The Atlanta Hawks have dropped 20 straight games . . . in San Antonio, of course.
Wizards guard Chasson Randle drives to the basket past Spurs guard Marco Belinelli in the first half. (Eric Gay/Associated Press)
On Sunday, point guard Tomas Satoransky flirted with a triple-double, finishing with 21 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, and Beal added 21 points on 8-for-20 shooting. Seven of the Wizards’ eight rotation players reached double figures, and the team assisted on 32 of its 40 field goals. But that wasn’t enough to end the streak.
“Eventually it’s going to end. It would be nice if it ends tonight, but I won’t talk about it,” Coach Scott Brooks said before the game, adding, “I haven’t even thought about it until you mentioned it.”
Wizards rookie Troy Brown Jr. wasn’t exactly searching for streak trivia, but he stumbled upon the information where many 19-year-olds receive their news: Instagram. Brown was drooling, not dribbling, the last time the Wizards beat the Spurs in San Antonio. As he came of age as a young fan, Brown enjoyed watching the Spurs’ Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. Those Spurs embodied many of the basketball tenets he believes in today.
“They didn’t care about points and stats. You could just tell by the way they played, they only cared about winning. That was like the biggest thing for me seeing them play — make the extra pass,” Brown said. “That’s good basketball. I’d rather have somebody play like that instead of somebody that’s thinking, ‘I’ve got to get mine.’ ”
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For much of Sunday’s game, the Wizards embraced those concepts and played in a very Spursian way. With Sam Dekker sidelined with back spasms and Ian Mahinmi missing the game with a right thumb sprain, the Wizards went only eight deep. Although they trailed by 13 in the first quarter, they shared the ball well.
“It’s always a good feeling when everybody is touching the ball,” Beal said, “and guys get shots up and we get a great shot after it.”
In the second quarter, the Wizards scored 43 points and did not turn the ball over. Players barely left their fingerprints on the Spalding as they moved the ball quickly and precisely. Early in the period, Satoransky drove into the lane and sent a pass to Brown in the corner. Brown kept the ball moving to Chasson Randle, who hit Jeff Green in the numbers for a pullup three-pointer. Superb ball movement returned later in the quarter when Satoransky collected another assist on an another open three by Green.
By halftime, as the Wizards trailed 70-69, a shootout seemed inevitable.
“It was an outrageously high amount of points,” said Beal, who then mentioned Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich. “I’m sure Pop wasn’t happy with the amount of points we scored, either, so it came down . . . to whoever defended. And they were the ones who defended. We didn’t.”
After halftime, the Wizards’ shots stopped falling, and the Spurs kept rolling.
“In the second half, they started to get hot, and we were having trouble with LaMarcus Aldridge with the matchup there,” Satoransky said. “It’s very tough playing with them when they have a lineup with good shooters, but we didn’t have . . . the pace [or] the offense like we did in the first half. So definitely the third quarter was crucial.”
Aldridge scored 30 points, doing what he wanted against Thomas Bryant and Green. Davis Bertans, another big man off the Spurs’ bench, lit up Washington for 21 points and five three-pointers. As a team, the Spurs made 49 of 86 attempts (57.0 percent) and collected 31 assists, and the streak lived on.