The Washington Wizards are limping to the end of the 2025-26 regular season after closing the road trip with a 120-101 loss against the Los Angeles Lakers
In the end, the Washington Wizards proved no match once again on the road, falling 120-101 against the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Wizards would enter tipoff even more shorthanded than the initial injury report noted with Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, Julian Reese and Leaky Black all inactive alongside Trae Young, Anthony Davis, Kyshawn George, D’Angelo Russell and Cam Whitmore. Head coach Brian Keefe had just nine available players due to injuries.
Will Riley helped to pick up the scoring slack after adding a team-high 20 points on 8-of-19 shooting from the field, while Bub Carrington noticed a team-high seven assists in 28 minutes while Justin Champagnie added 18 points on 66.7% shooting from the field in 27 minutes. Carrington also notched his 700th career assist in the loss, joining Luka Doncic and LaMelo Ball as the only players in NBA history to record at least 700 assists and 250 threes before turning 21 years old.
But it's almost like a broken record for Washington: the Wizards opened competitive behind a strong start from Tristan Vukcevic, scoring seven points in six minutes as the two teams traded leads. A beautiful inbounds from Sharife Cooper to Jamir Watkins to close the first quarter would put Washington ahead, 26-25, to end the first quarter before the Wizards extended it to a four point lead in the opening minutes of the second quarter. That came to a screeching halt after the Lakers answered with an 11-0 run, leading head coach Brian Keefe to call timeout. That didn't prove to make much of a difference after being outscored, 40-18, in the second quarter and heading to halftime trailing, 65-44.
But the Wizards would threaten in the third quarter after twice trimming the deficit to ten points - and twice squandering the chance to push it to a single digit deficit, but the Lakers seemingly responded when the Wizards got closest after the Lakers maintained a double digit lead before stretching it back to 20 points in the fourth quarter before eventually falling by 19 points.
With the loss, the Wizards close the road trip 1-4 and move to 6-32 on the road this season.
The loss not only pushes the Wizards to 17-58 with only a handful of games left in the regular season, but also pushes the team into a tie with the Indiana Pacers for the worst record in the NBA. The Wizards will now head back to Capital One Arena to host the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.