Washington Wizards Defeat San Antonio Spurs 118-113 to Stack Wins for First Time This Season
It took 46 games to do it but the Washington Wizards are officially on a winning streak after defeating the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night 118-113.
Not only does the win mark the first back-to-back victories for the Wizards this season, but it's also the first time in team history a new head coach has won his first two road games leading the team.
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"You just look at where he's been at in his career, the type of person he is, you know, he had to work to get to this level." forward Kyle Kuzma told Ava Wallace of the Washington Post about interim head coach Brian Keefe after the win. "A lot of times I think in this game when you (have) not necessarily played in the NBA your attention to detail (has to) be insane. And that's him, he's insane. All the little things matter and it's rubbing off."
Kuzma led the Wizards in scoring with 18 points and while they failed to have a single player reach the 20-point threshold, six of them scored in double-digits.
Comparatively, the Spurs had just five while three scored 20 or more led by guard Devin Vassell who had 24 to lead all scorers.
For Washington, the keys to getting this second-straight win was about efficiency as the team completed 53.5 percent of field goal tries while San Antonio converted just 46.7 percent.
It wasn't a fully clean victory however and the Wizards finished with a sub-37 percent three-point field goal conversion rate and shot just 70.8 percent from the free-throw line.
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We suppose the silver lining in those stats is that the game could have been won by a larger margin with a few tweaks to playing more efficient basketball. Something Keefe appears driven to get his squad to do.
Former teammates and first-round picks in the 2023 NBA Draft Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs chipped in 22 points and 11 rebounds in the loss while Bilal Coulibaly contributed 13 points and one rebound in the win.
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