“We could’ve been so much better,” Morris said Wednesday before the team headed to Philadelphia for the following night’s exhibition game. “Our communication was off. Our calls were off. Everything was off.”

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Specifically, when addressing the Wizards’ defensive performance, Morris did not hold back.

“We just all got to be on the same page,” he said. “We got to start on the defensive end and if you want my opinion, it was piss poor.”

Though previously cited as the new identity of the Wizards, the team defense did not live up to its billing.

“Those are areas we just have to improve on,” said Otto Porter Jr., who was one of the four regular starters to play Tuesday.

On the botched play involving Morris and Gortat, the blame can be placed on offensive spacing. This points to the larger problem of miscommunication. Morris and Gortat formed the starting Wizards’ front court for the final stretch of the 2015-16 season, but their familiarity with one another does not overcome their lack of mastery of Brooks’s style of play. So even though the core of the Wizards remains untouched, Brooks recognizes how the returning players are in the same position of unfamiliarity as the new Wizards.

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“They’ve been running the same system for four or five years now. Even the things that we do the same, the terminology is different so that does take time to adjust,” Brooks said. “I get that and I understand that the players will pick things up eventually. I’m patient with it but I still want improvement every day out.”

During the Wednesday video session, Brooks illuminated the “little plays” — moments that can be passed over in real time but are laden with mistakes upon close examination. Those “little plays” will cause a team to fall into an 18-point deficit in the first half, as the Wizards did on Tuesday.

“They look simple, but they’re not,” Brooks said. “You have to be able to execute them. We had a couple possessions I call dead possessions, we didn’t get anything out of it except for a tough shot at the end.”

However, Brooks remains confident that these early mistakes will pass and the Wizards eventually will speak the same language.