Washington Wizards 2015-16 Player Grades: Assessing Week 7

The roller coaster that has been the 2015-16 Washington Wizards season just keeps going on. This week tallied excellent road wins over very good Miami and Dallas teams, sandwiched around brutal losses to New Orleans, Houston and that same Dallas squad.

Bradley Beal is hurt. Nene is hurt. Kris Humphries is hurt. Ryan Hollins exists. By February, the starting lineup will probably be Wall, Garrett Temple, Kelly Oubre, Jared Dudley and a department store mannequin, but they’ll still get a win every now and then because Wall is so good.

Even thinking about this team is exhausting. Let’s just grade already.

Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

John Wall: 26.4 PPG (55.2 FG%), 5.2 RPG, 11.4 APG, 2.2 SPG

Remember two weeks ago when we were all complaining about John Wall, saying he was washed, saying he was lazy, acting like he might not actually be any better than Reggie Jackson? Since then, John Wall has played as well as he ever has.

Wall was downright deadly in five games this week, racking up four double-doubles, and not scoring fewer than 26 points in any game. The Washington Wizards have needed it – chronically shorthanded, DC has asked Wall to play at least 36 minutes in their last nine games.

Wall has hit 43% of his threes over that stretch, and it was his shooting that carried DC to victory Saturday night against Dallas, his best and most incisive performance of the week. The verdict is in: rumors of John Wall’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

Grade: A

Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

Bradley Beal: 19.0 PPG (37.9 FG%), 4.7 RPG, 3.0 APG

A recurrence of Bradley Beal’s chronic leg problems could place DC in a very, very tough position when planning for the future. Beal is averaging a career-high in points – around 20 per game – and he’s one of the centerpieces of the Washington Wizards’ present and future.

But at 22-years-old, he’s still routinely inconsistent, and he has a recurring injury that hasn’t shown any sign of going away. And it’s his contract year. You can see the bind that the Wizards are in here.

Does Bradley Beal deserve the max? As he prepares to hit the open market, the Wizards likely don’t have any choice but to give him a max deal if they want to keep their young star around. They simply can’t let him go for nothing – but if giving a max contract to John Wall three years ago was a risk, giving one to Beal now is a HUGE risk.

There are only two viable options: cave and give him the max, or include him in a blockbuster trade. We’ll find out one way or another soon enough.

Grade: Four stress reactions out of five

Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Otto Porter: 16.8 PPG (46.6 FG%), 8.6 RPG, 2.4 APG, 1.4 SPG

Our gentle Otto is taking flight. I’ve said all along this season that Otto Porter’s performance this season has largely been surprising based off his emergence as one of Washington’s better scoring options, and he’s stepped it up to a different level over the last couple weeks.

Otto is working on a career-high streak of six straight games in double-figure scoring, and he broke out Saturday night against Dallas, pouring in a career-high 28 points as the main beneficiary of John Wall’s 16 assists.

An assertive Otto Porter is a beautiful thing to watch, and he was firing up that jumpshot with no hesitation. Most importantly, he hit the 3-pointers that Wizards fans have been begging him to make – but whether this kind of performance can carry over into future games is a different question.

Grade: A

Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Jared Dudley: 9.8 PPG (43.6 FG%), 3.8 RPG, 2.0 APG, 1.6 SPG

Whether he’s hitting threes, playing tough defense or making Washington’s small-ball experiments run smooth, Jared Dudley has been the Washington Wizards’ quiet hero this season.

Count it up: Dudley is hitting 46% from 3-point range this season, second in the NBA behind only Kawhi Leonard. Opponents are shooting about 6% lower against Dudley inside 10 feet, vital when you consider that the 6-foot-7 Dudley, playing stretch four, is often guarding much bigger power forwards – and against less physical types like Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Love, he’s been DC’s defensive ace.

The Wizards have underachieved this season, but I shudder to think about where they’d be if they didn’t have Dudley.

Grade: B+

Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Marcin Gortat: 14.0 PPG (61.3 FG%), 11.0 RPG, 1.7 APG, 1.0 BPG

After three games off, Marcin Gortat has returned to the Washington Wizards lineup with a bang, recording season-highs in points (18) and rebounds (13) in his first game back, against Houston. Against Dallas, he recorded his second double-double of the week, putting up 14 and 12.

Good stuff, good stuff. The problem is, with Nene out and Kris Humphries being Kris Humphries, Marcin Gortat is Washington’s only true big. They simply can’t play him enough – he went 32 minutes against Dallas, and that was with Randy Wittman pulling a classic Wittman and holding him out through much of the fourth quarter.

If Gortat is anything, he’s durable: he’s only missed one game due to injury in his three seasons as a Washington Wizard, and that’s with playing 30+ minutes every night at a grueling position. Bradley Beal he is not. Gortat needs to be out there as much as possible, never mind the danger.

Grade: B+