The Washington Wizards, upon most difficult road trip of the season, have hit a bump in the road.

After losing their third straight game at San Antonio on Saturday night, the Wizards are still positioned well in 4th place in the Eastern Conference and are off to one of their best starts in franchise history.

However, two of the losses in particular (to San Antonio and OKC) came in eerily similar fashion as the Wizards were poised to steal a victory before the offense went AWOL late in both games; and that’s where the problems have been, the offense.

The Washington Wizards’ calling card is their defense.

They rank 6th in the NBA in opponents points per game and are tied for 5th in defensive efficiency. While that’s good, the Wizards’ offense is not, ranking 18th in the NBA in PPG and tied for 14th in offensive efficiency.

The offense gets even worse in the 4th Quarter where the Wizards have been outscored in each of their last eight games while averaging a meager 21.25 ppg over that same stretch.

Four straight opponents have scored over 100 points, but pointing to the defense as the problem would be a mistake. Elite teams that are good offensively will score, regardless of how well the Wizards play defensively.

San Antonio won’t forget how to move the ball, Dallas is going to be at or close to their average of nearly 110 ppg, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook will be who they are, and James Harden, the NBA’s leading scorer will find a way to score.

The Washington Wizards aren’t going up against the depleted Chicago Bulls or offensively challenged Indiana Pacers anymore. The top teams, the teams they will likely have to face at some point in the playoffs can and will score and the Wizards have to prepare for that.

Several issues are contributing to the offensive woes:

Substitution Pattern

The Washington Wizards have very few perimeter players capable of creating their own offense. Three of them–John Wall, Bradley Beal, Paul Pierce–are starters and the fourth is a soon to be 39 year old backup point guard with limited perimeter range.

Why does Randy Wittman sit his three primary perimeter scorers together instead of staggering the lineup? There is no reason to have the Wall, Beal, and Pierce all sit at once and rely on a second unit riddled with players who are dependent scorers. The same applies for the frontcourt.

While Marcin Gortat and Nene sit, the Wizards go to a lineup of Kris Humphries and Kevin Seraphin. When the starting lineup consists of five capable scorers, why not to stagger the lineup to have one to two of those scorers play with the second unit?

Get to the free throw line more!

The Washington Wizards attempt 21.5 free throws per game, tied for 23rd in the NBA.

Compounding that problem is the fact they as a team they shoot 73.7 percent from the free throw line, also 23rd in the NBA. Getting to the free throw line was an emphasis of this team as they headed into training camp but somewhere along the line the message was lost in translation:

John Wall- 4.5 FTA per game (Career Low)

Bradley Beal- 2.8 FTA per game (up 0.2 attempts per game from last year)

Paul Pierce- 3.7 FTA per game (Career Low)

Nene- 2.4 FTA per game (Career Low)

Marcin Gortat- 2.4 FTA per game (Career Low

Seriously?

After emphasizing getting to the line, four of the five starts are averaging a career low in attempts per game. More problematic is that all three teams ahead of them in the Eastern Conference Standings shoot more free throws per game and the two teams directly ahead of them, Toronto and Chicago, are top 5 in the NBA.

The Cavaliers, who are 3 1/2 games behind Washington in the standings and would be their first round opponent if the season were to end today, is ninth in the NBA (do you really think that number is going to come down with LeBron James in the playoffs?).

At times the effort is there and the whistle doesn’t blow, but there are many other times where the players settle for long jumpshots versus attacking the basket.

If the Wizards are afraid the referees won’t give them calls maybe it’s time to watch more James Harden and Kyle Lowry and learn how to flop or draw contact.

Instead of practicing free throws after practice, work on the art of the head snap!

Shoot more threes!

Another area where the Wizards rank bottom 10 in the NBA: three point attempts per game.

The Wizards currently are 28th in the NBA at 15.6 attempts per game. The major problem with this? THE WIZARDS ARE NUMBER 1 IN THE NBA IN THREE POINT FIELD GOAL PERCENTAGE!!!

Sure, the percentage is likely to fall as the attempts go up but let them fly! Between Rasual Butler, Bradley Beal, Paul Pierce, Otto Porter, and the returning Martell Webster, there are plenty of players capable of knocking down the shots, they just have to take them.

Two of the three teams ahead of the Washington Wizards in the East (Toronto and Atlanta), are top 10 (respectively 7th and 8th) in the NBA in this statistic.

Roster

The roster makeup of the Wizards may also have a correlation to their offensive performance.

There are many redundant players on the roster. At small forward for example, the Washington Wizards have three players on their bench behind Paul Pierce, all of whom are primarily off the ball offensive players who specialize in catch and shoot.

The problem becomes more pronounced because instead of playing a traditional backup shooting guard, the Wizards play these natural small forwards as the shooting guards on the second unit.

A true shooting guard or a combo-guard capable of providing instant offense to the second unit could lead to a huge improvement on that side of the ball.

The Toronto Raptors who were 13th in the league last year in ppg have jumped to 3rd overall, in large part due to the addition of Lou Williams, who’s averaging nearly 15 ppg off the bench for the Raptors this season.

The same issue can be found in the front court. The Washington Wizards’ roster is composed of six big men who can play power forward or center. The issue is none of these six are what you would call a stretch four.

Drew Gooden provides some shooting, but as a career 25 percent three point shooter playing 13.1 minutes per game this year, he hardly solves the issue. Lacking the stretch element, the lanes are tighter and this impacts our guards/wings ability to attack the basket (and possibly draw fouls) and their ability to manipulate the defense in an effort to create more open three-point attempts for shooters.

The opportunity to compete for the conference is there. The defense seems up to the challenge, but the offense doesn’t.

It will take a concerted effort by the coaches, front office, and players to make the necessary adjustments to improve the offense enough to take advantage of the opportunity that’s in front of them.

(All stats used courtesy of ESPN)