MILWAUKEE — It is said that bad teams find many different ways to lose games, and last night the Washington Wizards made every attempt to support this time-tested theory.
Before 17,002 at Bradley Center, the Milwaukee Bucks scrapped and clawed their way back from a 17-point deficit, then capitalized on a pair of Wizards mental lapses late in the game for a 116-107 victory.
It didn’t hurt the Bucks that they got a pair of spectacular performances from Michael Redd (game-high 35 points) and Desmond Mason (27).
But what cost the Wizards a chance at beating a playoff team late in the game were two mistakes that shifted momentum — which had been swinging the Bucks’ way the entire second half — completely in Milwaukee’s favor.
The first resulted in a goaltending call against Gilbert Arenas when he attempted to block Mason’s layup with 3:05 left in the game and the score tied at 100.
Mason was fouled on the play by Larry Hughes but failed to convert the free throw. Milwaukee’s Toni Kukoc stepped inside Washington’s Kwame Brown for an easy putback and a 104-100 lead. The Bucks never trailed after that.
“It was a big sequence,” said Arenas, who scored 11 points on 3-for-10 shooting. “He went up for the shot and I had to react to the ball, so they called goaltending.
“But if they call goaltending, we have to have our thinking caps on. They call goaltending, you get one shot. You don’t have your thinking cap on, [a mistake] happens.”
Brown, who finished with 11 points and six rebounds, never knew goaltending had been called and thought Mason had a second free throw.
“I didn’t hear the goal tend,” Brown said. “I was on the other end of the court.”
Said Wizards coach Eddie Jordan: “That’s what I’m talking about — not playing smart, not playing very heady basketball. You have to be intense, you have to compete and you have to be smart out there.”
The situation put a damper on a game that saw the Wizards make 12 of 26 3-point attempts, get 51 points from their reserves and score 60 points in the first half alone.
Hughes led the Wizards with 19 points. Jerry Stackhouse, who did not play in Sunday’s win against Boston because of his ailing knees, finished with 18 points and five assists.
The second unit clearly outperformed the starters last night, and Stackhouse thought Jordan should have stayed with the subs.
“You get in a situation where you think you have to come back with certain guys,” Stackhouse said. “You can always have hindsight, but we had a pretty good rhythm going with that group.”
The loss, in which the Wizards gave up 68 points in the second half, again dropped them 30 games below .500 (24-54).
The Bucks (41-38) held on to their 11/2-game lead over Miami for the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Milwaukee has three games remaining.
Milwaukee trailed by as many as 17 points in the second quarter and looked sloppy early on. The Wizards scored the last seven points of the first quarter, then opened the second making eight of their first nine shots for a 46-32 lead.
While the Wizards didn’t shoot the ball well in the first quarter, they were much better in the second when they connected on 13 of 26 shots from the floor. Washington shot the ball exceptionally well from the outside in the first half, nailing seven of 12 from beyond the arc.
In fact, a pair of 3-pointers late in the half by Arenas and Steve Blake gave the Wizards their biggest lead at 60-43 with under a minute left.
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