Wizards go cold in lopsided loss

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Everything outside of the Washington Wizards’ control fell into place last night.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Philadelphia 76ers both lost, giving the Wizards the chance to gain some ground on an outside push for homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

But they couldn’t take advantage — not by a long shot.

The Wizards, who rank fifth in the Eastern Conference, shot a season-low 27.1 percent as they fell 102-74 to the Central Division champion Detroit Pistons last night.

The hosts had nothing tangible to play for but used last night’s game as their first real playoff tuneup, rolling out a more postseason-like rotation and integrating shooting guard Richard Hamilton back into the lineup after missing eight of the last nine games.

The result was ugly for the Wizards. The Pistons shot 50 percent, pounded the Wizards 44-16 inside and led by 29 in the third quarter.

Forward Jason Maxiell paced the Pistons with a career-high 28 points off the bench.

“I’ve never seen him play better,” center Brendan Haywood said. “He was hitting step-back jumpers, one-dribble pull-ups — I didn’t even know he had that in his game.”

Because the 76ers lost, the Wizards managed to stay solely in the No. 5 spot. But tonight’s game between the two now looms large for Washington. Lose, and the 76ers will tie the Wizards in the standings and control their fate — they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker. Win, and the Wizards stay in front.

“We got some help tonight,” Haywood said. “But we didn’t take advantage of it. Now [tonight] is like a playoff game for us. … We’ve got to play a better game tomorrow than we did tonight.”

Perhaps the Wizards didn’t put as much into last night’s game as they could, knowing the most important game of their back-to-back is tonight. That wasn’t much consolation to coach Eddie Jordan.

“I don’t care about that right now,” Jordan said. “I’m just disappointed that, on a night like this, we weren’t ready to play against a championship-level team. They challenged us at every position, and we didn’t respond.”

Before the game, Pistons coach Flip Saunders said it didn’t matter where the Wizards stuck Gilbert Arenas in their lineup.

“He’s a heck of a sixth man,” Saunders said. “He’s a heck of a fifth, fourth, third, two, one, whatever you want to call him.”

But Arenas was barely a factor last night. He played 19 minutes, scoring 10 points on 2-for-8 shooting. Hounded by the Pistons’ physical defense, Arenas struggled.

“I just think we didn’t meet them on a physical level,” Jordan said. “We didn’t make plays when we had some breakouts, we missed some free throws, and it was only a five-point game at half. But we didn’t meet them physically in the second half, they pounded us and were much more physical and that was the difference.”

The Pistons outscored the Wizards 34-13 in the third quarter to run away with it.

The Wizards had another injury scare when forward Caron Butler hobbled through the last 30 seconds of the first half after banging knees with a Pistons player. It looked bad — he could barely put weight on his right leg and, as soon as the buzzer sounded, doubled-over in pain.

The team declared it a right knee bruise at halftime and said it was questionable whether he would be back. But he opened the second half on the floor and played 32 minutes. His bigger problem was Pistons forward Tayshaun Prince, who limited Butler to six points on 1-for-7 shooting.

“That’s a good example of how tough Detroit can be,” Jordan said. “Tayshaun is so long that Caron can basically only see half the basket, and that’s tough to do anything against.”