Wizards Vs Raptors: Game 3 Pregame

Tonight, The Wizards play their first home game of the 2015 NBA playoffs, they do so, with a two game lead, after beating Toronto on their home floor twice already to start the series off. They are the only team in the league to have won both games on their opponents home floor this postseason.

Time to get those brooms out, it's over. You might want to consider not even watching this one. No way they can lose, right? We would all hope so, teams that go up 2-0 in an NBA series to usually come out the victor, but the Wizards lost nearly every home playoff game they played last postseason, only winning one out of the five games they played at the Verizon Center.

This isn't over just yet, they still need to win a few more games obviously, but I think it's reason to be confident that this team won't repeat the mistakes of last years squad. Let's look at some key points going in to game 3 for now.

Who's Hot

John Wall and Bradley Beal

The combo of John Wall and Bradley Beal played great in game 2, Beal scored 28 points in the game going 12-21 shooting, 2-5 from the free throw line, and completely took over first half by scoring 20 of his total in the first two quarters.

John Wall, was even more impressive in my opinion, not only scoring 26 points on 8-16 shooting, but also distributed at a high level as he normally would, leading the team with 17 assist.

When Washington gets this type of production out of their young back court, their very hard to beat, hopefully it continues.

Who's Not

Drew Gooden

Gooden gave good and consistent effort off the bench, he grabbed 6 rebounds in the game, you really can't be mad at him in that department, but he only went 1-6 from the field. It would be good to see a more consistent shooting performance from him tonight.


Key Matchup 

• "The Truth vs. Toronto"

He's stated that he thrives off of the energy in Toronto.  There's one thing... We're back home and if he needs a hostile territory to play up to the competition then he won't get much of that at the "Phone Booth".  However, we need the Paul Pierce from game one and game two to show up.  In this series he has seen an enhanced role at the Power Forward position and quite frankly he's been exciting to watch.  During the season series in which Toronto swept the Wizards were bullied on the glass and exploited by the Raptors bigs.  They looked more athletic in the post which created big problems for the Wizards.  However, this series they just can't handle "The Truth".

X-Factor

• Bradley Beal

Over the duration of his tenure I've been really hard on Beal because there's talent there but oft times he looks timid.  If the Wizards want to take that next leap forward and if Bradley wants to jump into that next tier to superstardom he's going to have to piece together more games like Game 2.  He simply could not be stopped.  Not settling for threes but driving to the lane and drawing contact; a facet of his game that we haven't seen often.  Beal played more physical and forced Toronto to match that intensity which they simply couldn't.  Beal finished Game 2 with 28 points in 42 minutes on 12/21 shooting.