Tiny Wizards Lineup Pummeled by Houston Rockets

Last night’s loss by the Washington Wizards — this time to the Houston Rockets — seems from the numbers like it was at least a somewhat entertaining game. They fell behind by as much as 19, then went ham in the fourth quarter to trim the final margin to just five.

Now, it was one of those sorta phony “comebacks” that was more than a little about Houston slacking off. But, Sharife Cooper had the game of his career and the quarter of his life (11 points on 5 shots, plus 2 assists in the fourth). Jaden Hardy shot 4-4 in the period. Justin Champagnie 3-3.

So, I’d imagine these guys were giving a helluva good effort and it might have even been fun to see.

Unfortunately, I can only imagine because of the NBA’s blackout rules. I live in the Houston market, so I can’t use League Pass. Well, technically I can, I just have to wait three days.

“Every NBA game is available live with NBA League Pass in every country except the US and Canada due to blackouts,” the league explains on their website. “Blackout restrictions exist because local and national content providers have certain exclusive rights to show live games and content.”

The problem, of course, is that these blackout rules were made decades ago when the only ways to watch games were to show up in person or catch it on over-the-air TV. Cable TV entered the fray and made local market games available to subscribers, which for a time was virtually every household.

We’re in the cable cutting era now. According to AdWave, 80% of US households had a pay cable, satellite, in 2011. The current number is about half that. In 2024, 4 million households canceled cable per day. The pace increased in 2025 — an estimated 77 million households dumped their cable TV subscriptions last year alone.

In other words, cable and satellite are dying. People are consuming content over the internet and via streaming services. Or they’re pirating games they want to see by watching illegal streams that put their device and network security at risk.

The goal of these kinds of blackouts is to force people like me to buy cable or satellite so I can watch these games. That’s the theory. The reality is that it’s not working. Any bump the cable company gets from sports fans is offset by the millions of households canceling. Or, in my case, not subscribing at all when I moved to Texas.

Archaic blackouts are doing two main things at this point;

1. Punishing fans who don’t have a cable subscription. I’m a hoops junkie who enjoys the way the Rockets play and would watch virtually every game — if I could. But I’m not paying another $20+ per month on top of my League Pass subscription to watch the Rockets. I’ll catch them on national TV or put on a three-day old game in the background when I’m doing something else.
2. Undermining the development of new fans. To me, this is the more serious consequence. I became a fan watching over-the-air Bullets games on channel 20 — at-times staticky and often in black-and-white (that’s what we had in the kitchen) — but I could follow the action, especially when the great Mel Proctor was calling the game. How does a kid who’s curious about NBA basketball but doesn’t know much experience more than highlights if her parents don’t have the right subscriptions to watch games until three days after the game?

The three-day waiting period to watch an NBA game is absurd. Preposterous. Ridiculous. Unreasonable. By the time last night’s game is legally available to me, the Wizards will have played the Orlando Magic (tonight) and the Utah Jazz (Thursday). Which is to say, I’m never watching this game. I may see clips at some point if I’m doing some video analysis, but that’s it.

It’s time for the very smart people running the NBA to update these broadcast policies to reflect the changed reality of how people consume content. A League Pass subscriber should have access to every game, regardless of where it’s played or who’s broadcasting it. Financial aspects might get complex, but this seems like the sort of problem that smart people could figure out — or at least prompt an AI to figure it out for them.

I’ll stop complaining with this: The NBA’s broadcast policy should reflect something Commissioner Adam Silver said a couple years ago: maximum flexibility for people to watch games. Someone who cares enough about the NBA to have a “no-ads” League Pass subscription should be able to watch anything using League Pass. ‘Nuff said.

Thoughts & Observations

• Since I didn’t watch, these are all derived from the box score or play-by-play.
• Once again, the Wizards have done the improbable. They shout 54.3% from three-point range and were +30 from the three-point line and lost.
• The Rockets pummeled the Wizards on the boards despite the absence of Steven Adams. Houston had 21 offensive rebounds to Washington’s 20 defensive boards. They out-rebounded Washington 59-27. This is not unexpected considering Washington’s complete lack of size. Julian Reese, a 6-9 forward they signed on Saturday, started at center. He could manage just four rebounds in 28 minutes.
• Houston committed 20 turnovers — 1-in-5 possessions. Alperen Sengun and Kevin Durant combined for 14 turnovers (8 and 6 respectively). Outside of Reese (four turnovers), the Wizards did a pretty good job avoiding turnovers.
• Bilal Coulibaly hitting 5-7 from three-point range is a welcome development. He’s up to 30.4% from the three-point line this season. That’s something of an improvement from last season’s 28.1%.

Four Factors

Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

The four factors are measured by:

• eFG% (effective field goal percentage, which accounts for the three-point shot)
• OREB% (offensive rebound percentage)
• TOV% (turnover percentage — turnovers divided by possessions)
• FTM/FGA (free throws made divided by field goal attempts)

Stats & Metrics

PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.

ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average so far this season is listed in the Four Factors table above. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%. Median so far this season is 17.7%.

ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.

+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 115, the league — on average — would produced 23.0 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -3.0.

Players are sorted by total production in the game.