East Notes: Wizards, Corey Kispert, Pacers, Bulls

Wizards

Don’t look now, but the Wizards have won three straight. That, of course, is a season-high and a fairly big deal for a team that’s won just 14 games overall (for a record of 14-58).

Washington hadn’t even won two in a row since going for six straight in January 2023.

“Wow,” forward Corey Kispert told reporters. “That’s something that we want to be much, much more common in the near future. While it feels good now, we’re just kind of ready to make it a fourth.”

• Guard Jordan Poole led the Wizards with 23 points, and Kipsert recorded the first double-double of his career with 19 points and 12 rebounds.
• The Wizards have not won 50 games in a single season since 1979. Fittingly, that was also their last trip to the Finals, losing to the Seattle SuperSonics. They beat Seattle for the championship the year before that.

Pacers

The Pacers have now won six of their last seven road game after Monday’s biggie over the Clippers.

This one came on a Los Angeles back-to-back, following Indiana’s loss to the Lakers on Sunday.

“We’ve shown signs of real progress,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “Last night was a step back, but in the NBA there’s always another game coming. This was a terrific bounce back.”

• And this was about as balanced as it gets for the Pacers. Forward Pascal Siakam scored 31, center Myles Turner added 24, and point guard Tyrese Haliburton went for 21 points and nine assists.
• Added Carlisle: “Our entire roster played well. Myles Turner was spectacular in this game. … Tyrese and Pascal were ham and egging it back and forth, and that was really key.”

Bulls

The Bulls fell to the lowly Wizards at home on Monday, only making things that much more difficult for themselves, wrote Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Coach Billy Donovan tended to agree.

“Offensively, really for the entire game, it was not a good night for us, the way we shot the ball,” Donovan told reporters. “We don’t have the luxury to [play down to the competition]. We haven’t earned or deserved to be thinking that way.”’

The Bulls now lead the Hawks by just 1.5 games for the 10th and final play-in spot. Chicago moving to seventh or eighth in the Eastern Conference appears to be a long shot.

“It sucks because all these games matter — they count,” small forward DeMar DeRozan said. “You want to be playing good basketball toward this part of the season, and the circumstances we’re under, everything matters that much more.”

• You can check out the full post on DeRozan and the Bulls by our Ashish Mathur right here.
• Donovan offered an update on guard Lonzo Ball, who missed most of last season and all of this with a mysterious knee injury. “The hope is that he has August and September — that would be two months before training camp started,” Donovan said. “That’s not to say he’s that far away. He could potentially start playing in July. I just don’t know when they’re going to clear him to do that.”