PJ Washington is back. He noticed something while he was out and how Hornets need him
.JPG "Charlotte Hornets forward PJ Washington returned Wednesday after missing four games due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)")
PJ Washington’s sanity was tested quite a bit leading into the calendar flipping over to 2022. And it had nothing to do with navigating through massive holiday crowds or haggling over a list of new year’s resolutions.
“Just been bored watching everybody play, cleaning my house,” the Charlotte Hornets big man said Wednesday. “Just walking around in circles, looking at walls and stuff. So, just glad to be back.”
Following a four-game absence, Washington returned to action for the Hornets in their 140-111 victory over Detroit at Spectrum Center, helping them extend their winning streak over the Pistons to 14 games. He tossed in 14 points, making 4 of 6 shots, and collected eight rebounds in 24:23. He got to the free throw line eight times, showing aggression, and the Hornets were plus-26 with him on the court.
“I just saw energy,” coach James Borrego said. “I thought he had great energy on both ends. He obviously made shots, but his defensive energy, that’s the energy I saw before he left. So it’s great to have him back. The board, the defense. He got his hands on a number of balls. He played with great pace in transition (on) both ends. I thought he had a major impact tonight. I thought he was a major part of this win.”
Along with Miles Bridges, Washington originally landed on the league’s health and safety protocols list on Dec. 26. That happened some 72 hours after one of his best efforts of the season in the Hornets’ record-breaking comeback win in Denver. Washington and Bridges both got cleared on Saturday, giving the indication they each were going to be available for the Hornets’ game against Phoenix. Then word came Sunday that Washington was back in protocols while Bridges was good to go.
Due to results from the additional testing the players and staff are undergoing for extra COVID-19 surveillance over the holiday period — which ends this Saturday — Washington was placed in health and safety protocols again. It left him miffed because he didn’t experience any symptoms.
“I wasn’t sick at all the whole time,” he said. “I was just sitting in the house.”
Which is what made the entire 10-day ordeal that much harder to stomach.
“Yeah, so I clear protocols, came to practice, had a good practice, I’m thinking nothing of it,” Washington said. “The next day I come in, getting ready for shootaround, and come in and they are like, ‘Yeah, you need to go back in protocols.’ I’m like, ‘Man.’ At this point I’ve already seen what it was like … It just was what it was. So I was just upset, went back home and closed my eyes for the rest of the day.”
When he opened them, there was probably a part of him that wanted to shut them once more. Mauled by the Suns for all four quarters, the Hornets got clobbered against Phoenix for the second time in two weeks and then couldn’t overcome one of their trademark slow starts in a tough road loss to Washington on Monday.
Being the basketball junkie he is, the third-year combo forward out of Kentucky watched every single possession on the Hornets’ broadcasts on Bally Sports Southeast. He was engaged, treating every possession as if he was actually on the court and not in some alternate, virtual reality. Still, group chats and team Zoom sessions just weren’t the same.
During the games he was sidelined, particularly the past two, he noticed something that’s led to their struggles on the heels of a three-game winning streak.
“For me, I think it was just defensively,” said Washington, who’s averaging 10.9 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game. “I feel like we’ve been struggling and especially of late, just scoring at the rim. It’s just everything on defense. It’s just not enough. We’ve got to bring intensity and not let teams score. It’s just a will and a want to and we obviously don’t want to right now. So we’ve got to change that.”
Same goes for those sluggish first quarters. The Hornets have been outscored throughout the first 12 minutes in 21 of their 38 games.
“I think of us it’s just coming out and starting the games off playing hard each and every night,” Washington said. “Once we start off with that mentality, I feel like the rest of the game comes easy to us. We’ve got to pressure teams and it really comes on the defensive end. If we can do that, we’ll be fine in my eyes.”
In other words, the Hornets have to alter their mindset.
“I think it speaks volumes and he owes it to his teammates to say that to them,” Borrego said. “They’ve heard it from me. They’ve heard it from me. It’s got to come from within. And if PJ has seen it, I hope he says something because that’s leadership, that’s accountability. That’s owning it and in the end that’s the only way to turn this defensively consistently.
“This team has shown it in spurts. Consistently from game-to-game it’s got to come from within, period. They know the drill. They know the numbers, they know the schemes. This group‘s got to choose to guard consistently. The mentality’s got to be that’s how we are going to start games. That’s what wins games. You can’t be a one-way team in this league and try to win consistently. It just doesn’t work.”
That formula definitely can’t get it done for the Hornets.
“I think for us, it’s just our mentality,” Washington said. “I think it’s just simple. And I don’t feel like we have the right mentality right now and that’s why we’ve been losing. For us, it’s just we have to come in with a defensive mentality from the get-go. It’s that simple for us and I feel like once we get that, our team takes off.”
This story was originally published January 5, 2022 at 3:26 PM.
