Substance wins out

CHICAGO.

The Wizards could not hold up to the intensity of the playoffs and the Bulls in United Center yesterday.

They allowed the franchise’s first playoff game in eight years to slip away in the waning minutes of a see-saw affair.

It was a game that could have been theirs.

The Wizards succumbed to the crowd and to the moment and to perhaps wanting something too badly in losing Game 1 to the Bulls 103-94.

Gilbert Arenas melted down as the game progressed, being reduced to a puddle of bad decisions by the end. He could not hit a shot that mattered. He could not make an elementary play, much less a smart one. By the end, he was hoisting bad shots, losing the ball, looking for help from the referees.

Arenas was awful in San Antonio in the regular season. His toxic opener in the postseason was on that sorry level. He ended up going 3-for-19 shooting, with a number of the shots being ill-advised.

In the last eight to nine minutes, the Wizards played like a team that was in its first playoff game on the road. So much of what went down was predictable.

“Not too many smart plays there [in the fourth quarter],” Larry Hughes said.

It was, in a way, the first game in the rest of the evolution of the Wizards.

This was a raucous game before a hostile crowd that knows playoff basketball from the Michael Jordan years.

This was a game that measures players; tests their mettle and sends them on their way.

This was a game that Hughes embraced with all his heart, while Arenas and Antawn Jamison struggled to find their way.

The Wizards trailed by one point after 24 minutes, a fortunate circumstance after Arenas and Jamison combined for three points on 1-for-14 shooting.

Hughes was in another place, nearly a perfect place, hitting shot after shot to steady the Wizards.

Neither team could stop the other. They traded shots. They traded runs. The Wizards led 84-79 early in the fourth quarter before the electric air started to unnerve the Wizards.

Playoff basketball is considerably different from the regular season. Each possession is contested with an intensity that is impossible to maintain in the 82-game regular season.

Playoff basketball accelerates the growth of a team; tells a team what it needs to do if it is to be what it wants to be.

The Wizards are not committed to defense. This a fundamental flaw in the postseason. You do not have to be a great defensive team to succeed. But you have to be able to lock down on opponents. You have to be able to get stops down the stretch.

The Wizards have stronger personnel than the Bulls, especially with the Bulls missing Eddy Curry and Luol Deng. The Bulls do not have one player who rises to the level of Arenas, Hughes and Jamison. But the Bulls do play defense. And they do rebound. And they will fight you for everything, which is a reflection of coach Scott Skiles.

Arenas promised the Wizards would show more interest in defense in the postseason. Arenas and his shot-happy teammates have a long way to go before they deliver on that promise.

“Our defense is what it is right now,” coach Eddie Jordan said. “It’s not very good in the halfcourt. What more can I say?”

The Wizards now have a taste of playoff basketball. They have a lot of mistakes to deconstruct on film.

The Bulls are not going to go away easily. The Bulls passed their first test of character in November after losing their first nine games of the season. No one would have bet on them being the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference at that point.

Yet here they are, as improbable as the Wizards.

The Bulls play with grit, the Wizards with style.

Grit beat style in Game 1.