Well, the tank started tonight boys. It was not pretty. It was not amusing. It was disgusting, and a sight for sore eyes. However, we achieved our ultimate goal of getting a loss. Here are my 5 takeaways from tonight’s tilt against Indiana:

1. Kuz had a great game tonight. In just 25 minutes, he was 9-18 from the field and had 25 points. I really liked that Kuz was very determined at getting to the rack and used his length and size and strength to bully his way to the basket. That’s type of play I clamored for more and more from him last year, and early on it seems like he’s going to really lean into that this year. He wasn’t the best shooter tonight, but he was 6-6 from the FT line. While he did score a good amount, he did little else besides that. Didn’t really rebound or create for anyone tonight. Want to definitely see more of that from Kuz, but got to give him a shoutout for 2 blocks on the defensive end. His performance led me questioning why he only got 25 minutes, though I guess since it was a blowout WUJ decided to keep his minutes limited.
2. Poole had another off night tonight. None of his long balls went down for him , and he had terrible shot selection as well. Too many deep threes and ill advised shots from him. He is only 23 so I expect him to grow and develop over time and mature with his shot selection, but he needs to learn to slow down and pick and choose his spots. I think that will come with time, but tonight that definitely wasn’t there. He did have a couple of nice wrap around passes and 6 assists, so got to tip my hat off to him for that.
3. Gallo had 16 points and was the only consistent scorer off the bench. The bench is going to be an ENORMOUS issue this year. There is no offense whatsoever off that bench. That’s both a good and bad thing because it will give guys like Deni, Bilal, and Corey the opportunity to really take charge and show what they can do, but tonight, none of them showed anything encouraging. Going to need one of those guys to consistently hit 15 ppg a night or this is going to happen every night, because that bench offense couldn’t buy a bucket to save its life. The offense fell of a total cliff when they were out there.
4. Look, I understand that we want to lose games, but we shouldn’t be giving up 143 points. There was absolutely no effort on the defensive end tonight. The Pacers made 20 threes and shot them at a 47% clip. There were way too many open Pacers from deep tonight. Bruce Brown was open every single time. He should be tightly contested after the first two makes from deep. Every Pacer was making it rain from deep and that can be attested to the Wizards’ inability to close out. This is something that is unacceptable. They should lose games, but if they want to start building, that starts with creating a culture. That culture has to be giving it your all, hustle, and coming together as a unit to succeed. None of that happened tonight. The culture tonight seemed to be sit back and fold and let the Pacers get the dub.
5. To the Pacers credit, they were hitting everything. We didn’t really have an answer for Haliburton, and he was in his absolute bag tonight. He had a 20-10 game to start off against us tonight. It would have been interesting to see Bilal get put on Hali, because if Hali can get shut down, that offense sputters to a stop. Everything begins and ends with Hali for the Pacers. If he gets going, they get going. I really want to see Bilal match up with the second or best player on the opposition so he can fine tune his defensive instincts and skills. He already is pretty darn good (he had 3 BLKs tonight by the way-even though most of it was in garbage time).

Well, I’ll be interested to see what adjustments are made on Sat by WUJ so that 140+ points aren’t dropped on us again. Also interested to see where Shamet slots into everything. Might not have been a bad move by the FO to keep him because he could be huge off the bench with how dilapidated our bench looks. Either way, the tank has begun. It’s going to be a long bumpy season so buckle up boys! I’ll see y’all Saturday for the home opener when we take on the Morant-less Grizz.