Welcome to the Morning Shootaround, where every weekday you’ll get a fresh, topical column from one of SI.com’s NBA writers: Howard Beck on Mondays, Chris Mannix on Tuesdays, Michael Pina on Wednesdays, Chris Herring on Thursdays and Rohan Nadkarni on Fridays.
Within minutes of absorbing a 29-point thrashing that cast his team into a deep chasm of postseason despair, Bradley Beal took his place on a Zoom screen and declared, with all the earnestness he could muster, that the Wizards of Washington would persist.
“I’m a huge fan of the word ‘embrace,’” Beal said Saturday, after the Wizards fell into a 3-0 hole in their first-round series against the top-seeded 76ers.