”We don’t want to be 1-5 right now. Everybody’s frustrated. Everybody’s mad,” Beal said. ”At the end of the day, we all got to look at ourselves in the mirror individually first, before we start pointing fingers. Just try to figure out how we can get better. We all got to play better individually, one through 15.”

The problems are adding up already for a club that made two consecutive trips to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs before going 41-41 and missing out last season, costing Brooks’ predecessor, Randy Wittman, his job.

A .500 record would sound great at this point; only the Philadelphia 76ers, at 0-6, are worse in the East. Heading into Wednesday’s game against the visiting Boston Celtics – and things don’t get any easier after that, with LeBron James and the reigning champion Cleveland Cavaliers in town on Friday – the Wizards are among the league’s poorest defensive teams, and they’re not scoring all that much, either.

Hardly an ideal combination. And Brooks thinks there’s a connection, because when his players aren’t putting the ball in the basket, he senses that they lose the will to keep opponents from racking up points.

”That happens, and that’s not a good trait for a basketball team. You can’t ride the roller coaster of making shots, because if you have a great night, you’re (still) going to miss half your shots. And in order to have a great defensive night, you can’t have that dictate your defensive intensity, your defensive disposition,” Brooks said Monday night after Washington’s 114-106 loss to James Harden and the Houston Rockets.

The Wizards allowed the Rockets to make 52 percent of their field-goal attempts, including 46 percent of their 3-pointers.

”We’re not going to pitch a no-hitter,” Brooks added. ”When they made a couple shots, we got down, and we’ve got to correct that.”

The type of stretch he’s talking about came against Houston in the second quarter, when Washington missed 10 shots in a row during a 16-0 run for the visitor.

Afterward, an irritated-sounding Brooks criticized his players for not putting forth maximum defensive effort for a game’s full 48 minutes, saying: ”We’ve talked about it enough. Now we have to do it.”

It echoed Wittman’s frequent lament about his team’s defense, and the numbers are pretty stark this season.

Washington is tied for the worst opponent 3-point shooting percentage in the 30-club NBA at 39.5, and ranks second-worst in overall shooting-percentage defense at 46.7. The Wizards are giving up 105.5 points per game.

All-Star point guard John Wall, who broke Hall of Famer Wes Unseld’s franchise record for career assists before getting ejected in the final minute Monday, conceded that Brooks is correct. He pointed to problems in transition defense, in particular, and allowing open tries on 3s.

”We just have lapses,” Wall said. ”When we turn the ball over or take bad shots, we have lapses where we don’t get back.”

Part of the bigger-picture problem is that Washington is not able to overcome its defensive woes with its offense: It’s one of only nine teams in the league averaging under 100 points (98.7) and ranks 27th in 3-point shooting percentage (29.4).

It’s adding up to loss after loss for a club that began the season expecting a return to the playoffs.

”We know there’s a lot of games left,” Wall said, ”but you can’t keep falling back any further.”

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Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

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Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook teamed up for 50 points and needed to return in the fourth quarter to hold off a Sacramento charge, and the Thunder clinched the top seed in the West by beating the Sacramento Kings 104-95 on Monday night.

It was the 60th win for the franchise, which last accomplished the feat 15 years ago in Seattle. The team hasn’t been the top seed in the West since 1996, when the SuperSonics went to the NBA Finals before losing to Michael Jordan’s Bulls.

“We’ve never done it here before, so it’s new to us,” said Durant, who scored 29. “But it feels good. It shows our progression as a franchise each and every year.”

Tyreke Evans, the Kings’ second-leading scorer, did not return after grabbing at his troublesome left knee following a drive to the basket late in the first quarter. Without him, Sacramento fell woefully behind before mounting a flurry with the Thunder’s stars on the bench.

Durant hit a 3-pointer and Westbrook set up Serge Ibaka for a two-handed slam during a string of 11 straight Thunder points midway through the third quarter that stretched the lead to 75-51.

Sacramento was able to cut the deficit to 11 early in the fourth quarter and force coach Scott Brooks to put Durant and Westbrook back in and close out the game.

“To get 60 wins is quite an accomplishment,” Brooks said. “We’ve come a long ways through the hard work our entire organization has put in.”

Westbrook didn’t make it until the very end, drawing his second technical foul of the game with 2:28 left after spiking the basketball following Travis Outlaw’s dunk that brought Sacramento within 100-88. The two technical fouls brought Westbrook’s total to 15 for the season, one short of the number that would draw him an automatic one-game suspension.

Westbrook, who had 21 points, left the arena without speaking to reporters.

It appeared as though he — along with Durant and Ibaka — wouldn’t return after Westbrook was called for a technical foul with 3:04 left in the third quarter for complaining to referee David Guthrie that he had been hit in the face with no foul called.

Westbrook continued complaining until Guthrie instructed reserve Daniel Orton to lead Westbrook to the bench with Oklahoma City leading 76-55.

But the Kings soon pieced together a 12-2 comeback late in the third quarter, and Brooks called timeout after Sacramento scored six straight points to cut the lead to 84-73 with 9½ minutes left. Durant and Westbrook returned, and Sacramento couldn’t get within double digits until Jimmer Fredette’s four-point play with 7.8 seconds to go.

“With the second-best team in the NBA, you can’t get down early,” said Isaiah Thomas, who led Sacramento with 16 points. “You can’t get down 18 to 20 points. It’s going to be a hell of a job to make a comeback. We fought, though, in that third and fourth quarter.”

Outlaw scored 15 and Cole Aldrich had a double-double for the second straight game by tying his career best with 12 points and setting a career high with 13 rebounds.

Leading scorer DeMarcus Cousins, who was allowed to play after the NBA rescinded his 16th technical foul of the season, had just seven points and six rebounds and didn’t play in the fourth quarter.

Evans, who missed 16 games from late November through early January because of left knee injuries, clutched at the front of that knee as he lay under the basket following an awkward landing. His right foot appeared to slip on the court as his left leg folded up underneath him.

Outlaw and a trainer helped him off the court and down a tunnel to the locker room with 2 minutes left in the first quarter. A team spokesman described the injury as a left quadriceps strain.

“I definitely thought it was his knee, and he thought it was his knee as well,” Smart said. “We thought maybe when he fell and he hit the floor that maybe when they fell on it that maybe his knee had thrust into the floor.

“But then once he got in the back and realized that it wasn’t the knee. It was more the quad. I think it scared him more than anything else, thinking right away it was the knee. Just happy that it was just a quad and a couple weeks of rest and he’ll be back to normal.”

Smart said he won’t let Evans, who is a restricted free agent at the end of the season, play in the team’s final game Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Clippers.

“No need for him to go out there and limp around or try to do anything else to that,” he said. “So it’ll be a fight between Tyreke and I. We’ll do it behind closed doors, but it doesn’t warrant for him to get out there and try to do something.”

The Thunder scored the first eight points of the game and didn’t relinquish the lead, despite losing Thabo Sefolosha and Hasheem Thabeet to two fouls apiece within the first 7 minutes. The Kings got as close as one and were down 20-16 after Evans’ layup.

“It shows that we’re improving every year, and it’s a big number,” Sefolosha said. “There’s not a lot of teams that can do it. To be a part of that group and just to get to that number, it’s big.”

Game notes

While Durant is trailing New York’s Carmelo Anthony in his bid to win a fourth straight NBA scoring title, Brooks thinks another feat would be equally impressive. Durant is trying to become the sixth player in league history to shoot at least 50 percent on field goals, 40 percent on 3-pointers and 90 percent on free throws for a season. The others are Reggie Miller, Mark Price, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Larry Bird. “To be able to score as many points as he has scored and shoot that well is pretty impressive. It doesn’t happen that often,” Brooks said. Brooks actually came close in Houston’s 1993-94 championship season, making 48 percent on field goals, 38 percent on 3s and 87 percent at the foul line. … It was the second straight April that Cousins was able to play at Oklahoma City only after a technical foul was rescinded. “You want to get it to where those things are all behind us,” Smart said, “where we don’t worry about any of those things anymore, to where we can focus on just the game and focus on the opponent.”

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