Rivers: Wizards' woes can be cured with sustained effort

The Washington Wizards dropped to 2-8 on the season with Tuesday's 119-100 loss to the Dallas Mavericks, once again looking lackadaisical two days after getting a rare win against the New York Knicks.

The Mavericks outscored Washington 70-49 in the first half before the Wizards edged Dallas 51-49 over the final two quarters, leading backup point guard Austin Rivers to pin his team's loss on a lack of effort in the opening 24 minutes.

"I thought we played real cool in the first half," Rivers said, according to ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "Cool gets you Ls. There's nothing cool about losing. Maybe we thought, 'Oh we won finally (Sunday vs. the Knicks). It's just going to click for us now because we're talented.' Like it's hard to get wins in the NBA. Unless you're the f-----g Warriors. For everybody else it's hard. You've got to compete every night."

Rivers deflected criticism away from head coach Scott Brooks who, along with John Wall and Otto Porter Jr., has taken much of the heat for the Wizards' poor start.

"It's not like coach Brooks has to figure something out," said Rivers. "You just saw, we did the same defense in the second half that we did the first half ... we were playing hard as sh--. It's that simple, bro."

The Wizards, 14th in the Eastern Conference, face the Orlando Magic on Friday.