BOSTON (AP) Bradley Beal stood at his locker near the middle of a noisy Washington locker room and expressed a thought that Wizards' players haven't felt for a few years.

"I was sitting here after the game and talking to Glen (Rice) saying, `It's a great feeling knowing you're going to keep playing,'" Beal said after scoring 27 points to help the Wizards grab the Eastern Conference's No. 5 seed with a 118-102 win over Boston on Wednesday night.

"You don't have to go home now and not know what you're doing," he said. "It's a great thing for us to be in the situation we're in. For me being my second year, a lot of guys haven't been through it."