The Washington Wizards have been hot and cold for the past couple of years. They have been plagued by injuries, they have changed their playing style attempting to be the Golden State Warriors without the talent, consistency or chemistry, it’s been a tumultuous few years.
In the middle of it all has been John Wall, the glue keeping the Wizards together. Imagine if Wall was gone, the Wizards would go back to being a lottery team. Wall is invaluable to the Wiz. He’s loyal too. Do you know he has spent the past three years dealing with a knee injury? He could’ve easily had surgery if needed and take out a few months but no, he continued to lead getting double digit assists and getting snubbed for All-Star and All-NBA selections.
The Vertical’s Michael Lee recently wrote about Wall, covering his health, recruiting Kevin Durant and Scott Brooks, the latter is where we’ll begin. Brooks has settled in as Wizards coach and has communicated with John Wall. So how is it going?
“He told me I haven’t reached nearly my potential,” Wall told The Vertical on Thursday after receiving the NBA Cares Community Assist Award, “and that’s something I like to hear, because I haven’t. I’ve just showed glimpses of what I can be.”
When the Wizards hired Brooks to replace Randy Wittman in April, the prevailing storyline was that the former coach of the Oklahoma City Thunderwould be able to use his close relationship with former MVP Kevin Durant to bring home the summer’s most coveted free agent.
“In my opinion, that’s not why we hired him,” Wall told The Vertical. “I feel if [Brooks] can make a pitch, and I can make a pitch and [Durant] comes, it’s great. I think we do need another star here, another great player to [get over] that next hump. You need three stars to win this league.“
Since the subject turned to KD, let’s segway to the offseason and the Washington Wizards’ chances of getting the D.C native.
In my opinion, not a snowballs’ chance in hell, but that won’t stop Wall from joining in the recruitment hunt.
“If he comes, he comes, if not, got to make other plans,” Wall said. “But that’s something I haven’t talked to him about. I’m not willing to right now. He just came off a tough series. I’m trying to give him a couple of weeks, a month off, to think about what he wants to do.”
In the article, Lee wrote that Kevin Durant and Wall are good friends and that quote definitely sounds like a friend who cares.
It also seems that everyone is literally holding back on talking Durant’s ear off until July 1st, which is interesting, certainly the calm before the storm. I’d hate to be KD’s phone come July 1st.
We move onto Wall himself, who’s priority as it pertains to himself is to get healthy from the aforementioned knee pain.
Wall’s priority is to get healthy after having procedures on both knees – the removal of loose particles from his right knee and calcium deposits from his left patella tendon. The left knee surgery, performed by orthopedic surgeon Richard D. Parker, will require several months of recovery and could affect Wall’s availability for Brooks’ first training camp with the Wizards.
But Wall is in no rush to get back after dealing with discomfort in his left knee in each of the past three seasons. “It’s something I feel like I had to do,” Wall told the Vertical. “It was painful. You watch a lot in games, I jumped off my right leg, or I jumped off two feet. I never jumped off my left leg. That’s the reason I rarely went right, because I had to jump off two feet, because this leg, I couldn’t get off of it. … Dr. Parker told me, ‘I don’t know how the hell you were able to do it.’ [Famed orthopedist] Dr. [James] Andrews told me the same thing: ‘You’re basically playing on one leg, to be honest with you.’ “
I respect the fact that he’s been dealing with it for so long. When us normal people are hurting we want to get rid of the pain in the quickest time possible. But no, athletes like Wall deal with knee problems that require two separate procedures to gain back something that was close to “healthy”. It’s crazy but admirable.
Even if John Wall doesn’t make it to training camp, as long as he makes it to game 1 of the 2016-17 season the Wizards should be happy with John Wall’s recovery.
