John Wall
Photo: Al Drago/AP

John is a five-time NBA All-Star, a member of all the NBA third team in the 2016-17 season, and was selected to the all-defensive team in the 2014-15 season and a top 15 player in the league before he got injured in 2018. He was the leader of the Washington Wizards and signed a 4-year contract extension worth $171 million. To give a bit of a background John Wall was selected as the number one pick in the 2010 draft by the Washington Wizards, he played his college basketball for one year at Kentucky.

In a quick to forget league like the NBA, it seems that the league has completely forgotten about the all-star in Washington. John Wall in a recent interview stated that he is feeling completely healthy and the fans are about to see the best version of him in the next season. He further stated that for the last five seasons that he had played as an all-star he has had two bone spurs in his knee and heel, but now is feeling better than ever. He has elevated his game to a level where he has convinced Bradley Beal to stay, even though the Wizards just won 45 games last year. After a recent practice that the Wizards held, John Wall’s first team practice after the injury, Bradley Beal commented that Wall added a spark that they were missing the whole year last season.

So is John Wall going to be better than he has ever been? To evaluate that we have to look at Wall’s best season. So let’s take a look back at the 2017 season where Wall averaged 23.1 points 10.7 assists and 2 steals per game, was an all-star, and a member of 3rd team all NBA. In the 2017 playoffs, he gave the fans a thriller when he almost reached superstar level when he beat the 5th seeded Atlanta Hawks with 42 points 8 assists in Game 6 of the first round. He then went on to face the top-seeded Boston Celtics and continued to impress everyone with 42 points and 13 assists in Game 2 win and in Game 6 while being down 2 points with just 7.7 seconds to go John Wall hit a 3 point buzzer-beater to take them to the 7th game of the Eastern Conference semifinals. The Celtics eventually beat them in Game 7 but the hope for the Washington team was there to succeed in the future.

So in the 2017 season, the Wizards won 49 games, made to the playoffs, and almost beat the top seed to get to the Eastern Conference Finals lead by John Wall who is having a historic playoff run averaging 27 points and 10 assists a game becoming one of only five players to do so in the history of NBA, joining the ranks of Oscar Robertson, John Stockton, Russell Westbrook, and Allen Iverson. What is even more impressive is that he averaged 27 points and 10 assists over 13 playoff games while the other four who did so had at most played 5 playoff games.

Now taking all this into consideration, what makes the return o John Wall is Bradley Beal. In 2017, Beal was still getting accustomed to playing in the NBA and was yet to make an All-Star team. With Beal now in his prime and seeing how good of a scorer he has become it would be a treat to watch them play this season. Bradley Beal averaged 30.8 points last season while being the clear number one option on the team and going against defensive schemes and opponents double teams. He has emerged as one of the most fluent scorers in the league and now with John Wall as his point guard the sky is the limit for the duo. As we saw last season the 5th seed Miami Heat won the east so the eastern conference is wide open for the taking.

Add to that healthy Wizards team and we have something very exciting on our hands. John Wall and Bradley Beal have claimed that they can convince another star to come to join them which if they play to their potential is very possible John Wall seems to be in very high spirits and has said that he is playing pain-free for the first time in 10 years and his body is ready for the whole regular season including the playoffs however long they might be.

One other considerable improvement in John Wall’s Game is his 3 point jump shot which now has a much quicker release and a source told NBC sports that he showed explosiveness while having a much better 3 point shot. Wall has always been one of the fastest and quickest guys in the NBA but his shooting has been a little inconsistent, with a much-improved shot he would be a real threat offensively. With John Wall and Bradley Beal in the backcourt, it would be really interesting to see what the Wizards do this season.