The Amazingly Sucky March and April John Wall thread

[hands11]

Did he have a good game last night? They won so by your view that should be another good game, right?

JJ, for the record....what would you do with Wall at this point if you were part of the FO?

Not really. It was a better than average performance for him.

I think the FO is stuck. Can't get any sort of value for him in a trade but I'd certainly stop planning the entire franchise around him when it's clear he's not "that guy".

They don't need him to be "that guy" He just needs to be the best John Wall he can be. He needs to manage the game. Break when he can. Pass to the open player. And add a jump shot from the top of the key where he is wide open.

Good teams have more then "the guy" Chicago for all the attention Rose gets, has a team a good players. Boozer is a very good player. So is Noah. So is Deng. But without Rose or Deng, get got them. With both, they would have won even if we had Nene.

The more good players we add, the more Wall can learn to be a winning PG. Next year is the big year for him. And in two years we will see where his ceiling could end up.

Here is the link to his video interview. Looks like after a good win, he is able to talk slower.

http://www.nba.com/wizards/video/2012/04/17/VID00035MP4-2069115

[Knighthonor]

Not even Michael Jordan can get a team like this, a championship! what makes any of you assume John Wall can?


Anybody catch pun there?

[jivelikenice]

Did he have a good game last night? They won so by your view that should be another good game, right?

JJ, for the record....what would you do with Wall at this point if you were part of the FO?

Not really. It was a better than average performance for him.

So when he plays a very strong game v. the Pistons for example, he gets no credit because they lost. And when he plays a avg game but makes some clutch passes(amazing since he has no real pg skills )to win the game he also didn't play well. Dude just can't win.

[JonathanJoseph]

They don't need him to be "that guy" He just needs to be the best John Wall he can be. He needs to manage the game. Break when he can. Pass to the open player. And add a jump shot from the top of the key where he is wide open.

Good teams have more then "the guy" Chicago for all the attention Rose gets, has a team a good players. Boozer is a very good player. So is Noah. So is Deng. But without Rose or Deng, get got them. With both, they would have won even if we had Nene.

The more good players we add, the more Wall can learn to be a winning PG. Next year is the big year for him. And in two years we will see where his ceiling could end up.

Here is the link to his video interview. Looks like after a good win, he is able to talk slower.

http://www.nba.com/wizards/video/2012/04/17/VID00035MP4-2069115

But they are treating him like "that guy". They are making all of their personnel moves assuming that he's "that guy". That's my frustration! If they weren't building the franchise around him it wouldn't be a problem.

[JonathanJoseph]

Did he have a good game last night? They won so by your view that should be another good game, right?

JJ, for the record....what would you do with Wall at this point if you were part of the FO?

Not really. It was a better than average performance for him.

So when he plays a very strong game v. the Pistons for example, he gets no credit because they lost. And when he plays a avg game but makes some clutch passes(amazing since he has no real pg skills )to win the game he also didn't play well. Dude just can't win.

But you are equating big points or assists to a very strong game and I'm telling you that it supports my theory that whenever Wall's usage rate is that high the Wizards lose.

And if you are referring to the Bulls game, let's be quite clear that Kevin Seraphin won that game by dominating the paint at both ends. You might even say the Wizards were able to overcome Wall's -13 on/off and .333 shooting to get the win.

[hands11]

They don't need him to be "that guy" He just needs to be the best John Wall he can be. He needs to manage the game. Break when he can. Pass to the open player. And add a jump shot from the top of the key where he is wide open.

Good teams have more then "the guy" Chicago for all the attention Rose gets, has a team a good players. Boozer is a very good player. So is Noah. So is Deng. But without Rose or Deng, get got them. With both, they would have won even if we had Nene.

The more good players we add, the more Wall can learn to be a winning PG. Next year is the big year for him. And in two years we will see where his ceiling could end up.

Here is the link to his video interview. Looks like after a good win, he is able to talk slower.

http://www.nba.com/wizards/video/2012/04/17/VID00035MP4-2069115

But they are treating him like "that guy". They are making all of their personnel moves assuming that he's "that guy". That's my frustration! If they weren't building the franchise around him it wouldn't be a problem.

What moves are they making around him. He is there PG. They have plenty of other holes to fill so they are doing it. They needed to upgrade in the post so out with McGee and Nick, in with Nene.

So now they have Centers and PFs and a PG but the need SGs and SF. That is where the bigger holes are so that is what they should address next. in 2 years if they have all of that addressed and Wall hasn't fixed the things that he needs to fix, then you can look at moving him. But with other bigger issues to address, there is no need to address one that still looks like a viable option. Give the kid a summer of work and then revisit the issue mid next season. Now is not the time to move him, that much is clear.

[Ed Wood]

I've been quite consistent in calling Wall's statistics fools gold. Wall racks up a lot of points and assists because he's athletic and he forces the action but on the whole it results in a lot of turnovers and bad basketball. How many of those games where Wall goes off for 30 have the Wizards ever won? Probably close to zero. It's a pretty straightforward hypothesis well supported by the statistics.

Though I'm not entirely sure what your position is precisely with regard to Wall (you're just about unremittingly negative about him but don't quite out and out call him terrible) I think presentation plays more than a little part in the ire generated by your stance. There's no question that Wall still has a great deal of work to do to really be what he was ordained to be but partially because there's very little for Wizards fans to self-associate with positively at this point and so there's a tendency to be a bit defensive about Wall and partially because you present your arguments as very cut and dry and supported by the balance of evidence when it often seems you're starting with a conclusion and then sifting through available data to fit it to that end.

In this instance, for example, you say that the team tends to do better when Wall doesn't have enormous scoring nights. I don't actually disagree, but I don't take that as such a clear cut indictment of Wall. Wall tends to score less and pass more when the team around him isn't hot garbage. Those twelve assist nights when he keeps his shot attempts in the single digits tend to coincide with nights that guys like Roger Mason Jr and Cartier Martin play like legitimate NBA players. You've made the case that based on his draft position it's Wall's obligation to coax that sort of performance out of very marginal guys regularly but it seems to me that's much more the case that management needs to do a better job of putting a half decent roster together.

So I agree with you, Wall is not a superstar, he's not capable of carrying a team through a rough night, certainly not consistently anyway. But strip him of the trappings of "franchise savior" and he's a very young and enormously talented man who's already an above average NBA player and at times a great one. He's paid modestly for what he does, as are all good players on rookie contracts and he has deficits that are so readily apparent that if he's willing and able to do so he can still improve a great deal.

So, in large part because you're perfectly legible and fully capable of being worth reading when you're not carrying out your crusade please, continue to be critical and to counterbalance some of the excessive largess Wall is granted here. Just as the depressed tend to have a more accurate sense of self because their self esteem doesn't warp things you are correct that many here have a blind spot when it comes to Wall, but do so less acerbically and try to work on your tendency to cherry pick statistics and exclusively shop for off of the rack negative conclusions when using them (that's more of a personal thing, you are causationing your correlations all over the place) and let's enjoy having each other around. I mean **** man, this is a diversion, our souls can very well be beaten down by the real world.

[montestewart]

Not even Michael Jordan can get a team like this, a championship! what makes any of you assume John Wall can?


Anybody catch pun there?

roflmfao

[montestewart]

I've been quite consistent in calling Wall's statistics fools gold. Wall racks up a lot of points and assists because he's athletic and he forces the action but on the whole it results in a lot of turnovers and bad basketball. How many of those games where Wall goes off for 30 have the Wizards ever won? Probably close to zero. It's a pretty straightforward hypothesis well supported by the statistics.

Though I'm not entirely sure what your position is precisely with regard to Wall (you're just about unremittingly negative about him but don't quite out and out call him terrible) I think presentation plays more than a little part in the ire generated by your stance. There's no question that Wall still has a great deal of work to do to really be what he was ordained to be but partially because there's very little for Wizards fans to self-associate with positively at this point and so there's a tendency to be a bit defensive about Wall and partially because you present your arguments as very cut and dry and supported by the balance of evidence when it often seems you're starting with a conclusion and then sifting through available data to fit it to that end.

In this instance, for example, you say that the team tends to do better when Wall doesn't have enormous scoring nights. I don't actually disagree, but I don't take that as such a clear cut indictment of Wall. Wall tends to score less and pass more when the team around him isn't hot garbage. Those twelve assist nights when he keeps his shot attempts in the single digits tend to coincide with nights that guys like Roger Mason Jr and Cartier Martin play like legitimate NBA players. You've made the case that based on his draft position it's Wall's obligation to coax that sort of performance out of very marginal guys regularly but it seems to me that's much more the case that management needs to do a better job of putting a half decent roster together.

So I agree with you, Wall is not a superstar, he's not capable of carrying a team through a rough night, certainly not consistently anyway. But strip him of the trappings of "franchise savior" and he's a very young and enormously talented man who's already an above average NBA player and at times a great one. He's paid modestly for what he does, as are all good players on rookie contracts and he has deficits that are so readily apparent that if he's willing and able to do so he can still improve a great deal.

So, in large part because you're perfectly legible and fully capable of being worth reading when you're not carrying out your crusade please, continue to be critical and to counterbalance some of the excessive largess Wall is granted here. Just as the depressed tend to have a more accurate sense of self because their self esteem doesn't warp things you are correct that many here have a blind spot when it comes to Wall, but do so less acerbically and try to work on your tendency to cherry pick statistics and exclusively shop for off of the rack negative conclusions when using them (that's more of a personal thing, you are causationing your correlations all over the place) and let's enjoy having each other around. I mean **** man, this is a diversion, our souls can very well be beaten down by the real world.

Couldn't have said it better (literally, not as good a writer). Maybe Wall will never be much better than the average of what I see, but I see enough wrong with this season--no summer prep, super-short camp, lousy team, no shooters, no solid vets, coaching turnover--that I sure want to see what would happen with Wall in a season without most of that. I'm more inclined to believe that Wall will be worth a lot more next year, either as piece of the team or in trade, than he is right now. And if not, on to plan X.

[miller31time]

Not even Michael Jordan can get a team like this, a championship! what makes any of you assume John Wall can?


Anybody catch pun there?

roflmfao

[hands11]

Excellent post Ed. Well written.

I will say this though. The part about high scoring number of shots in wins vs losses. Go back a few pages. I think it is in this thread. I posted all the start from win and loses. About 10-12 shots was a sweet spot for him though there were games he shot more and didnt score but they still won. There were also a few he score high and they won. But they won more game when he was not really a scoring factor.

John has shown some tendencies to want to be the guy and taking shots even though they were in the game late without him...and he was off the entire game. Some call that hero ball and they hate when Crawford does it so John should not get a pass. His ego is writing checks he can't cash.

But I'm pulling for the kid. I think Nene is really going to help him. I hope they retain some Mo Evans and Mason types. Wall needs those kind of vets around him to help him grow into one himself. I screamed what a mistake it was to make him a captain before he even took his first NBA dribble. Everyone has to earn there way. Even the #1 pick. So now the team need to repair that mistake and help him go through the right process. Again, having Nene here will help a ton. This will be as much his team as it is Walls. Bring in another top 5, and the stage will get shared by even more players. Specially if that player is a SF or SF.

[hands11]

Not even Michael Jordan can get a team like this, a championship! what makes any of you assume John Wall can?


Anybody catch pun there?

roflmfao

Ok. I'm not getting it. What am I missing that was so funny?

[Knighthonor]

Wtf John Wall drafted into Kuwait league
http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/1/12 ... it-bullets

[GhostsOfGil]

Weird... That was one hell of a dunk tho.

[Illuminaire]

Once again Ed wins points for understanding and eloquently expressing about fourteen different sides to one issue.

[JonathanJoseph]

I've been quite consistent in calling Wall's statistics fools gold. Wall racks up a lot of points and assists because he's athletic and he forces the action but on the whole it results in a lot of turnovers and bad basketball. How many of those games where Wall goes off for 30 have the Wizards ever won? Probably close to zero. It's a pretty straightforward hypothesis well supported by the statistics.

Though I'm not entirely sure what your position is precisely with regard to Wall (you're just about unremittingly negative about him but don't quite out and out call him terrible) I think presentation plays more than a little part in the ire generated by your stance. There's no question that Wall still has a great deal of work to do to really be what he was ordained to be but partially because there's very little for Wizards fans to self-associate with positively at this point and so there's a tendency to be a bit defensive about Wall and partially because you present your arguments as very cut and dry and supported by the balance of evidence when it often seems you're starting with a conclusion and then sifting through available data to fit it to that end.

In this instance, for example, you say that the team tends to do better when Wall doesn't have enormous scoring nights. I don't actually disagree, but I don't take that as such a clear cut indictment of Wall. Wall tends to score less and pass more when the team around him isn't hot garbage. Those twelve assist nights when he keeps his shot attempts in the single digits tend to coincide with nights that guys like Roger Mason Jr and Cartier Martin play like legitimate NBA players. You've made the case that based on his draft position it's Wall's obligation to coax that sort of performance out of very marginal guys regularly but it seems to me that's much more the case that management needs to do a better job of putting a half decent roster together.

So I agree with you, Wall is not a superstar, he's not capable of carrying a team through a rough night, certainly not consistently anyway. But strip him of the trappings of "franchise savior" and he's a very young and enormously talented man who's already an above average NBA player and at times a great one. He's paid modestly for what he does, as are all good players on rookie contracts and he has deficits that are so readily apparent that if he's willing and able to do so he can still improve a great deal.

So, in large part because you're perfectly legible and fully capable of being worth reading when you're not carrying out your crusade please, continue to be critical and to counterbalance some of the excessive largess Wall is granted here. Just as the depressed tend to have a more accurate sense of self because their self esteem doesn't warp things you are correct that many here have a blind spot when it comes to Wall, but do so less acerbically and try to work on your tendency to cherry pick statistics and exclusively shop for off of the rack negative conclusions when using them (that's more of a personal thing, you are causationing your correlations all over the place) and let's enjoy having each other around. I mean **** man, this is a diversion, our souls can very well be beaten down by the real world.

Thanks for the take, Ed. I appreciate the comments and especially the criticism. Despite what many would believe, I'm quite open to critical feedback and take it to heart, it's just that most of the criticism directed towards me usually comes wrapped in cheap insults and otherwise disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. That I don't take too seriously. I'm opinionated and, for the most part, don't apologize for that.

I think we'd agree to disagree on some of the edge cases. My concern is that Wall will never be a winning basketball player in the NBA, much in the same way that people are concluding that another Calipari product, Tyreke Evans, puts up big numbers in a mostly losing cause. My position is that I have a grave fear that he is a bust, but it's too early to draw any conclusions so I hold off on that.

What you get from my posts is that I don't like watching Wall play. The same way that Nick Young could go off for 35 on any given night but you knew that it was bad basketball and that he wasnt' going to be a winning player. Same thing with Javale McGee and his big statistical nights and highlight reel plays. I've coached basketball and played so much basketball that my knees were shot by my early 30's, and just as I ran my mouth at the ultra-talented guy who hogged the ball and took bad shots, I have a similar visceral reaction to watching Wall play bad basketball. Which he does on a nearly nightly basis. It's really not a pre-determined conclusion, it's just that I see the same bad basketball repeatedly from him. I have been positive about his play after games, it's just only happened 4 or 5 times.

Yeah, it's just sports, but let's not kid ourselves, if you're still following this moribund franchise it means something to you for whatever reason. I've been stuck in a personal sports hell, being a Wizards fan, Redskins fan (hello RG3!) and a Tulane alumni (worst run athletic department in the country bar none). Sorry if my disappointment in feeling like I was sold a bill of goods on Wall spills over. But more than anything, I hope to get enough people asking questions that the franchise stops acting like Wall is "that guy" who we can build around. I don't want to spend the next 5-7 years of my life cheering for a team with a strategy doomed to failure.

[Ed Wood]

Okay, while that's not an opinion I share I can certainly understand taking a negative tack if you're at the point where you don't enjoy watching Wall play. Not to reduce your frustrations to cognitive gymnastics but once you've reached the point as a fan where you don't want to root for a player the lengths to which you'll go to loath that player are amazing.

I'm obviously there with Andray at this point; strong play from him would simply be further cause for him to view himself as in some way an acceptable NBA player, or, far worse, provoke similar thoughts in the front office. I also was that way about Antawn at the end, disgusted by his truly unique offensive skills because of his defense and his amazing ability to avoid creating assists and his thoroughly snobbish treatment of the team's young players (which in retrospect might not have been the gross injustice I was very sure it was). It's relaxing to watch him play now because I can simply appreciate the artistry in some of his shots without finding grounds to take offense.

Anyway, generally try to post on a wider range of topics. I don't recall your stance in any other particular being anything other than eminently reasonable but even if that's not the case you're sort of "that guy" about Wall and more varied content would make your views on Wall seem a little less like your one tune.

And I'm also with hands in that I'm not sure I see how the team has actually built its roster around Wall to a significant extent. Certainly the team's public identity, its advertising and media profile, are very much centered around Wall but other than not seriously looking to replace or challenge him with an alternative I don't see all that much that's been done to use him as a cornerstone. The one move that smacked of a "because we have John Wall" decision was the Vesely pick.

I find the apparent lack of interest in the information and more broadly the kind of evaluation and thinking that identified Vesely as a prospect of somewhat unassuming prospects more worrying there. Beyond that the way the roster has been put together hasn't dazzled but I don't see many failings that center around a Wall-centric mentality, just a combination of a "because we are rebuilding it is imperative that we be bad" and less premeditated poor management. Changes in that area are my own panacea of choice.

[JonathanJoseph]

Okay, while that's not an opinion I share I can certainly understand taking a negative tack if you're at the point where you don't enjoy watching Wall play. Not to reduce your frustrations to cognitive gymnastics but once you've reached the point as a fan where you don't want to root for a player the lengths to which you'll go to loath that player are amazing.

I'm obviously there with Andray at this point; strong play from him would simply be further cause for him to view himself as in some way an acceptable NBA player, or, far worse, provoke similar thoughts in the front office. I also was that way about Antawn at the end, disgusted by his truly unique offensive skills because of his defense and his amazing ability to avoid creating assists and his thoroughly snobbish treatment of the team's young players (which in retrospect might not have been the gross injustice I was very sure it was). It's relaxing to watch him play now because I can simply appreciate the artistry in some of his shots without finding grounds to take offense.

Anyway, generally try to post on a wider range of topics. I don't recall your stance in any other particular being anything other than eminently reasonable but even if that's not the case you're sort of "that guy" about Wall and more varied content would make your views on Wall seem a little less like your one tune.

And I'm also with hands in that I'm not sure I see how the team has actually built its roster around Wall to a significant extent. Certainly the team's public identity, its advertising and media profile, are very much centered around Wall but other than not seriously looking to replace or challenge him with an alternative I don't see all that much that's been done to use him as a cornerstone. The one move that smacked of a "because we have John Wall" decision was the Vesely pick.

I find the apparent lack of interest in the information and more broadly the kind of evaluation and thinking that identified Vesely as a prospect of somewhat unassuming prospects more worrying there. Beyond that the way the roster has been put together hasn't dazzled but I don't see many failings that center around a Wall-centric mentality, just a combination of a "because we are rebuilding it is imperative that we be bad" and less premeditated poor management. Changes in that area are my own panacea of choice.

It's certainly possible, but I don't think I'm playing any cognitive gymnastics with my take on Wall. For example, the game-clinching assist versus Chicago came when Wall forced the issue to the degree that he was literally falling down he was so out of control. What PG is playing out of control and rushed when he should be trying to milk the clock with a late game lead? That's not cognitive gymnastics, that's literally the last basketball play from Wall to go on and it prompts my reaction (and yes I'm aware that it did end up as an assist and dunk on the play that clinched the game).

Since most seem to forget, you can read through the Seraphin thread and find that I've been pretty high on Seraphin for quite some time, and certainly was of that opinion while others were openly questioning his ability to stay in the NBA. I was dead wrong about Blatche and had a mostly wrong opinion about EG, but that's a trickier issue. In any of the cases, I'm on the record about plenty and I'm not afraid to take the less popular point of view. In the case of Wall, I sure hope I'm wrong.

The good news is I assume we'll finally have new basketball leadership and be able to discuss a new direction and a new organizational culture soon. Hopefully we won't have to spend our time engaged in mostly negative conversations about an organization that has been nothing but negative for many years now. Winning solves a lot.

[montestewart]

For example, the game-clinching assist versus Chicago came when Wall forced the issue to the degree that he was literally falling down he was so out of control. What PG is playing out of control and rushed when he should be trying to milk the clock with a late game lead? That's not cognitive gymnastics, that's literally the last basketball play from Wall to go on and it prompts my reaction (and yes I'm aware that it did end up as an assist and dunk on the play that clinched the game).

Such has been your impact around here that I was literally thinking something like, I'll bet JJ loved that one, on that and certain other plays.

[DallasShalDune]

CCJ, Walls counterpart PER has been good both years. That's far from a perfect stat, but it answers some of your questions.

JJ, you are basically establishing a no-win scenario for Wall... which is why a significant number of us have come to believe you are deeply biased and unwilling to take a balanced view of the situation.

I've been quite consistent in calling Wall's statistics fools gold. Wall racks up a lot of points and assists because he's athletic and he forces the action but on the whole it results in a lot of turnovers and bad basketball. How many of those games where Wall goes off for 30 have the Wizards ever won? Probably close to zero. It's a pretty straightforward hypothesis well supported by the statistics.

Also, it's quite possible that I'm the one with the balanced view of the situation and "a significant number of you" are wearing Bullets-red colored glasses. Just sayin...

Fair and balanced?