This one is simple.
The Wizards, over the last two years, came to believe in Bradley Beal more than John Wall.
And they knew if they brought Wall back as if the last two years hadn’t happened, and it was 2017 again, and he once again had the rock, that Beal would push his way out of town. Maybe not this season; maybe, even, not next season, but inevitably, he’d be gone. And if they had to pick one or the other, it was going to be Beal — who toiled last season on a bad team and had a great season, playing well enough on a 25-win team to warrant serious all-NBA consideration. He’s 27. He’s in his prime. He’s become a leader. He’s worth trying to build a franchise around.
With the opportunity to make the best possible case to Beal to stay past the end of his current deal — by no means a guarantee, by the way; if you ask me the odds he’s still here in 2023, I’d still put them at 30-70 against — the Wizards pulled the trigger Wednesday, dealing Wall and a 2023 first-round pick to Houston for Russell Westbrook — essentially, what our Shams Charania reported a couple of weeks ago was being discussed, except Washington refused to add the multiple firsts the Rockets were initially asking for along with the point guard. (The 2023 first they’re sending Houston has a whole bunch of protections for Washington that render it, essentially, meaningless to the Wizards; they’ll still have their first next year, in what will be a loaded draft. That’s the pick they had to keep.)
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the Wizards had to stop being insane. They had to move on from Wall. The only real option was Houston, which needed to get rid of Westbrook — who also wanted to be traded.
Two talented, flawed, but real talents, passing in the night.
Glad the owner listened.
In an era that craves efficient basketball, Westbrook often isn’t efficient. And he can be a handful for a team to deal with. But he wouldn’t have been available if he was perfect. What Russell Westbrook does do, night in and out, is compete his ass off. He sets a tone, a relentless one, in trying to win games. Ask yourself, if you’re a Wizards fan, if you could say that about the Wall-Beal Wizards the last few years. There are teams, like the Heat and Jazz and Nets, that have almost trademarked multiple-effort, hardnosed play, no matter the opponent. Washington was, too often, 180 degrees from that.
Were Wall and Beal talented? Yes. Did they want to win? Yes. But everyone in the NBA wants to win. To win regularly, you have to, pardon my French, give a ****, every game, no matter if you’re playing LeBron and the Lakers in a sold-out building, or the Hornets, in a half-empty one. Too often, Wall and Beal didn’t, looking at the opponent and saying “easy night.” Of course, it often became just the opposite.
Even at 32, Russell Westbrook still sweats out a few dozen gallons of ****, 82 (or, this season, 72) times a season. He averaged 27 points, 7.9 boards and 7 assists last season in Houston. He’s a nine-time All-Star and the 2016-17 NBA MVP, equaling one of sports’ most indelible, seemingly unmatchable, records: averaging a triple-double for a season in the NBA, something that hadn’t been done since Oscar Robertson, in 1962. And: Westbrook averaged a triple-double the next two seasons afterward, for good measure.
That’s a big part of “culture” — that amorphous, cliched concept that everyone in sports talks about — just, simply, competing at the highest level when the lights come on. The Wizards say they want to re-set their culture. Westbrook will help the Wizards, significantly, with that.
And a healthy Wall, even if just 80-85 percent of what he was before tearing his Achilles, could help the Rockets. He can play off of James Harden; if he was serious, as he insisted he was, that he could become more of a secondary ballhandler and catch-and-shooter with Beal, owing to Beal’s improved playmaking, he certainly can do it with Harden. Wall can get open 3s for Eric Gordon and P.J. Tucker and Harden (I have my doubts that Harden, now, will be placated and drop his own trade demand to Brooklyn or Philly, but we’ll see). And Wall can and will throw electric oops to newly-signed center Christian Wood. Houston could be a fun team to watch and a likely playoff team in the West.
I don’t know if the Wizards can get back to the playoffs led by a Westbrook-Beal backcourt. Off the top of my head: Miami, Milwaukee, Boston, Toronto, Brooklyn, Philly and Indiana look to be postseason locks, with a reconfigured Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando all in the mix with Washington for the last spot. But the Wizards aren’t going to be boring, for sure. And Westbrook, who’s only made the Finals once in his career, with Oklahoma City in 2012, is still trying to get back there.
It’s nonetheless jarring to mark the end of Wall’s decade-long tenure here in D.C., and especially the Wall-Beal divorce.
Most everyone in D.C. bought into the young guard tandem, which had so much promise and played at a level together we hadn’t seen from a backcourt in this town — no joke — since Kevin Porter and Phil Chenier. Wall was a No. 1 overall pick, often electric. The Wizards got further behind Wall and Beal, winning three first-round series and making the playoffs four times in five years, than they had in four decades. The dream was that there was another gear. But there wasn’t, not after Wall started getting slammed by injuries.
But, this wasn’t personal.
Do Wall and Beal still like each other? Yes. They’d been through too much together over eight years together, had done too much together to make the Wizards semi-relevant in the East again, and had become fathers within a couple of years of one another, not to still respect each other, as men and teammates. They saw each other Tuesday in D.C., as the Wizards reported to town for the start of individual workouts and training camp.
But did Beal want to wait any more for Wall to get back to where he was before the injuries? Did he believe Wall was as diligent about his rehab as he could have been? Did he want to go back to a supporting, catch-and-shoot role, which seemed inevitable even as Wall professed he’d play differently with Beal going forward, seeing how Beal’s game had grown the last two years?
No.
Leonsis had also come to believe that Wall was, often if not always, “too cool for school,” in his thinking. And, the shirtless video of Wall at a party this summer, flashing gang signs, was the last straw. (Again, as I wrote two weeks ago: Leonsis was a thousand percent right in being furious with his 30-year-old face of the franchise for doing such a dumb thing.) This was not a decision that could be made by GM Tommy Sheppard, or his equivalent in Houston, Rafael Stone.
“At the end of the day, this is a Ted call,” one source said.
That doesn’t mean Sheppard didn’t agree, given that Wall refused to back off his demand to be traded the last two weeks. But it’s a team’s owner that decides to trade a team’s five-time All-Star, face of the franchise and lodestar for so many people in this town. He doesn’t sign off on that. He decides to do it.
But you can read elsewhere if you’re looking for someone to take shots at John Wall on his way out of town.
A lot of people — a lot — who’ve been in D.C. more than 10 minutes, and who have roots here, came to love Wall, what he did for poor people and families in the parts of town many don’t care about. How he was clearly flawed but owned it, how he wore his heart on his sleeve and cried openly — when he signed his max extension, when his mother was sick, when a little girl he’d befriended died. And how he played in the playoffs with a broken hand, and how he led Washington to within a game of the Eastern Conference finals, and jumped on the scorer’s table after winning that Game 6 in 2017 over Boston, and how the crowd roared that night, having a legit contender in town for the first time in God knows how long, and the point guard and the crowd both hoping the night, and the feeling that washed over the building, would never end.
