Washington Wizards: John Wall a Max-Level Player? ‘I Feel Like I Am’

John Wall just signed a five-year contract extension. Photo Credit: Geoff Livingston, Flickr.com

When Zack Lowe asked John Wall if Wall thought of himself as “max guy,” the answer was quite simple and straight to the point: “I feel like I am. I do, definitely.”

There honestly was not much to pull from that moment. It was a standard question and Wall gave the answer any player with his ability and upside has to give. Despite that, a few people made a big deal of it, seeing it as an opportunity to question if Wall would ever actually realize the max-contract potential he had. Wall decided to answer those questions with his play over the next month and into the season’s end. After Zach Lowe’s Q&A with Wall:

23.5 ppg, 8 apg,  5 rpg, 1.5 spg, 2.6 TOs, 46.1/37.9/78.4 shooting splits

Compare that to Derrick Rose‘s MVP season:

25 ppg, 7.7 apg, 4.1 rpg, 1 spg, 3.4 TOs, 44.5/33.2/85.8 shooting splits

You could argue that Wall put up better numbers to close out the season than Rose did during his MVP campaign–you at least have to admit that Wall was more efficient while putting up relatively similar numbers. And to be honest, though nobody was watching it, Wall was that good. He was distributing the ball at a higher assist rate than he had in his career. His actual assist number did not diverge much from his career average, but he cut down on his turnovers and ended up posting an almost respectable assist-to-turnover ratio to finish the season. And maybe most encouraging, he started to knock down jumpers at semi-respectable rate. His 3-point percentage was good on a very selective number of attempts and he even developed a sweet spot when pulling up from the mid-range.

The Wizards were 10-13 during that stretch, but showed they were more than capable of competing in the East with Wall leading the way, especially with a fully healthy roster around him. The Wizards sported the eighth-best defense during the stretch (102.7 defensive rating, per NBA.com) and were even more stifling at home (98.3). Their offense also improved from the bottom of the barrel to a passable 102.7 offensive rating, good for 19th in the NBA. Also, particular four- and five-man lineups–specifically lineups pairing Wall with Bradley Beal, Emeka Okafor and Martell Webster–were outstanding on both ends of the court. While these lineups saw limited minutes, the mammoth point differential numbers they were able to put up suggest a fully healthy Wizards lineup could be devastating on both ends of the court certain nights. Essentially, Wall played like a max-level player to finish the season. Statistically, he looked like a top tier point guard and, considering his supporting cast late in the season, had respectable success at the helm of this Wizards squad.

That does not necessarily mean the Wizards needed to lock him up as quickly as they did, though. While the deadline to sign Wall to an extension was approaching, Wall is still locked up until the end of the upcoming season. After the season Wall would become a restricted free agent, but the Wizards would have been allowed to match any offer another team gave to Wall, which could only max out at four years with a 5 percent increase in salary each (compared to the 7 percent the Wizards gave Wall with the max). Essentially the Wizards could have saved roughly $20 million and had an extra year to evaluate whether Wall was worth the max-level contract. There is always the potential of a player becoming disgruntled without an extension or a player becoming so enamored with a suitor during their restricted free agency that they sour on the team he returns to (think Eric Gordon). However, in Wall’s case there are so many question marks surrounding his game that you have to wonder whether the Wizards would have been better off waiting a year and seeing if Wall could deliver as a max guy.

Those question marks we need to see Wall deliver on mainly deal with his ability to shoot and his ceiling as an elite playmaker. Concerning his shooting, while Wall showed marginal improvement last season, he needs continue to show that type of incremental improvement going forward. Because even with Wall’s recent improvement, Wall is not shooting it well enough to demand the defensive attention a point guard needs to draw for his team’s offense to be effective and have proper floor spacing. Specifically, Wall is bad from every mid-range spot on the court except for two (the left baseline and the right elbow) and is only good from one spot (the right elbow). If smart teams force him away from that one spot Wall essentially becomes useless as a pull-up jump shooter, making it tough for him to be effective out of the pick-and-roll. It was so bad last year that some teams were playing Wall pick-and-rolls by simply sending Wall’s defender under the pick to meet him on the other side of screener. That type of defensive set up can render the screener useless while making it almost impossible for Wall to bend the defense away from the pick-and-roll action’s ancillary players so he can find them for open looks.

Wall’s inability to shoot the 3 ball will also hamper Washington’s court spacing. Again Wall showed growth as a shooter; he shot 50 percent from the corners this year. However, Wall only took 12 corner 3s over the course of the season and was so horrible above the break that teams really have no business worrying about him beyond the 3-point line. That can be a real problem for the Wizards, whose offensive inefficiency was mainly caused by a lack of court spacing. Teams can generally get along with two players on the court who cannot space the floor with their jump shot, given those two players are big men who are creative in creating space in other ways–like Kosta Koufos. Okafor and Nene are more than capable of that type of creativity and the Beal/Webster wing combo provides plenty of floor space, but Wall adds another player to the mix who cannot spread the floor with shooting. Typically speaking, it’s hard put a good offense together with three guys who cannot create space via the jump shot. Ask the Memphis Grizzlies. Wall has to develop a jump shot, both from 3 and mid-range, that opposing defenses at least have to consider defending.

Less of a concern is Wall’s playmaking ability. His ability to assist has never really been in question. His assist rates have been excellent since he entered the league: He ranked 12th in assist percentage his rookie season (35.7), 13th his sophomore year (36.2) and jumped up to fourth last year (40.7) behind only Rajon Rondo, Chris Paul and Greivis Vasquez (among players who played 30 or more games). The concern with Wall is his turnover tendencies. He was dangerously close to four turnovers per game over his first couple of seasons and still finished with more than three a game last year. That being said, Wall did show improvement this year in the turnover department and was excellent to finish the season. After March 8–when he said he deserved a max deal–Wall cut down his turnover ratio to 8.1 (down from 13.7 in 2011-12) and raised his assist-to-turnover ratio to 3.05 (up from a dismal 2.08). He’ll probably never be Chris Paul or Jose Calderon in the assist to turnover department, but if he keeps up the momentum he had going at the end of the season, his top-tier ability to distribute will be well worth the relatively small number of turnovers that come with it.

That seems to be where we are at with John Wall. If he is able to continue on the path he started paving at the end of last season, the sky is the limit for him. The question is whether he is going to continue on that path. The smart money says yes, but you have to wonder why the Wizards went all in before they had to.

One last point on Wall: here are his numbers compared Russell Westbrook over the first 164 games–equivalent to two full seasons–of their career:

Wall: 16.03 ppg, 8.03 apg, 4.4 rpg, 1.5 spg, 3.8 TOs, 41.6/22.3/78.5 shooting splits
Westbrook: 15.7 ppg, 6.6 apg, 4.9 rpg, 1.3 spg, 3.3 TOs, 40.8/24.9/79.8 shooting splits

Westbrook played every one of those 164 games in his first two seasons and his third season is when he really started to come into his own as one of the NBA’s best guards. For Wall the first 164 games took him to right around that March 8 date of this year. They seem to be on very similar career progressions and Wall started to explode statistically around the same time Westbrook took his game to the next level.

Also, Wall shares the size and athleticism with Westbrook that makes him a terror on the defensive side of the ball. In watching Wall play it is obvious he has the potential to be one of the league’s top defensive point guards as well. If Washington can get that Russell Westbrook-type of production out of Wall–maybe even more considering Wall appears to be slightly more skilled and efficient as a pure point guard–they will be more than justified in ponying up the money for their franchise point guard.