NBA Power Rankings: Ranking All 30 Starting Point Guards

4.  John Wall — Washington Wizards

Passer Rating:  162.53 (2nd)

Per-36 minutes:  17.6 points, 10.1 assists, 4.6 rebounds, 1.8 steals, 3.9 turnovers.  44.5% field goals, 30% 3-pointers, 78.5% free throws.

True Shooting Percentage:  52.3% (15th)

Player Efficiency Rating:  19.9 (8th)

Real Plus-Minus:  +4.3 (4th)

Wins Above Replacement:  11.63 (4th)

When I initially ran the lengthy Passer Rating formula and sorted the results, I couldn’t believe what was in front of me. Everyone is cognizant of John Wall’s acumen as a selfless point guard. Everyone is aware of Wall’s growth as a distributor with profound court vision, especially since entering the league out of Kentucky.

While all this is true, I’m not certain may would expect him 2nd in Passer Rating.

Once a reckless player in transition and out of control in halfcourt sets, Wall is already one of the league’s top four point guards you’d want on your team. Only five seasons into his career, he’s taken the time and looked for proper guidance to help him improve every summer. One impressive trait about Wall is that he approaches the game with a sensible mind during his offseason improvement. For instance, he sets specific, challenging goals for himself for the upcoming season:

Last year (including the playoffs), that would’ve been an $8,100 loss for Wall. Although he did have his greatest season as a pro and sky-rocketed by the assist charts, Wall still had an issue coughing up the ball. His 5.5 turnovers per 100 possessions — the most of his career — led to the Wizards giving away 15 possessions per game. They were 24th in the league in turnovers, and it’s never a good combination to have a slow-paced offense with a myriad of turnovers. Had they been in the same realm as Golden State when it comes to getting up and down the floor in a blur, they likely could’ve dealt with 15 per game.

Just think about this:  Had Wall not turned over the ball at such a high rate, he could’ve challenged for the No. 1 spot in Passer Rating. He was 22.27 points behind the 1st place individual, but that was with Wall coming up incredibly short in one important category.

Something to heavily value as a point guard is the percentage of your teams’ turnovers that result from your own bad passes. After calculating this, only two point guards had a higher percentage than Wall. We had Russell Westbrook racking up 17% of OKC’s turnovers through bad passes, Rajon Rondo absorbing 16.4% of Dallas/Boston’s. Then, Wall was directly behind with a 16.3% rating — anything above 12% is getting into problematic territory.

This was a strong component of the Passer Rating design. Without a high dosage of turnovers, Wall would’ve been right on the tail of No. 1 … maybe even surpassing him.

Where Wall made up for it, though, was in two distinct categories.

It was no secret that Wall experienced his best year in terms of setting up teammates (especially Bradley Beal when he was healthy) for easier scores. For the first time in his career, Wall broke the 10-assist mark in per-36 minute production. He also had the highest assist percentage of his career (46.3%), which helped him rank extremely high out of all point guards. Only Ty Lawson, a small sample of Ricky Rubio, and Chris Paul had a higher average assist percentage than Wall. So really, eliminate Rubio’s 22 games and he was 3rd overall.

What also helped Wall was that his teammates virtually shot 52.9% off his assist chances, considering he averaged 10 assists per game on 18.9 opportunities. It’s basically the same concept as field goal percentage, where you take the makes (assists) divided by the attempts (opportunities). In this case, Wall was 7th overall and it helped overshadow his turnover problem.

You can’t discuss Wall without acknowledging his defensive pressure, that’s for certain.

There is only a select group of two or three defensive point guards most of America would take on their team over Wall. Based on the way he’s advancing his game and how Washington loves to lock down under Randy Wittman, that number will likely become zero in the next two years.

For the most part, Wall stays disciplined on the defensive end. There are times where he gambles while looking for a steal, or becomes over-eager to strip the ball away instead of holding his ground, and locking up his opponent for the full 24 seconds. However, Wall has a very unique case with his game. He believes he is able  to gamble at certain times, because he’s blessed with the quickest speed of any NBA point guard. He’s not wrong with this thought, since he’s still fast enough to recover if he makes a mistake.

With an offense that’s destined to run faster this year — primarily due to small-ball lineups and playing Otto Porter more minutes — the Wizards are only giving Wall more ammunition. It’s only a matter of time before Wall’s offensive armory helps him take down the next three victims ahead.

Also, how wild is it that John Calipari has now produced a top four point guard, a top four center, and now the No. 1 power forward.

Wall, Cousins, and Davis could own the league by 2018.

Next: How Do You Stop Russ-sanity?