John Wall is Having a Sneaky Good Shooting Season
By Ti Windisch
Despite his Washington Wizards struggling at the moment, John Wall is having the best shooting season of his career thanks to an important offensive adjustment.
John Wall really isn’t getting much national attention right now. That makes sense, for a few reasons. His Washington Wizards have struggled, and bad teams (aside from the Kobe Bryant Los Angeles Lakers) get less press. Plus, other point guards are currently hogging the spotlight.
Rajon Rondo is in the aftermath of a scandal, Reggie Jackson is everybody’s new favorite underdog, Chris Paul continues to be one of the best point guards in NBA history and Russell Westbrook is still dunking on everybody in the world.
Oh, and Stephen Curry is leading a 27-1 Golden State Warriors team en route to his second consecutive MVP award. So Wall hasn’t made too many headlines recently, aside from some charity work.
But maybe he should be. Wall is quietly having his best shooting season ever according to true shooting percentage, and he’s taking 4.3 threes per 36–another career high.
He’s not lighting the world on fire compared to guys like Curry, but Wall doesn’t need to be a sharpshooter to be great. He’s still second in the NBA in assists per game while scoring just less than 20 points a game. Wall is a pure point guard, through and through.
Except for when he isn’t. This season Wall has played 21 percent of his minutes at shooting guard, according to basketball-reference. Across his previous five seasons, Wall had never played less than 90 percent of his minutes at point guard.
It’s easy to brush that off as meaningless. Wall is better than his career average in assists per 100 possessions and has had two previous seasons in which he scored more per 100 possessions than he is now. So his numbers still show him as the same old pure point guard.
So what’s the big deal about Wall playing off-ball a little bit more?
Remember that career-best true shooting percentage? That’s coming because Wall is starting to take smarter three-point shots this season. This year, Wall is taking catch-and-shoot three-pointers at a frequency of 14.8 percent.
Before this season, Wall’s frequency for those efficient long-range shots had never been more than 10 percent.
In this GIF via GIPHY, it’s quite apparent how easy these catch-and-shoot threes have been for Wall. He’s sitting there, catching his breath while letting somebody else run the offense for a little bit, when all of a sudden he’s got the ball and a whole lot of real estate in front of him.
These situations are helping Wall in both of those regards. Not having to use his incredible speed on every single offensive possession is keeping Wall fresh for late game situations, and also improving his shooting percentages.
In clutch moments, with less than five minutes left and the score differential between the Wizards and their opponent at five or less, Wall is shooting 50 percent from the field and 37.5 percent from three-point range.
Those are great numbers, considering Wall is easily Washington’s best player and thus the one opposing teams are going to watch out for.
Wall had never had a clutch field goal percentage of better than 42.3 percent or a clutch three-point percentage of better than 30.8 percent before this year.
By finding a much better balance between running the offense and moving off-ball at times, Wall has made himself into a much more dangerous scorer.
Wall can let another gifted ball-handler like Bradley Beal–or maybe even Kevin Durant–occasionally run the show so he can gain some rest without actually leaving the floor. He’s added that spot-up shooter skill to his utility belt, which makes it that much easier to keep him on the floor with different lineups.
Washington’s best lineup via net rating to play at least 30 minutes together this season includes two point guards, Wall and Ramon Sessions. Spoiler alert: that isn’t because Ramon Sessions is some sort of amazing player.
That lineup is so deadly because it allows Wall to morph roles whenever he needs to–he can be a spot-up three-point shooter and let Sessions work, or take over himself and eviscerate the opposition in typical fashion.
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Adding that extra facet to his already complex game is going to do wonders for Wall and his Wizards going forward. Maybe he’ll even be able to snap Washington out of their early-season slump.