The Washington Wizards have had to do without their franchise player John Wall for about six weeks. Coach Scott Brocks adapted the capital’s system – with success:”The injury seems to be a blessing for the team’s development.
After a cold start to the season and problems in the locker room, the Washington Wizards fought their way back to home court advantage in the playoffs at the turn of the year. But then came the shock: John Wall had to undergo knee surgery at the end of January. A “cleanup”, as the PR of the wizards explained.
Without the franchise player, Coach Brooks was forced to change his game: he distributed the load over several shoulders, the focus should now be on the ball movement. And that seems to be working quite well, for example the team assistants have increased since Wall’s absence.
Since the failure of Wall, the wizards have distributed a strong 28.6 direct submissions per evening, putting them at the top of the league during this period. Previously, Wall stopped the flow of play with many dribbles (5.88 per touch) and isolations (5.3 per game). In both categories, Wall is in third place in the league in terms of frequency – but his efficiency is only in midfield. One of the reasons for this was that at the beginning of the season the Wizards”only” ranked eighth with 23.5 assists.
Wall’s negative influence seems quite illogical, considering that he has already played an average of 9.3 assists per game on his own. In addition to the positive development of Markieff Morris (1.2 to 3.3 assists), this is mainly due to three factors: Bradley Beal, Tomas Satoransky and Otto Porter Jr.
During Wall’s absence, Bradley Beal became the head of the Wizards, leading Washington in minutes (37.4), points (21.8) and assists (6.7) per game. He has the ball in his hand much more often and – despite an average of 2.2 points less per game – has developed from a 3-and-D-Guard with an extra construction kit into a primary ball handler and leader.
“The time without Wall helps him to improve further. He sees the game from a different perspective when he holds the ball in his hand so often,” said Dwayne Wade after the game between the Miami Heat and Washington.
The same could certainly be said about Otto Porter Jr. who has also left his role-player situation, is now the second option after Beal and takes over point-guard tasks. He puts up a stable 18.1 points – previously 13.5 – and only needs about two more throws. He also distributes almost three assists per game. As a result, he leads the wizards in terms of offensive rating (114.3), which he increased by almost ten points.
Unlike Kelly Oubre Jr. he’s getting along very well with the bigger part. The latter has made a great leap this season, but without the clever Wall passes he plays inefficiently. Since then, it has pulled five times off the perimeter – but only hits 29 percent.
When it comes to true shooting, he is the worst wizard behind Tim Frazier (44.9 percent) (48.2 percent). In this category Washington is led by Tomas Satoransky (68 percent), who is by far the biggest bright spot since the Wall injury. After it was clear that Wall would be out for a long time, there were rumours of Derrick Rose or Ty Lawson as immediate help, but Satoransky’s achievements prove that it was the right decision not to acquire another point guard.
It symbolizes the development of the bank, which has often been considered the weakest point of the Wizards in the past seasons. After several back-up PGs (Brandon Jennings, Trey Burke and Ramon Sessions) failed before, the sophomore now delivers.
He spends almost 30 minutes per game on the field, sets up 11.2 points (55.5 percent from the field, 51.1 (!) percent from downtown) and cleverly stages his teammates, as can be seen from his 5.7 assists per game:”He goes on the pitch every night and knows that he has to defend a good guard and accepts that,” Beal praises his teammate C.
He is certainly not a banker at the moment, but with Wall’s return he will take the bench to a new level if he can preserve his performance to some extent – especially since he won’t have to fight so often against the Guard elite of the Association any more:”When John is back, Tomas won’t be on the field for as many minutes. But his 15 to 20 minutes will be better because he’s more confident,” says Coach Brooks.
Besides Satoransky, Mike Scott, Jodie Meeks and contract owner Ian Mahinmi are also useful rotation players.
After a weak last season with the Atlanta Hawks, Scott is especially strong. The forward scores 8.7 points per game and offers spacings (40.9 percent from downtown) with a decent volume.
Parallel to the good development, Beal and Marcin Gortat fired up the suspicions that the Wizards were going through a crisis with Wall as team leader. Everybody gets touches, everybody gets litters. That keeps the informal room and camaraderie together,” Beal said:”We work as a team,” and Gortat tweeted:”Great’team’ victory,” which was seen as a stab at Wall, who hadn’t commented on it before. It could be the much larger construction site of the wizards.
It’s fitting that after the Wizards won eight of the first ten games without Wall – including victories over Celtics, Raptors and OKC – there has already been a debate about whether Washington would be better without its franchise player:”Someone who says that has no idea about basketball,” Kevin Durant told the Washington Post.
The real question should therefore be what Wall can take with him from his time-out and how the wizards integrate him into the new system. He is without a doubt one of the best two-way guards in the league, but his offensive efficiency leaves much to be desired. He has a lot of ball in his hands and takes the second most throws of the wizards, although he is one of their weakest shooters.
Over the season, he is the second worst true shooter (51.1 percent) among the wizards who have played relevant minutes. Under the basket he finishes strongly, but the values of three to ten (31.6), ten to 16 (29.3) and 16 feet to behind the triple line (29.7) are catastrophic – career tendency falling. These figures are also due to the fact that almost every second roll of Wall is a pull-up in this season. For example, after a pick’n’roll with gortat, Wall often takes a difficult midrange roll from dribbling.
It seems obvious that Wall could help the Wizards much more in another role that is more limited to his strengths – can this be linked to his ego? Questionable. However, his recent defeats have also shown that he is missing from his team, especially during crunchtime, when he has often demonstrated his qualities in the past playoffs. Even the double-OT victory against the enormously decimated Celtics does not cloud this impression.
Ultimately, it’s up to Brooks how he integrates his best player on his return, which was predicted to be just under two weeks. The coach has already set a course:”We don’t want John to change. He’s elitist. We don’t want to take his pick’n’roll. We don’t want to take his speed from coast to coast. But the other players will continue to play well and grow.”