Point guard coming off 38-point performance In the final three minutes of the first half of Saturday’s 103-90 loss to Philadelphia, Wizards point guard John Wall went to the bench with just six points, three assists and seven turnovers.
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After struggling with his shot and decision-making in the first 11 games of the year for the Wizards (1-12), it was time for Wall to sit, watch and think.
A game and a half later, Wall responded with the best basketball of his sophomore NBA season.
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“Yeah, I’m still worried about losing, and I want to win games,” Wall said after setting a new career high with 38 points, and adding eight assists, six rebounds and four steals in Monday’s 114-106 loss to the Houston Rockets. “I’m just going out there and playing basketball. It’s still on my mind that we’re losing tough games and losing games we could’ve won, and some of them we just got blown out by not playing hard. But I just gotta go out there and play basketball and try to produce to the best of my ability.”
Harkening back to his triple-double (19 points, 13 assists, 10 rebounds) against the Rockets as a rookie, Wall hit 13 of 22 shots for his best shooting performance of the season (59.1 percent) while recording eight assists and just two turnovers, one of which should’ve been a kicked ball against Houston guard Kyle Lowry.
Wall picked up a quick technical foul on that play but went on to score 18 points in the fourth quarter, raising his season averages to 15.2 points, 7.2 assists and 37.8 percent shooting.
“I think it was funny, at the same time you’d hear people saying I was shooting too much,” Wall said. “And then you hear people say I’m not running the team. I’m doing the best I could, just trying to find people and do the same things I did last year.”
Since his benching at the end of the first half Saturday, Wall has put up 51 points, 14 assists and 14 rebounds. He’s played with his head up on the fast break, launched his jump shot without a pleading hopefulness and risen above the distractions of a team seemingly unable to break free of its losing ways.
“We were demanding and I think John responded,” Wizards coach Flip Saunders said. “I think our players need that, to understand that. Not just to let them continue to play through their mistakes where there’s no consequence for playing through those mistakes. To John’s credit, he took that and really took it as a challenge.”
Saunders has a similar task in trying to reach JaVale McGee. Two nights after a stellar 23-point, 18-rebound game against the 76ers, McGee watched the final nine minutes of the Rockets game due to his ineffective defense, an effort made worse by his off-the-backboard dunk in the third quarter.
“I don’t know if he understands [why he was benched] or not, but we have to still continue to do that,” Saunders said. “I’ve always said in coaching, they may not understand it now, but eventually it’ll kick in, but they’ll understand it probably when they’re done playing.”
