John Wall would welcome a return to Wizards in offseason, per report

John Wall very nearly experienced déjà vu earlier this season when he was linked to the Los Angeles Lakers in trade rumors. A possible deal would have revolved around Russell Westbrook, who he was already traded for in 2019. That deal ultimately didn't come to fruition, and Wall's frustrating 2021-22 season continued.

The Houston Rockets point guard has not played this season. He is healthy enough to do so, but the Rockets prefer to give his minutes to their younger players. All told, he has played just 40 games over the past three seasons due to a combination of injuries and circumstances. The Lakers represented his best chance at getting his career back on track, but according to The Athletic's David Aldridge, there is another situation he would have some interest in.

One source told Aldridge that Wall would be open to a reunion with the Washington Wizards, who are suddenly in need of a point guard. Washington dealt Spencer Dinwiddie and Aaron Holiday at the trade deadline, so Wall would provide a veteran presence at point guard that the Wizards currently lack.

Unfortunately, constructing a feasible trade from a salary perspective would be extraordinarily difficult. The Wizards used most of their salary flotsam to acquire Kristaps Porzingis, whom they'd seemingly prefer to keep. Most of their other bigger salaries are necessary for other reasons. Kyle Kuzma has become an essential part of the team. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is close friends with Bradley Beal, whom the Wizards would like to re-sign this offseason. Matching salary on Wall's $47 million deal would therefore be very difficult.

There's also the matter of the original trade. Washington moved Wall in part because it thought it could do better at point guard. The Wizards know him as well as any franchise in basketball. If they really believed in his future, they likely would have kept him in the first place. For now, all of this makes a reunion fairly unlikely unless Wall secures a buyout. Never say never in the modern NBA, but there just isn't an obvious Wall destination on the trade market right now.

Comments

From Deep: At long last, Nikola Jokic's Nuggets can envision getting to the top of the mountain

Jamal Murray tore his ACL on April 12, 2021. Leading up to that night, he'd been playing at an All-NBA level for two months: In a 25-game stretch, Murray averaged 24.1 points on .509/.459/.935 shooting splits, 4.2 rebounds and 5.2 assists. He was even more efficient than he was in the bubble playoffs, and his defense had improved, too. Murray only got to play with Aaron Gordon, the Denver Nuggets' big trade-deadline addition, for five games. They won them all except the one in which Murray got injured. In 110 minutes, their new starting five scored slightly more efficiently than any iteration of the Kevin Durant-era death lineup in Golden State and defended like a top-five team. Two Nikola Jokic MVP awards later, Murray is back. So is Michael Porter Jr., who signed a five-year extension about a year ago and needed back surgery nine games into the 2020-21 season. The Nuggets remember how easily everything slid into place with Gordon in the mix. Newcomer Kentavious Caldwell-Pop...

Klay Thompson to sit out Warriors preseason games in Japan as Kerr says he needs more time to ramp-up

Klay Thompson may have returned healthy to the Golden State Warriors last season, but the scars from his two missed seasons are still quite visible. The Warriors played their first of two preseason games against the Washington Wizards on Friday and will play another on Sunday, but Warriors coach Steve Kerr said that Thompson will not be playing at all during the trip to Japan. "Just feel more comfortable giving him a little more of a ramp up," Kerr said before Friday's victory over Washington. "He's just not quite ready to play at this point just based on where, you know, we're so early in camp. We just want to be safe and make sure he gets a good ramp-up before he plays in games." Typically, so little time to ramp up wouldn't be a problem for a veteran in a preseason context. The games tend to be so low-impact and demand so few minutes out of a team's best players that they can safely jog through them. Stephen Curry and Draymond Green played 1...

LeBron James says he has 'no relationship' with Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

It's not a matter of if LeBron James passes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the No. 1 spot on the NBA's all-time scoring list, it's when. James sits just 1,326 points away from passing the Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Lakers legend, a milestone that should happen at some point this season given James is still performing at peak levels and is coming off a year in which he averaged over 30 points a night. If he averages around the same amount of points as he did a season ago for the Lakers, James could break the record somewhere in the middle of the season, assuming he stays healthy. It's a highly anticipated moment heading into the season, but in regards to LeBron's thoughts about and his relationship with Abdul-Jabbar, he didn't have much to say on the matter. Following the Lakers first preseason game Monday night, a reporter asked James what his thoughts were on the Lakers legend and if the two had any relationship, to which LeBron gave a very short answer. "No...

Crossover World

Search This Blog