Dime is the premier basketball magazine, covering the NBA, NCAA, High School, Playground and International basketball - as well as sneakers, fashion and music.
Issue link: http://dimemagazine.epubxp.com/i/73806
off atmosphere this spring, but also to study Chris Paul. He paid enough attention to point out, "When you watch his game, he always wants to go back to the right." But Paul isn't the only player he's studied, and Wall isn't some athletic freak that gets by on his natural talent. He knows ball, and loves it. Ask him about his favorite moves – like his patented, warping spin move – and he'll break it down step by step. Ask him about his opponents. Sometimes, you don't even need to ask. He'll just start talking. Corey Allmond was a good enough bas- ketball player to set a NCAA record at Sam Houston State, and good enough to now be playing for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA's D-League. But even though Corey All- mond averaged 15.5 points a game in the NBA's jayvee league this past season, you probably don't know who he is. But John Wall does. Wall starts to tell the story from atop his perch – overlooking three crowded courts at the Red Bull Midnight Run. With Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones, Pt. II" echoing off the walls, he notices Allmond, who's here playing, raining hell from behind the three-point arc. "He don't like to miss," Wall says, before tell- ing the story from the start, how the two played each other in college, how Allmond broke a Rupp Arena record for a Kentucky opponent by making 11 triples against Wall, how, as Wall remembers, "He was double- clutching and still made it." It was a regular season game from two years ago, an automatic win that would've been forgotten even in rabid Kentucky circles just days later. Yet Wall remembered, and even recalled the screens the visitors were setting to free their shooter. Minutes later, after someone asks if Wall still wishes he had stayed another year at Kentucky, the 6-4 hang glider shrugs, yet is clearly still pissed they didn't win an NCAA Championship. They lost in the Elite 8 to an underdog West Virginia team. Why? Wall says the Mountain- eers went zone in the first half, and were too scared to man up. Wall remembers West Vir- ginia coach Bob Huggins saying he wouldn't play man. And yet Wall explained, "We lost because our three shooters started 0-22." Last summer, I spent a day with Wall at Ree- bok Headquarters in Canton, Massachusetts. A handful of standouts from Reebok's sum- mer Breakout Challenge Camp were there, and Wall spent hours going full-court, run- ning through shooting drills, and even got after it in some two-on-two games with the high schoolers. By the time I left in the late afternoon, he was still playing. As he reminded me that day, he's still young, and that means we all need a little patience, even if Wall sometimes seems so enamored with the game and so observant that we expect it all to come together immediately. "I don't think it was a disappointing season," Lowry says of Wall's play last year. "John's young. People don't understand how young John really is. He's one of the most explosive point guards we have in this league. He's up there with Russell Westbrook and D-Rose in athleticism, explosiveness and his speed." Between his work with the U.S. Select Team, as well as the time he says he'll spend this summer with one of the NBA's most famous "That's the main thing with John," he ex- plained. "Just getting him comfortable with what we're trying to do in terms of repeti- tion, repetition this summer. He's already been hard at it, and that develops your con- fidence. You see it with people throughout the NBA, guys who wouldn't be able to shoot, but just kept working at it." Wall admits nothing about this past sea- son met his expectations. But it didn't kill his confidence. "No doubt the All-Stars and individual awards, those will come soon enough," says teammate Jordan Crawford. "His thing is about leading a team to the playoffs and hopefully on beyond." Washington's season-ending six-game win- ning streak, coupled with a new, more serious approach has the fans dreaming once again. More importantly, Wall's goals for himself haven't diminished either. He can play the "WE WANT TO BE A PLAYOFF TEAM. trainers, Rob McClanaghan, Wall plans on being a new player next season. Of course, he won't be giving up the summer league circuit completely. The Wizards lockers were barely cleaned out before footage surfaced on YouTube of Wall catching a reverse alley- oop from R&B; superstar Chris Brown in L.A.'s Drew League. "This is going to be a very good summer for him going into his third year," Love says. "That's where I made my big jump. He'll have to apply himself and do everything it takes to get to the next level but he has all the tools that to be the player he wants to be and who people think he can be." In June, at a press conference announcing his return as the team's head coach, Randy Wittman said he wants to see confidence in Wall. Not just a belief in his athletic gifts, but the poise to step up and take open jumpers. 59 part of a superstar. But until he starts making jumpers, making All-Star Teams and leading the Wizards out of a nearly 30-year plague of bad basketball, he won't actually be one. "As a player," Wall says of what would make a perfect summer, "I think be where every- body expects me to be: lead my team, being a clutch performer, being a superstar. That's what I think about putting it in exact words that I need to, so I can finally lead to my superstar statement and be one of the top five point guards in the league." So Wall knows what he has to do. He knows what he wants and knows what it takes. Everyone else is simply waiting, and Wall is not about to delay it any longer. Right before this issue went to press, John Wall launched his new personal web site. Go to www.johnwall2.com for a chance to win an autographed copy of this issue.