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They told me they wanted
intimate details. What's he really like away from basketball? Spend a few hours, even a few days with John Wall as I did and you'll find there is no off-court for him. This summer, he hung with his little nephews and nieces. He plays a ton of racing video games and even says he loves to sleep. But basketball is his oxy- gen, whether it's dropping a triple-double in a summer league game against the Indy Pro-Am, or screaming at officials from the sideline of his nephew's Reebok Breakout Challenge games.
It's hard to miss John Wall. But apparently we all did. His overlooked rookie season with the Washington Wizards (16.4 points, 8.3 assists
64
and 4.6 rebounds per game) came from the same guy who was once cut from the basketball team at Needham B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C. For most of his childhood, that defined him. Back in 2007, Wall was a nobody driving 865 miles to make his name in the Reebok Breakout Challenge. This summer, he returned to the camp as the world's next breakout star.
Wall set out this summer to conquer and destroy – conquering haters in gyms across the country; destroying any more talk about being a jumper-less lead guard. With the NBA lockout raging, Wall did all of that, averaging nearly 41 points a game in