There’s a reason John Wall didn’t play in the Washington Wizards’ preseason game against the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday night. It had nothing to do with rest or injury, and everything to do with Wall being an exceptional human being.
You might recall Wall’s emotional interview last December, in which he dedicated his performance to the memory of a young girl named Damiyah Telemaque-Nelson, who succumbed to non-Hodgkin lymphoma that winter. Wall has continued his relationship with the Damiyah’s family, even becoming an advocate and supporter of non-Hodgkin lymphoma research.
That relationship is the reason Wall missed a meaningless preseason game. As Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post reports:
Wall traveled back to Washington after his team’s win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday night to participate in Saturday’s Light the Night Walk, a fundraising event benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, in honor of his “buddy” Damiyah Telemaque-Nelson who died weeks before her sixth birthday last winter.
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“He still has that personal relationship with the family of Miyah, who passed,” Wittman said after the Wizards defeated the Bucks without Wall Saturday night. “This is a back-to-back. I wasn’t going to play him anyway. And so, hey, if we got players that are committed to that kind of stuff, I don’t have a problem sending a guy back to do that in the preseason. So I give John a lot of credit. He wanted to be there with her mother and he had the opportunity to do that.”
Originally, Wall didn’t think he’d be able to attend the walk, so good on the Wizards for realizing that, preseason or not, there are more important things in life than basketball. This isn’t just some empty foundation or fundraiser Wall slapped his name on for some publicity, it’s a cause to which he as a very personal connection.
The mistake in holding athletes to a higher standard lies in the belief that their near-superhuman abilities should also give them superhuman morality. In reality, they are just ordinary people – some are good, some are bad, some are downright awful. John Wall is certainly one of the good ones, and it has nothing to do with his abilities on the court.
