John Wall Doesn’t Want To Be Known As A Guy Who Couldn’t Get Past The Second Round


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The Washington Wizards have the most continuity of any top team in the Eastern Conference after the Cavaliers and Celtics made the blockbuster trade to swap Kyrie Irving for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, and more. With John Wall inking a max extension, Bradley Beal signed through 2021 and Otto Porter re-signed this summer, the core group will be intact for years to come and they have the most returning minutes of any top team in the East.

That figures to give them a leg up on the Cavs and Celtics early in the season to rack up some wins while they adjust to new lineups to set themselves up for landing one of the all-important top seeds in the conference. For Wall, in particular, this is the season he is expected to lead the Wizards on their first deep playoff run and truly challenge for a conference title.

Last year, Washington fell a game shy of the Eastern Conference Finals, marking the third time Wall has reached the playoffs but failed to make it out of the second round. For a point guard, playoff success is critical to a player’s legacy and Wall knows this.

In a recent interview with Wizards.com, Wall explained how he knows how important it is for both himself personally and the team as a whole to get over the hump this year, so he doesn’t catch the same stigma that’s plagued other great point guards like Chris Paul over the years.

“I just want to be in the Eastern Conference Finals and get past the second round,” Wall said. “I definitely don’t want to be one of those point guards or those guys that never could get past the second round. I think get to the Eastern Conference Finals and then it’s the first team to four gets a chance to be in the Finals. You couldn’t ask for more than that. We were one game away.”

Entering his age 27 season, Wall knows his just starting to get into his prime years. However, opportunities to reach the Conference Finals or beyond aren’t guaranteed, and looking at the Eastern Conference you’d expect this year and the year after to be some of the Wizards’ best chances, health pending.

Chris Paul’s career has, unfortunately, been defined by his lack of playoff success. In any discussion of Paul as one of the league’s best point guards of the current era, there’s inevitably someone that brings up his inability to get past the second round of the playoffs. This year figures to be Paul’s best chance too, as the Rockets have become the apparent No. 2 team in the West behind the Warriors. Wall hasn’t reached that point quite yet, but a few more years of playoff struggles would make that chatter grow louder and he wants to nip that in the bud in 2017.

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