John Wall Wasn’t Happy With Marcin Gortat’s Tweet Because He Gets ‘The Most Spoon-Fed Baskets Ever’

There’s been a strange new tenor to the conversation surrounding John Wall in Washington. The injured point guard has somewhat inexplicably become the lightning rod for the Wizards’ inconsistencies this season, with the catalyst for it all has been the team’s recent five-game winning streak amid his absence.

This has happened alongside some borderline cryptic social media posts from teammates that could easily be interpreted as thinly-veiled shots at the five-time All-Star. It started with a comment by Bradley Beal about how “everybody eats” when the Wizards move the ball well, although Beal has since claimed that it wasn’t a reference to Wall.

Another one came from Marcin Gortat, who posted what would’ve been a totally innocuous tweet about a team win had it not been for the word “team” placed suggestively in scare quotes, which Wall obviously took to heart in a since-deleted reply.

Wall said in an interview with NBC Sports earlier on Tuesday that the notion that the Wizards are better off without him is laughable, and he took it a step further in an appearance on SportsCenter later in the day when he took aim at Gortat’s jab directly.

Not only did Wall claim that someone else deleted his tweet and that he stands by his original sentiment, he reminded Gortat the he’s one of the primary benefactors of his passing abilities, saying that he gets some of the “most spoon-fed baskets ever” at the end of his comments.

In an era when passive-aggressiveness is the modus operandi for dealing with interpersonal conflicts in NBA locker-rooms, Wall’s bluntness is refreshing, but it’s probably not going to help matters much. The real test will come when Wall returns to action, at which point he’ll be tasked with unifying his team — with or without Gortat, whose name has popped up in trade rumors — and maintaining their momentum in the second half of the season as they prep for what they hope to be a deep postseason run.