The Washington Wizards have been on tear since John Wall had to undergo surgery to repair a lingering knee issue. They’ve gone 10-3 in his absence, which has sparked a good bit of overreaction from a certain subset of fans who believe they might better off without him altogether.
The Wizards themselves haven’t helped matters in that department. A couple of ill-conceived tweets from teammates have directly or inadvertently fed into the idea that their recent surge is a product of addition by subtraction. This mainly had to do with Marcin Gortat, who tweeted a sly comment about a “team” win a couple of weeks back, which led he and Wall to have a sit-down to clear the air.
Many think the notion that the Wizards are better without the All-Star point guard is patently absurd, and Kevin Durant is chief among that camp, as he told reporters prior to tip-off of the Wizards’ home game against the Warriors on Wednesday night.
Via Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post:
“Yeah, that’s from a bunch of people that don’t understand basketball,” Durant said after his Golden State Warriors held their shoot-around at Capital One Arena on Wednesday morning before facing the streaking Wizards. “Just make sure you guys know what really goes on.
“If you say you don’t need one of the best point guards in the league on your team, I don’t know if you should be in this league as a front office exec. You definitely need a guy like that.”
Wall was expected to miss 6-8 weeks when he underwent the procedure at the end of January, which would see him back in mid-to-late March, and so far there haven’t been any updates to that time table.
The Wizards currently hold the No. 4 seed in the East, and they’ll need some time to reintegrate Wall in anticipation of what they hope will be a deep postseason run.
