John Wall Retaliates Against the Heat: Defending His Pride or Prejudice?

When the Wizards traded Gilbert Arenas to the Orlando Magic in December, new owner Ted Leonsis and GM Ernie Grunfeld effectively handed the reigns of the franchise to rookie phenom John Wall. When they traded away Kirk Hinrich, they made John Wall the leader of the team, and role model for all his teammates, young and old.

Since Hinrich was traded to Atlanta, only Josh Howard and Rashard Lewis remain as veteran presences on the team. However, neither player has ever played the role of veteran mentor nor have they really spent enough time on the court to instill good habits into the young Wizards.

Aside from those two, the next most senior group of players would be the two longest-tenured Wizards, Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee. Not only are both players still new in the league themselves, but they also hardly resemble anything we might call ‘role models.’ On the court, they both show great potential, but neither player is polished and it is clear that both Blatche and McGee need coaching up in order to realize that potential.

So, we’re left with the sobering fact that John Wall, no more than a rookie, is the leader and mentor of his team. Wall knows that for the team to play hard, he must play hard. He has to keep up the tempo on offense and defense and he needs to get players in line, as he did when he criticized his teammates for a lack of effort after a loss last month to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Then, how does the leader of this team get caught up in something like this?

Halfway through the second quarter of tonight’s game against the Miami Heat, John Wall was ejected from the game for intentionally elbowing Zydrunas Ilgauskas in the stomach. Worse, the Wizards were up when Wall was ejected but ended up losing the game, at least in part because their rotation was reduced to seven men (including one under a 10-day contract, and several more who couldn’t get a spot in a rotation on other rosters this year) and they lost the only distributor on the team (Wall had five assists when he was ejected; the team finished with 15).

Wall’s actions are not what we would expect from a veteran leader. It is unclear if Ilgauskas intentionally elbowed Wall in the face—it did seem like ‘Big Z’ leaned forward. However, regardless of Ilgauskas’ actions, Wall’s retaliation only reinforces the immaturity of the young squad, recently plagued by immaturity and threats of violence between teammates (e.g., the Arenas-Crittenton incident, the McGee-Blatche fight).

Despite the display of immaturity and lack of forethought on the part of Wall, you have to give the kid some credit. The Wizards have been beat up and insulted all year. They are near the bottom of the standings. Of their last 10 losses, only twice was the margin of victory under 10 points (it was just nine for the other two)—and they lost by an average of 18.0 points per game.

And tonight, even though they were winning, Wall felt he was being disrespected. So, he retaliated. Was it immature? Sure. Was it stupid? Definitely. There are people that are going to call him a thug, but—by all accounts—he’s never been a problem kid since he entered college, at least.

And what happened when he retaliated? JaVale McGee came to break up the fight until Juwan Howard again shoved a well-meaning Wizard back. Flip Saunders then came to calm McGee down and verbally lambast Howard. As a fan, I’ve seen a lot of Wizards games this year. I’ve never seen McGee really care for the rest of the team like that; I’ve never seen Saunders defend any of his players.

I’m not defending Wall. What he did was wrong. If he truly was being disrespected and insulted, there are better, smarter ways to solve that problem and, hopefully, this is a one-time incident and we don’t see this kind of bone-headed behavior from any of the other young Wizards.

That being said, he made it clear that he’s sick of losing and he’s sick of being pushed around. I’d like to think that his act of retaliation wasn’t completely selfish. I’d like to think he’s not just defending himself, but also his team. They’re pretty awful right now, but the Wizards are a work in progress. And he was right not to allow anyone to insult his team like that, even if he was wrong in the way he carried it out.