Basketball was a sport that I didn’t get into until I was around 9 years old. When I did become interested in the sport, one player drew me to one specific team. John Wall, the Wizards point guard, was electrifying with the ball in his hands. He was faster than fast, going coast to coast in a blink of an eye. He made jaw-dropping passes nightly and usually ended up on the SportsCenter top 10 plays of the night with athletically advanced blocks on the defensive side of the ball. Here’s a highlight reel of some of his best defensive plays.
He was an all-star and one of the best players in the Eastern Conference. One of the downsides, however, was that he didn’t have a whole lot of help around him. Help arrived in 2012 when the team drafted Bradley Beal out of Florida. He was a sharpshooter who always found a way to get open for a shot. And he was a great compliment to Wall because of Wall’s playmaking ability. They quickly grew into a dynamic duo, with Otto Porter Jr. and Marcin Gortat playing very important roles as well. This Wizards group became quite competitive in the Eastern Conference and they went to the playoffs multiple seasons in a row, but would fall early in the playoffs each time. Then Porter Jr. and Gortat left, and Wall got severely injured multiple times, leading to him being traded. That left Beal as the only player remaining, and for many years as the only star on the team made the all-star teams, but he would eventually be traded as well in 2023, leading to a full-scale rebuild in D.C. Now in 2024, the Wizards have multiple high-upside young players, including Bilal Coulibaly, who I am a huge fan of, Bub Carrington, who is a Baltimore native, Alex Sarr, who was just recently the second overall pick in this past year’s draft, and Kyshawn George, who is a sharpshooter with high potential. It is a tough time to be a Wizards fan right now, as the team only has two wins so far this season and are trending towards another high pick, but I’m excited to see the team’s potential if all these young guys pan out. I don’t have as much as I used to, but check out my Wizards gear below!
