Wall underwent surgery today to repair a torn Achilles, suffered when he slipped and fell at his home. This was while recovering from heel surgery he had on 29 December 2018.
Wall should miss not only the rest of this season, but likely all of next season. Then again, the 12 month recovery should have him back just before or after next year’s trading deadline. Still, does anyone really expect the Wizards to be buyers this time next season? In fact, they may empty the shelves faster than the Cleveland Cavaliers are in the midst of doing right now.
Please do not regale me with Wall being a five-time All Star. Being named an All Star in any of the major professional sports says more to marketability than performance. The fact that Dirk Nowitzki and Dwyane Wade are in this year’s group tells you about all you need to know in regards to validity.
The Wizards are 22-31 after last night’s loss to Atlanta, and 2018-19 may end up being their first sub-.500 season since Wall’s arrival in 2010. The Wizards with already their cornerstone player in place, drafted Bradley Beal third overall in 2012. The hope was that this would be the next great backcourt in NBA history. Despite making the playoffs four of the last five years, the Wizards have yet to get past the second round.
That LeBron James guy who used to play in Cleveland may not have had a direct hand in the Wizards’ playoff woes, but those last four years were after he came back home. Ironically, the Beal/Wall combination was put together to combat the James/Kyrie Irving duo the Cavaliers had in place. Remember that the Wizards were also bounced out of the first round three straight years from 2006-08 when James was in Cleveland the first time around.
Wall and Beal were involved in trade rumors earlier this season, despite the East being ripe for the pickings after James went West. Wall cannot be dealt while on injured reserve, and signed a 4-year/$170 million extension this past offseason.
The injury means that Wall will have played only 73 games since the start of the 2017-18 season, and earned $75 million in that span (credit to Spotrac.com).
Otto Porter’s 14 points a game is sure not going to make up for Wall’s absence, assuming he's still in the District by the end of the season. The Wizards are certainly going to try and sell off as many pieces as possibly before Thursday’s 3:00 PM eastern trading deadline. The first piece likely to move is going to be Beal. Owner Ted Leonsis certainly would like to have fans in seats for home games of his basketball team, but it’s his defending Stanley Cup Champion-winning Washington Capitals that are set up for a more sustained run of success.
This opens the doors for any other team to essentially offer up whatever they want to get some complimentary pieces for the stretch run, and even into next season. Some might argue that the Wizards should be able to be buyers, since Wall’s salary cap hit of $19 million this year, and $37.8 million next year are about to be prorated, if not next year’s hit to come off the books completely.
For a team trying to build enough talent to beat LeBron, they sure copied the blueprint of what not to do once your franchise player is not in uniform, and you have no salary cap room to do anything about it.
-JC24