Watching John Wall, Who Keeps It Moving

On the last night of games before the All-Star break, the Washington Wizards went to Milwaukee to play the Bucks. They missed more than 60 percent of their shots, including more than 80 percent of their three-pointers, and in every way earned their 28th loss, against 23 wins. It was a bad basketball game, but it was a perfect summary of a season that has so far seen the hope built over two consecutive trips to the Eastern Conference semifinals evaporate.

Key players have missed substantial time with injuries or haven't progressed to the expected degree, offseason acquisitions haven't provided the hoped-for jolts, and Randy Wittman's half-court offense has reverted to its bleakest and khakiest inclinations. The Wizards presently look less like conference-final aspirants than the unofficial line of demarcation between those teams occupying the lower end of mediocrity and the truly crummy. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Certain superstar types, in this kind of situation, have an ability to throttle back, to pass the months in a cruising virtuosity. Think of Kevin Love during his later Minnesota days, or Carmelo Anthony on some recent versions of the Knicks—playing hard, no doubt, but also in a way that communicates professional acumen more than a heartfelt attempt to turn around a doomed enterprise. These displays produce their own sort of admiration; some people are so gifted that knocking down perfectly calibrated stepback jumpers is just how they punch the clock.

One of the rare pleasures of this Washington season, though, has been the realization that John Wall does not belong to this sad group. Regardless of the surrounding circumstances, he moves like a Formula One car, all millimeter adjustments and projected angles ratcheted up by an insistent roaring speed, but on such a bummer of a team, his style and ethic of play gain extra resonance. The Wizards still have a shot at the playoffs, but you sense watching them that this chance doesn't account for Wall's unflagging energy. Washington's down year, in fact, has emphasized the fundamental character of his game. That drifting mode that other players sometimes inhabit would not so much diminish Wall as change him to something altogether different. He doesn't slow down because he can't, not even with chronic knee tendinitis and other nagging injuries that have bothered him all season.

If you were looking for a basketball game to represent true futility, you could do worse than Washington's home game against Golden State on a Wednesday evening in early February. The Warriors entered as they've entered every game this season—as pretty much the very notion of a 30-point beatdown incarnate—and the Wizards entered it as the Wizards, losers of four of their last five. On the whole, things played out as expected, with the Warriors winning the first quarter by 15 points and spending the rest of the night maintaining that distance. In the loss, though, Wall put forward a minor masterpiece: 41 points, on 17-for-25 shooting, and 10 assists.

That night, as he often does, Wall seemed to have some sort of skewed relationship with the laws of energy, like it took him more effort to stop moving than to start. He burned past a defender for a layup on one possession, and then on another got him wobbly-kneed with the threat of the drive and rose for an easy jumper. He caught outlet passes already half-turned upcourt, ready to slalom through or pass over whatever arrangement of transition defense presented itself. Late in the first half, coming off a screen face-to-face with Draymond Green, Wall spun breezily past him to the rim. The spin move has always been the ideal demonstration of Wall's personal physics—a marriage of technique and dizzying rate, ballet at a thousand beats per minute.

That these plays were largely irrelevant didn't make them any less impressive; in fact, the opposite was true. Down double digits throughout the game and below .500 on the season, Wall played like he does nightly, as if the slightest slip in his attention might prove the difference in a title run. The scope of his regular duties is almost as remarkable as the quickness with which he fulfills them. Wall gives the Wizards a burst of pace when they are slow and gets the shots up when they are befuddled. His ability to diagnose a weakside rotation even as he's leaving vapor trails across the court accounts for what little modernity the Washington offense has. The odd-couple pick-and-rolls he runs with Marcin Gortat a few times a night are a source of consistent delight, the ball dropping through the rim by way of one vrooming virtuoso and one strangely limber oaf.

Wall is currently going through a career phase that all great players, save for the truly eminent or the exorbitantly lucky, experience at some time or another. His first foray into team success has given way to his first bout of team underachieving. Five years into his professional career, he is no longer a novelty, and so he is relegated to the periphery of basketball's collective attention. He'll move back towards the center when his team gets on track and his play can do more than rustle the edges of the playoff picture, but for now, John Wall is not a name anyone tracing the throughline of this basketball season needs to pay much attention.

In its quiet way, though, this season has been a revelation for Wall, or at least an affirmation. If the general drowsiness of this year's Wizards has stalled Wall's upswing, it has also isolated his attributes. It has let us see what he looks like dredging up his own optimism and supplying his own stakes. It would be no sin for Wall to relax a bit, and it would just be a small virtue for him not to.

It's another thing entirely, though, that the option seems not to present itself at all. This doesn't make Wall some noble sufferer in a world of loafers; it speaks to something more fundamental than obligation. It seems like Wall works hard because it isn't work, because that's just the way he situates himself on a basketball court, by going everywhere and doing all he can.