John Wall, the former star point guard after recovering from serious injury, turned to the Clippers this season.
Although the scoring, assists and rebounds in a single season have reached a career low, it is the best news for him who has been on the bench for a long time to return to the game.
Recently, when talking about all kinds of bad experiences in the past in the Rocket era, Wall was full of negative emotions.
In the 2020-21 season, the main star of the Rockets, James Harden, turned the team around.
The team took advantage of the situation to trade Wall into the team from the wizard, but still could not retrieve Harden’s strong desire to leave.
Wall naturally became the team’s eldest brother, scoring 20.6 points and 6.9 assists per game, but the Rockets launched a bad pattern after Harden left, and only played the league’s worst 17-55, including 20 consecutive losses in a single season, Wall said helplessly, “In my first year in the Rockets, the team has begun to win. We are deliberately going to lose. I also started with players like Justin Patton and David Nwaba. Who can win with this shit team?”
The most important thing for a veteran like Wall who is recovering from injury is the performance opportunity. However, the rocket executives don’t think so. Wall disclosed a conversation with the head coach Stephen Silas, “They want me to play as a substitute. Sometimes it may be DNP (Die Not Play). I didn’t mean to offend him, but I asked him who should be the substitute. Last year I was the best player on the team, but he said that this was the manager’s plan. He asked me to play for 10 to 15 minutes a game, and sometimes I didn’t play. I told him that there was no way to guarantee my playing time, or let the player who replaced me win his position.”
The Rockets are completely in pursuit of high ranking draft, which also means that the young players in the team will face the frustration of losing the game as soon as they enter the league. In order to avoid the habit becoming natural, Wall also warned the rookie Jalen Green and the young point guard Kevin Potter Jr, “You have dodged everything here. If you go to other teams, you will be eliminated from the league and will never play again.” Wall tried to explain to them that he thought the two young boys were quite comfortable. If they were finally traded, he would know that he was right, “I just keep a professional attitude in the Rockets. Don’t take what happens here for granted. The NBA is not like that. The Rockets are a rotten team now. They must solve some problems and then get back on track.”