The Weekside: John Wall runs into a career crossroads

After five years of proving his critics wrong, John Wall is once again being doubted on the court.

The Washington Wizards were the definition of mediocre last season. Forty-one up, 41 down. Five hundred.

There are worse things to be. The Los Angeles Lakers, for example.

But for a team coming off a 46-win season and back-to-back appearances in the second round of the playoffs, this was unacceptable. Aside from spiritual leader Paul Pierce heading home to California, there was no talent exodus to explain the falloff.

Players did get hurt, and those injuries were no small hurdles to overcome. Still, this was a team that swept the Toronto Raptors in the 2015 postseason. The ceiling was suppose to be higher; the trajectory not so easily prone to pitfalls. The team had lost hard-fought series against the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference in two straight playoffs. Both went six games, and there were times in each — against the Indiana Pacers in 2014 and the Atlanta Hawks in 2015 — when Washington had the advantage.

Against the Hawks, the underdog went up 2-1, with home-court advantage — even after John Wall broke his hand. Although Atlanta looked shakier than they had all year, with such bad luck, nobody expected the Wizards to continue their postseason run. But that didn’t really matter. The message had been sent: Washington was a team on the rise. John Wall was taking this franchise to new heights. And for the first time, he had a running mate who could help take the nation’s capital by storm.

Just over a year later, however, everything has changed

The team’s lost year ended with no free-agent signings. Bradley Beal, who only played 55 games last year, is now seen as incapable of playing a full season. That, along with significant injuries to Nene and others, made for a sudden, sordid decline.

Naturally, this inexplicable drop-off is being seen as a referendum on John Wall, Basketball Winner.

Of course, onlookers have no time for such excuses. Over half the teams in the NBA make the playoffs, after all. And anyway this is the East. If John Wall is really all that, he should be able to lead even a beat-up roster well into May.

But he didn’t.

So not only is the Wizards’ climb in jeopardy; Wall’s standing in the league has taken a big hit. Worse still, doubt about his superstar status is dovetailing with — and perhaps feeding — clamor that he and Beal have an unhealthy rivalry that could threaten the squad’s chemistry and on-court success.

Both players have lately been saying less-than-helpful things to the media when discussing their relationship. “I think a lot of times we have a tendency to dislike each other on the court,” Wall told CSN. “We got to be able to put that to the side.”

Beal’s response: “It’s tough because we’re both alphas,” he said, per CSN.

This offseason — in a free-agent period that saw more money handed out than ever before — Beal signed a max contract that will pay him $128 million over the next five years. Wall, who signed his five-year, $80 million extension in 2013 before TV money changed the league’s economics, is all too aware that he is no longer the highest paid player in Washington.

So there are the on-court problems. There’s the money. And then there’s that last playoff appearance.

Against the Hawks, Beal was the high scorer in the team’s Game 1 road win, tallying 28 points. He then led the Wizards to a Game 3 win after his floor general was sidelined with injury. Albeit in a loss, his Game 4 line — 34 points, seven assists, and six boards in 44 minutes — was gorgeous.

Then in Game 6, with his team fighting for its playoff life and Wall making a triumphant return, Beal again led the stat sheet. It was another loss, and one that ended the team’s season, but Beal could hold his head high with 29 points. Wall, meanwhile, shot poorly and turned the ball over six times (while dealing out 13 assists… but still).

After that breakout series, Beal watched Wall lead a team that scuffled night after night when Bradley was hurt. They essentially took turns leading on the court — Beal in the playoffs, Wall in the regular season — with neither being impressed by the other’s ability to run the show.

It’s hardly any wonder we got to this point.

So now we have Wall displaying all the signs of a player who feels — correctly, in his case — that his reputation has been tarnished. It is an odd, rapid, wholly jarring turnaround.

Two years ago, when he guided the Wizards to the second round for the first time in a decade, Wall was silencing critics. He’d been shoehorned, alongside Russell Westbrook and Kyrie Irving, in the mold of score-first point guards whose approach ran at odds with the position’s classic interpretation. But the doubters were falling by the wayside. Most had either realized Wall was all-the-way legit, or they were smart enough to stay quiet while their case against John Wall grew thinner by the day.

No more. Back come the critics, and with a fresh cache of ammo.

Irving just took his game to unassailable heights, dropping 40 in the Finals and putting a title-winning 3-pointer in the MVP’s eye. After that, Kyrie could average 8 points, two assists, and 14 turnovers per game next year and still never have to apologize for his career.

Westbrook love is now a universal hoops truism. As non-traditional as his point-guard play might be, the triple doubles and nightly nuclear-detonation-test-site ferocity leaves no doubt about his Hall of Fame status and historic place in the game.

Even the upstart, Damian Lillard, has surpassed Wall in the consensus view. On a talent-for-talent basis, there isn’t a wide difference. But Dame spent the past season leading a ramshackle Portland Trail Blazers roster on a redemption campaign. No LaMarcus Aldridge, no Nicolas Batum, no Wesley Matthews? No problem. Dame has become the poster child for the “it” factor that basketball’s best big-game players have — and many, once again, believe John Wall lacks.

Wall seems to sense all this.

It is apparent from his comments about James Harden’s extension and the mist of insecurity surrounding his relations with Bradley Beal. His status steadily climbed during his first five seasons. Now it is in retrograde. He knows this, and it upsets him.

No individual numbers can save John Wall now.

The all-mighty consensus is beyond being impressed by gaudy stats. Wall posted career-best per-game averages in points (19.9) and assists (10.2) last year, and nobody cared.

The only numbers they saw? Five hundred. Forty-one and 41. Tenth seed in the East.

Scott Brooks is the man entrusted with righting the reins. In a different time line, replacing the Peter Principle embodiment that is Randy Whitman with Kevin Durant’s old coach would’ve been the sign of Washington’s final push for KD in free agency. Just one year ago, Wall’s franchise was hoping to convince the Oklahoma City star to follow LeBron’s path. To come home, and come home for good.

But by the time they missed the playoffs, canned Whitman, and hired Brooks, the idea of a player as good as Durant coming to a franchise as rudderless as the Wizards seemed a laughable farce.

Of course, the failings can’t be laid all, or even primarily, at Wall’s feet.

The team’s stylistic change, on top of injuries, was the single biggest issue. After years of improvement honed by forging a defensive identity, Randy Whitman tried to turn the team into an uptempo ball club.

In one year, they became the fourth-fastest team in the NBA after ranking 18th in each of the two previous seasons. It didn’t make them more dangerous or harder to defend. All it did was destroy their identity and negate their biggest strength.

With the quicker play, the defense fell from fifth-best in the NBA in 2014-15 to 14th in 2015-16. Again, injuries to some paint protectors contributed to this. But mainly, it was just a misfit style for a roster that had previously done certain other things very, very well.

A team that had a good shot of knocking off a No. 1 seed in the playoffs rolled the dice with an overhaul. It was an odd plan that was doomed by terrible execution, and the revamp failed fantastically.

What a cruel world sports can be. Even though management realized Whitman was a large part of the problem, hiring a measure more respected coach to remedy the ill, everyone knows Wall is the face of the team — the one who will continue to take the blame if things don’t improve.

If Wall wants to re-join the class of Westbrook and Irving, he’ll now have to go out and prove himself all over again.

John Wall has reached a career crossroads, one where playoff success — wins, and ones that add up to more than mere near misses — is the only way forward.