Can John Wall Lead the Washington Wizards to the NBA Finals?

John Wall led the Washington Wizards to it's highest win total since the 1978-79 season with 49 wins last year. They made it through the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the playoffs in six games, but then lost a seven-game series to the Boston Celtics in the eastern conference semifinals.

It was a banner year for the 26-year-old floor general. Wall finished the season with career highs in points (23.1), assists (10.7), steals (2.0), and field goal percentage (45.1%). After making his fourth straight all-star appearance, the Wall received a monstrous contract extension. Washington gave their franchise player $170 million through the 2023 season, on top of the $37.1 million Wall is owed through the 2019 season from his previous contract signed in 2014.

That's a lot of money. It's very well deserved, but that's a huge contract for a player that probably won't be the best player on a championship team in today's NBA. I don't think there's a team out there that wouldn't do the same thing as Washington in that situation, but Wall will not be able to lead the Wizards to the finals the way they are constructed moving forward.

In the past two summers, the Wizards have committed a lot of money to their core. Bradley Beal signed a five-year extension last year for $128 million, and Washington matched Otto Porter's four-year $106 million offer sheet that he signed with the Brooklyn Nets. Beal is definitely worth the money he received, and while Porter might be a bit overpaid, the Wizards had to retain him given their inability to replace a player of his caliber.

Washington has some bad contracts on their roster in Ian Mahimni and Marcin Gortat, and the main thing keeping the Wizards from making it to the finals is the fact that they are built around Wall as the best player. Wall is an exceptional talent, but the Wizards would have a better chance at winning a title if they tried to maintain cap flexibility.

Signing a 30-year-old Gortat to five-years $60 million, and a player in Mahimni that played over 20 minutes per game once in his careerfour-years $64 million is not how you maintain cap space to give Wall another all-star level player on the floor. If Washington avoided those contracts, they wouldn't have been forced to overpay Porter because they'd have the cap space to go after higher caliber players like DeMarcus Cousins, Gordon Hayward, and Blake Griffin.

So here we are. The Wizards owe a ton of money to three players that won't get them a championship until after the 2021 season. What's worse, is that the core of Wall-Beal-Porter is good enough to be a high seed in the playoffs for quite some time. That means Washington won't have any high draft picks to bring in potential stars. It isn't Wall's fault that his franchise decided to build solely around him, but he isn't the type of player to lead a championship team by himself.

Like I said before, Wall is really good. He's a freak athlete who can score at the rim and find the open man as well as anyone. In the open court I haven't seen someone faster than Wall. Everyone else looks like they're in slow motion when he charges down the floor after an outlet pass. The problem is that he's a few rings below the players that can lead their teams to championships.

On offense, Wall has nice stats as a 20-10 guy, but it's mainly due to the fact that the Wizards use him a ton. With the sixth highest usage rate in the NBA last season at 31.7, Wall's player efficiency (PER) rating was 21st in the league at 23.28. It's important to note that none of the five players who had higher usage rates than Wall had lower player efficiency ratings. In summary, Wall's usage matches the elite players of the NBA, but his efficiency isn't on the same level, and that's the number that matters.

There are reasons for these inefficiencies. For one, Wall isn't necessarily a great shooter. He's a career 32% shooter from three, and his true shooting percentage on his career is around 51%, while point guards like Chris Paul and Isaiah Thomas sit around 58%, and both have higher PER than Wall. With subpar shooting stats, Wall doesn't help himself by taking good shots.

Last season, Wall took the tenth most pull up jump shots in the NBA with 8.3 per game, and had an effective field goal percentage (eFG%) of 40.5% on those attempts. Of the players in the top-15 in pull up attempts, the only two players with lower eFG%'s than Wall are Andrew Wiggins and Dwyane Wade. For a player that is as fast and as strong as Wall is, you'd expect him to drive to the basket more. He was fourth in the NBA in drives last year, but he could easily lead the league given the amount of possessions he gets on a given night.

So not only do you have a below average shooter in Wall, but one that also takes a lot of bad shots. Wall will have to fix one of those two things if he is to become a more efficient player that can lead his team to more wins.

For some reason there's this myth out there that Wall is a good defender. I guess it's from the high steal numbers, but a player that gets a lot of steals isn't always a good defender. In many cases, Wall takes possessions off on defense, allowing his man to get off an open shot or cut to the basket for an easy lay in. In the playoffs, Avery Bradley torched Wall on countless possessions by catching him sleeping and cutting to the basket for an easy two points.

The advanced metrics tell a similar story. Wall ranks 52nd among point guards, and 369th overall in Defensive Real Plus-Minus. In a stat that measures a player's overall defensive impact when he's on the floor, Wall ranks among players like Jahlil Okafor, Joffrey Lauvergne, and Anthony Bennett. Not the kind of company you want as your team's best player.

There are plenty of elite point guards with suspect defense like Isaiah Thomas, Kyrie Irving, and Damian Lillard, but all of them have significantly higher Offensive Real Plus-Minus ratings than Wall's 3.52 (Thomas-5.72, Irving-4.35, Lillard-4.63).

Kobe Bryant has recently challenged Wall to make the NBA's All-Defensive first team, so maybe he will turn things around on that end of the floor. But as of now, Wall is not a good defender. He's lazy whether he's on or off the ball, and gets beat constantly. If Wall is to lead his team to the NBA Finals, he'll need to commit to two-way basketball.

On top of Wall's shortcomings as an all around player, his competition in the eastern conference isn't going to give him many opportunities. As long as the Cleveland Cavaliers have LeBron James, Washington isn't getting through them. The Wizards have no hope to guard James, Thomas, Love, and keep Tristan Thompson off the boards at the same time. Washington simply doesn't have the depth or fire power.

Not only that, but the Boston Celtics have put a substantial amount of distance between themselves and the Wizards. While the Wizards resigned Porter and brought on back up point guard Tim Frazier, the Celtics added Irving and Gordon Hayward to their core of Al Horford, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Jayson Tatum. Not to mention the fact that they have one of the very best coaches in the league in Brad Stevens, who solved the Wizards mid-way through their playoff series this past summer.

The Cavaliers won't last much longer as the eastern conference's top dog, but Boston will surely be around for a long time. The Wizards will also have to deal with an upcoming Philadelphia team led by Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, as well as Giannis Antetokounmpo's Milwaukee Bucks.

Given the Wizards' cap situation, the only way to improve their team is to take a step back and trade one of Beal/Porter, or strike gold on a late first round draft pick. Both scenarios are unlikely, and it give the Wizards one final option if they hope to reach the finals: Wall's improvement.

John Wall is an exceptional basketball player. There's a reason he's made four straight all star games, and he'll probably make another four in a row. However, his inefficiencies on offense and shortcomings on defense are holding him back from reaching the same level as the NBA's best individual players. Washington decided to build around him completely by giving him $170 million, and Beal, and Porter max-money. Either Wall improves his game, or the Wizards will be stuck in NBA purgatory for the foreseeable future.