Washington Wizards: Will John Wall be an elite player when he returns?

Video has been surfacing daily of Washington Wizards MVP John Wall getting in reps during practices, but will he be the same player when he returns?

Washington Wizards fandom has been treated to multiple videos of John Wall practicing in the past few days. While I’m just as excited as the next fan, I think we need to come to grips now rather than later with the possibility that he won’t be the same player he was before the devastating Achilles injury that he suffered in February of 2019.

From LaPhonso Ellis to Kobe Bryant, Achilles tendons have been the beginning of the end, if not the flat-out end, to the careers of even the best athletes in the National Basketball Association. According to a paper published in 2013 for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting in Chicago titled “Performance Outcomes after Repair of Complete Achilles Tendon Ruptures in National Basketball Association Players,” the Player Efficiency Rating of players decreased by a more significant margin in their first and second seasons back than their uninjured counterparts.

Worse, of the 26 players in the study, 11 returned to only play one season, and seven never played again.

Now, there are certainly stories of people who made complete recoveries and played at comparable levels to their pre-injury levels, but those are few and far between. What I’ll be focusing on in this article is what John Wall will be able to do on the basketball court if he has an average recovery.

The Achilles tendon rupture is basically a death knell for a player’s career if they are over the age of 30. John Wall will be 29 when he returns.

The Evidence

I’ve taken out the odd case, like Dominique Wilkins in 1992 or Rudy Gay in 2017, who seemed to fully recover with very little fall off to the level of their play, and focused on players who were key to their teams and returned to play the game with clearly diminished abilities. What I was left with were: Brandon Jennings, Wesley Matthews, DeMarcus Cousins, Kobe Bryant, Chauncey Billups, Elton Brand, and LaPhonso Ellis.

All of these guys were important parts of their team when they went down. Their average age at the time of injury was about 29 years old.

Using Basketball Reference, the average stats of these players per 36 minutes before and after their injuries changed by the following percentages:

• Points fell by 21.6%
• Field goal percentage fell by 4.4%
• Three point percentage fell by 4.4% (Brand was an outlier here and had to be thrown away as he didn’t shoot threes post injury)
• Rebounds fell by 0.2%
• Assists fell by 11.5%
• Steals actually rose by 0.9%
• Blocks fell 0.9%
• Turnovers actually fell by 6.9%

I used their per 36 numbers because the truth was that most of these players didn’t play the same number of meaningful minutes upon returning from this devastating injury. I also tried to use the two seasons immediately before the injury and immediately after the injury where I could, but in Cousins case I used one, in Bryant’s I skipped the 2013-14 season in which he only played 6 games following his injury, and in Brand’s case I skipped the 2007-08 season where he only played 8 games.

What does it mean for John Wall?

Before Wall went down to injury last season he was averaging 20.7 points on 44.4% shooting and 30.2% from the three, 3.6 rebounds, 8.7 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.9 blocks, and 3.8 turnovers. If we extrapolate this data and apply it to John Wall, here’s what we can hope he will average the next season he plays, be it this season or next season:

John Wall’s Projected Stats: 16.2 ppg, 40% fg%, 25.8% 3p%, 3.6 rebs, 7.7 asts, 1.5 steals, 0.9 blocks, and 3.5 turnovers

These numbers assume Wall will play similar minutes (most don’t) but they also assume he will regress. As mentioned before, Dominique Wilkins and Rudy Gay returned pretty much to form after they recovered from the injury, but it’s imperative that we remember that these are exceptions to the norm.

It’s entirely possible that Wall is able to return to his old self, but the far more likely scenario is that his numbers will dip more towards what is projected above. And if they do, who has posted comparable numbers to those?

• Devonte’ Graham this season: 18.8 ppg, 37.9% shooting, 38.9% 3pt, 3.7 rebs, 7.8 asts, 0.9 stls, 0.3 blocks, 3 TOs
• Kenny Anderson in the 1994-95 NBA season: 17.6 ppg, 39.9% shooting, 33% 3pt, 3.5 rebs, 9.4 asts, 1.4 stls, 0.2 blocks, 3.1 TOs
• Nick Van Exel in the 1998-99 NBA season: 16.5 ppg, 39.8% shooting, 30.8% 3pt, 2.3 rebs, 7.4 asts, 0.8 stls, 0.1 blocks, 2.4 TOs

And John Wall is older than each of these players in those respective seasons. The Washington Wizards won’t exactly be amazing if John Wall plays at that level upon his return.

Either way, Wall is an upgrade over Isaiah Thomas and Ish Smith, and there is always that tiny bit of hope that says he’ll be all right. In the end, we’ll just have to stay hyped with the videos we get that seem to tell us all will be okay.