In a column I wrote about John Wall for Sunday’s paper, in which I essentially said the Wizards’ 22-year-old point guard is a work in progress but is also worth keeping in Washington and appreciating anew, this paragraph was typed:
“A prominent NBA agent, whom I’ll save from embarrassment here, told me a year ago the Wizards needed to unload Wall before the rest of the league found out he didn’t have trade value.”
It turns out David Falk didn’t want anonymity. He just wanted to go off on Wall.
And Emeka Okafor.
And Trevor Ariza.
And the Wizards’ alleged rebuild.
But he mostly wanted to go off on any perceived homer who believes Wall can eventually make Washington a contender.
“I’m going to save you from embarrassment,” Michael Jordan’s former agent said as an introduction Monday night when he called.
A Wizards season ticket holder, Falk added: “You guys are in dreamland. Because this team [stinks] so bad you guys want John Wall to be someone he will never be.
“Before Wall becomes Nene, I would trade him and get rid of him.”
Come on, really?
“I’m serious. He doesn’t have a feel for the game,” Falk said. “He only knows how to play one speed. Magic Johnson had a great feel, a court sense, by the time he was a sophomore in college. Chris Paul had it by the time he was a sophomore in high school.
“You can develop your jump shot all you want, but if you don’t know how to play more than an up-and-down game by the time you’re about 20 as a point guard, the chances of learning are very slim. I don’t see it happening.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Falk said, maybe 28 times over 30 minutes, often answering for you. “Who’s bigger, Kyrie Irving or John Wall? John Wall. Who’s a better athlete? John Wall. Who’s faster? Who’s stronger? John Wall.
“Now, who’s a better player? Kyrie Irving,” he said of Cleveland’s all-star point guard who was rookie of the year in 2012. “John Wall will never be good as Kyrie Irving was in his first week in the NBA.
“You want to know the reason why just nine teams have won an NBA title in 40 years? Because if both of them came out today, 99 percent of all general managers would still take John Wall instead of Kyrie Irving. They’d take the athlete over the ballplayer. And they’d be wrong.”
It should be noted that it’s highly unusual for a working agent to eviscerate a current player. So I asked Falk, who often likes to be right instead of happy, why he has so much contempt for Wall’s stop-and-pop game?
Is it because 76ers swingman Evan Turner, one of a handful of clients to sign with Falk since he got back in the agent game after handsomely cashing out on his company, went No. 2 behind Wall in the 2010 NBA draft?
Does Falk yearn for the days when he was the game’s biggest power broker, not John Calipari or some Liaison to the Stars everyone calls Worldwide Wes?
Did he just receive his Stan Van Gundy Starter Kit in the mail? (“I don’t think he’s good enough that you can build a franchise around him,” Van Gundy said earlier this year.)
Either way, Falk picked an odd time to drop an anvil on a third-year player who’s been tearing it up lately. Since returning from injury, Wall has led the Wizards to 10 wins in 18 games and, more important, created real hope for a Wizards team that started the season an embarrassing 5-28.
