When the lights come on, the music stops, and the ball shoots skyward from the referee’s hands, everything unrelated to the game fades into the background. excuses have no place. Nor the problems that may have marked the hours before the game. All that matters is competition, winning, scoring.
There are many players in the NBA that to get to where they are they first had to learn to separate the everyday from what was happening on the field. Their player-I was on the floor, and this splitting of themselves could end up being the vehicle that would get them and their family out of a bad situation. Too often there is a tendency to romanticize these kinds of stories, reducing them to stories of self-improvement, to the point where a negative past has almost become a cliché. It happens, especially with those who have stayed longer in this league, that their life trajectories have long been in the background. Everyone thinks they know them, they see them every day on TV, inside best moments, in the media, but Few people actually know the backpack they are carrying.
John Wall He’s been carrying pounds and pounds of problems and obstacles on his back practically since he learned to walk. And the passage of time has not lessened in the slightest the burden that has always weighed on him.
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For 3 years now he has been traveling to the prison closest to his birthplace Raleigh became a tradition for the point guard’s family because his father was there, John Carroll Wall Sr.. When he was younger, these trips were an exciting place, but the monotony of going there every week to share a moment with his father ended up shaping his personality. At first his father was a hero to him, because no one had told him the reason why he was imprisoned, time made him realize his reality.
He normalized the prison to such an extent that it became a second home in a way. Away from the complex, at home, his mother, Frances Pulley, took full responsibility for leading the family unit to the point of working four jobs simultaneously to support both John and his other two sisters, Cierra and Tonya. So, The wall was growing in a forced marchsupported by a core of his sisters, aunts, grandmothers and inseparable mother, but his personality, even in childhood, was complex.
His father’s farewell to liver cancer marked a before and after for the North Carolina native. In just under two years his shift was too much. Expulsions from school became so common that His mother was waiting for him at the gates expecting to be kicked out of the compound that day. “I had so much pent-up anger. I was angry at everything.” he recalled in a Washington Post article in 2014. “I didn’t trust the coaches, the people. Whenever someone would say something to me, I would just say, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t want to believe anyone for some reason.”
He liked basketball, he was good at it and he had skills, but was unable to follow orders or directions. At the age of 12 there was a moment when everything started to change and it was thanks to someone who would become his mentor from now on: Levelle Moton. A year earlier, the coach had kicked him out of his free campus for bad behavior by throwing a hard ball as a result of a fight, but his mother insisted on giving him a second chance. acceptable and It was then that John Wall began to separate gaming from real life. Moton made him realize that his life, even at such a young age, was entering a dangerous spiral and that he needed to change as soon as possible. “As soon as I realized that, I knew that basketball was my escape route”reported in 2010 in the Washington Post. “It was the best way for me to get out of there. I built myself around it, I played every game for my dad. I felt like every time I stepped on the court I had to dominate because he would be watching me.”
This was the beginning of an unprecedented takeoff. Front, John Wall would become one of the biggest sensations national level institute. Second best player of his generation (2009), number 1 in the 2010 Draft, leader of the Washington Wizards, All-Star, All-NBA, All-Defensive… The point guard’s career reached in 2017, at the age of 26, it was a way to confirm himself as one of the best of his time. It was at that moment, just over 16 months after signing a major contract, when life dealt him a blow from which he was hardly going to recover.
All professional players compete to some extent pain at their ends. While not optimal, it is common, more so in an 82-game league plus playoffs. There are those who have a high tolerance for damage and others who simply don’t want to admit they have a physical problem, as if it were a sign of weakness. When John Wall was examined to find out the extent of his complaints at Dr. Wiemi Douoguih, orthopedic specialists Robert Anderson and David Porter, who were in charge, were confused. The lump protruding from her heel was gigantic and they quickly determined it was the Haglund’s Spur, a lump that would need surgery. “It felt like someone stuck a knife in there and kept turning it every time I took a step.” he admitted to Sports Illustrated in 2020. That would be the start of all his problems.
This first intervention, from which he should recover in no more than 6 weeks, was complicated by a domestic accident in which ruptured the Achilles tendon in his left leg. Same as previous mode. It was at that moment that his house of cards came crashing down, a particularly personal ordeal for Wall where he was stripped of everything that had given his life meaning.
“I tore my Achilles and lost the only refuge I’ve ever known, basketball” he recently wrote in The Players’ Tribune. “If that wasn’t enough, I ended up getting an infection from the procedures that almost amputated my leg. A year later I lost my best friend in the world, my mother, to breast cancer.”
While Wall’s pain, both physical and mental, didn’t stop in any way, his contract was changing hands in the most bitter part of the NBA world. The Wizards No longer interested in carrying the $41 million plate his salary represented, they wanted to compete and take advantage of Bradley Beal’s moment, and the Houston Rockets offered a quick exit. The Texans welcomed him with open arms as they had no choice but to enter reconstructionbut when they achieved their goal in the draft, the utility of the base for them disappeared.
That’s how John Wall became player-contractand its shape and relevance the subject of public debate.
money, fame and health, the three postulates that make up the imagination of many players on their way to success. The Raleigh native had the first two, but the third, while capable of playing, you couldn’t say he had, not mentally. And it is that John Wall in the 2021-2022 season was eligible to play. So he informed the Rockets, but they didn’t count him out and asked him to stay away and wait for a transfer that was never going to come, or break his contract and forgive the money he was owed. He just wanted to play, he wanted to regain what his health and fortune had taken from him.
Although more than a wish, Wall required return to the fields. Because the point guard, during the long recovery process, literally hit rock bottom. As he said in a harsh and lengthy letter The Players’ Tribune There was a time when he came close to making an irreversible decision as a result of his complicated situation every night. The next morning his mother came to his rescue and pointed him in the right direction once again, perhaps the last and most necessary.
“This is what depression tells you”he was honest. “It’s that devil on your shoulder whispering, ‘Well, maybe everyone would be better off without you here.’ Money and fame mean nothing if you don’t have peace in your life.
The help he got to get out of it cycle It was so complicated that it ended up turning John Wall into a very different man than the one who last donned a Washington Wizards jersey on December 26, 2018. From the outside it may look the same. Even watching him play with it LA Clippers, blitzing out in transition, running the game, can give you the feeling that he’s that basic electric. But everything surrounding the Raleigh native has now changed.
now he is happyhe is aware of everything that is happening around him and in his thoughts. Nowtruly, John Wall is back. “It’s true, I’m back, but this is something much deeper, bigger than basketball”He wrote. “It’s about life. I’ve been through some of the darkest times you can imagine and I’m still here.”
When the point guard agreed to opt out of his contract with the Rockets last July, the It didn’t take long for the LA Clippers to ring their phone. Many teams wanted him but doubted he could continue to make a real impact after being away for so long. The Californians did not hesitate for a moment to reclaim it for the cause. “They gave me a chance” he said in a conversation with The Athletic. “I feel like when we figure it all out we’re going to be something special. It’s about trusting each other, building on that. But yeah, everything I’ve been through in the last two years has been amazing. Think it’s made me stronger.”
How his career will develop from here is a mystery, even if he will be able to maintain the high level he shows in the early stages of the course throughout the season. But after the stormy journey that John Wall had to live through 2018 one thing is clear: He’s not going to give up, he’s going to keep fighting.
LA Clippers vs. New Orleans Pelicans: day, time, where and how to watch online and on TV
| Country | Time | TV | online and streaming |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico | 1:00 p.m. (CDMX) | – | NBA League Pass |
| USA | 15:00 (ET) | – | NBA League Pass |
| Argentina | 16:00 | – | NBA League Pass |
| Spain | 20:00 | Movistar Sports | NBA League Pass |
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