[2级]When John Wall and Bradley Beal reunite on the floor, things will be different由JabariIverson 发表在翻译团招工部 https://bbs.hupu.com/fyt-store
John Wall has spent almost two years watching Bradley Beal. He knows how his backcourt mate has progressed.
The last time Wall was healthy — and not just playing an NBA game, but really, truly healthy — Beal was a shooter who made much of his living dashing around screens. He didn’t pull buckets out of hats as he can now. He didn’t finish through contact like one of the league’s foremost foul forcers. He’d run the occasional pick-and-roll but didn’t have this kind of patience and most certainly didn’t flick that ever-so-subtle pocket pass to scampering big men with such ease.
The 2017 version of Beal is not equal to today’s rendition. And thus, the dynamic between the Wizards’ two guards will change next year. And if there’s one person who knows that, it’s Wall.
“You have the opportunity to sit there and watch and see how a person develops,” Wall told The Athletic. “Then also, you develop your game to be able to fit into the way he plays at times because there will be times when I don’t have the ball in my hands. So, how can I affect the game being off the ball like that? Can I become a better spot-up shooter? Yes. That helps Brad’s game out. There’s so many times when we’re both interchangeable.”
Wall and Beal have played together for almost a decade. They’ve shared the court for more than 183 hours of game time since Washington drafted Beal in 2012. And now, with Wall expecting to return for 2020-21 training camp after a series of injuries has kept him out for almost two years, he has to go through a unique process.
He may know Beal, the person, but he’s never played with this form of Beal, the player. And that means relearning someone who’s evolved into a new species of All-Star since that last really, truly healthy Wall season in 2016-17.
“John understands the growth that I’ve had the last few years,” Beal told The Athletic. “Like, I think he understands that a lot of times, I’m gonna bring the ball up the floor. And I think it’s beneficial for both of us, honestly, because it’s tough having to do that. It’s tough having to bring the ball up. It’s tough having to get guys in sets. It’s tough having to run the offense. It’s tough having to create. That’s not an easy task.”
Wall and Beal are far from the only two in D.C., thinking about their dynamic. The Wizards have no interest in trading Beal this offseason. He, meanwhile, has asserted countless times he wants to stay with the organization. One of the main reasons is that he wants to give this thing with his point guard another try.
The Wizards have spent the whole season thinking about next year, adding a harsh irony to the 4 ½ month, coronavirus-induced hiatus that extended their currently bleak reality. This season begats a losing record and a winless stretch in the NBA’s bubble with one game to go. They spliced preparation for Wall’s return into team activities during the spring and early summer. Before the Orlando restart, coaches sent to the team’s young core clips of past playoff series that featured Wall and Beal. Guys who the organization expects to keep around moving forward (Rui Hachimura, Troy Brown, Isaac Bonga, etc.) got detailed looks of what a season next to the two All-Star guards might look like.
“(It) let them see how good they are and then also understand how they make the game easier,” Scott Brooks said. “So, when we go into games, they will know all you have to do is just be in this spot, set a screen and roll this way, and you’re gonna be spoon-fed by both of those guys.”
The Wizards sent clips from the team’s 2015 second-round playoff series against the Hawks and 2017 second-round series against the Celtics. It was the best they could do, considering the Wall/Beal backcourt of yesteryear is a mere facsimile of what’s to come.
Wall hasn’t been his spryest since 2016-17 when he made his only All-NBA team. He had bone spurs removed from his knee in 2018, then ones removed from his heel in December of the same year. He tore his Achilles in January 2019. He hasn’t played since. The next time he plays an NBA game, he’ll be 30 years old. He was 26 when he made All-NBA. Even without injuries, a guard whose success is predicated on feet made of dynamite could regress when he reaches his 30s.
Yet, just about everyone up and down the organization — from any players to Brooks to general manager Tommy Sheppard — says Wall looks as good as ever. He, himself, has predicted his best hooping is ahead of him. The reality is, no one can know for sure until he plays some semblance of competitive basketball.
Beal, meanwhile, is far more advanced than he was in those games from half a decade ago.
“His ability to create off the dribble is a lot better now than it was then. … I would say that’s the biggest thing,” Troy Brown said after studying Beal in those past playoff series. “He’s able to finish at the rim at such a high level now, and it makes him a three-level scorer. You can’t really stop him from getting to his spots.”
Two creators, one basketball.
It’s not an inherently specious match. This is, after all, the NBA in 2020, when skills kill. But it was imperfect for the first eight years. The two All-Stars have helped the Wizards to the top-10 in points per possession only one time. They’ve never won 50 games, though they’ve won four playoff series.
This new version of Beal will command the ball more. It would help if Wall’s jumper improved during his time off. He’ll need to shoot and make spot-up 3s with enough accuracy and volume to force defenders to come to the arc and guard him.
Will he find other ways to affect the game while Beal handles? And he’ll most certainly need to facilitate in his comfort spots, too. Will he and Beal strike a balance that’s more fluid than what they had before?
“If you wanna be good in this league, you have to be able to sacrifice, not just the role players but every player on this team,” Brooks said. “I’ve always been a role player, and I hate the (idea of), ‘Hey, you gotta sacrifice because you’re not good enough to start.’ No! We all have to sacrifice if we wanna be on a championship-contending team.”
If Wall and Beal live by what they’re saying, the sacrifice is welcomed.
They will have to resist past flaws. The two would trudge into my-turn, your-turn stagnations too often. Wall’s activity when he didn’t have the ball could resemble The Thinker’s. The Wizards have changed aspects of their offense with him gone and would like to carry many of the tenets over into next year. He will have to learn how to play inside of them. Beal will have to make absorbing him into those concepts more smooth.
Both guys point to one strength first: They can be each other’s crutches. Beal was the Wizards’ everything man this year. Wall wasn’t all too different in years past. If Wall returns in close to his previous form, Washington has two elite playmakers, which means both can expel more energy on defense (which would solve some past issues) and neither has to go home so bruised or drained.
“Brad don’t wanna do that for 48 minutes. He wants a little pressure off of him,” Wall said. “So, that’s when I come in the picture like bam! OK, I’ll take the pressure off for a couple minutes. ‘OK, John you got it going.’ ‘Brad, take the pressure off me for a couple minutes.’ So, I think it’ll be fine.”
Wall has commanded an offense with lots of high pick-and-roll for most of his career. He’s dynamic getting to the rim and in transition. There may not be another point guard alive better at creating corner 3s. But the Wizards changed their principles this year when they entered training camp knowing their point guard would miss at least a large chunk of the season. Assistant coach Robert Pack, who runs the offense, didn’t just turn the attack over to Beal; he contoured it around his strengths.
Washington added more dribble-handoffs and more motion. There was more cutting. It allowed Dāvis Bertāns to become the personification of chutzpah. Wall has supposed that Bertāns would be “the best shooter I ever played with.” (Imagine the looks he could get Bertāns in the corner, by the way.) The Wizards averaged 113.1 points per 100 possessions when Beal was on the floor, a figure that would be good for third in the league if it belonged to a team.
Wall, meanwhile, doesn’t think the group should get away from what made it successful.
“We ran sets for certain people that we probably didn’t run sets for before, but that’s what Robert Pack wanted to do,” Wall said. “So, I’ve been talking to him all the time. We communicate a lot. It’s just, OK, these are the types of positions I wanna put you in on the court. I’m like, OK, I’m fine with that. People don’t understand. I don’t mind. I don’t have to have the ball all game. Half of them times, I’d be tired as hell having the ball the whole game. (When) you have to go push the pace every time, create for somebody all the time, you get tired at some point in time. So, when I can get off of that a little bit and score in other ways and score easier, that’s what I’m hoping to be able to do.”
Especially in recent seasons, Wall had become stoic without the ball, parking himself in the corner without much movement to follow.
He believes he’ll be more active and cites a reason for why he wasn’t before: Standing around off the ball provided an opportunity for rest, which was much-needed not only because the team relied on him so much to create for others but also because he was playing through pain from the bone spurs. The numbers are staggering, especially for basketball’s Usain Bolt. The only two NBA players who moved slower than Wall on offense last year, according to Second Spectrum’s metric that records average miles per hour, were injured big man DeMarcus Cousins and what was left of 40-year-old Dirk Nowitzki. The year before that, the only two players to move slower were … injured big man DeMarcus Cousins and what was left of 39-year-old Dirk Nowitzki.
“I think it was more or less when John would play off the ball then, he’s dead-ass tired,” Beal said. “I can imagine what it feels like because having to create for everybody — and I feel like I’ve had to do that the last what, year and a half, two years — is tough.”
Now, Wall is trying to correct it. He has spent his rehab practicing different routes he could run around all types of off-ball screens.
“That’s what I’ve been working on, all those type of things,” he said. “I understand my game. … And I just watch how Brad plays, adjust to this type of style. Adjust to that type of style. That’s what I’ve been looking at.”
Of course, it’s one thing to say something. It’s another to practice it. And it’s an even other to do it in actual NBA games. Wall’s never been an abundant cutter or screener — even in his healthiest days. He’s never operated with bountiful dribble-handoffs as this year’s offense did. He fielded 2.6 of them per 100 possessions from 2016 to 2019, according to information compiled by Second Spectrum and supplied to The Athletic. How much has the offense changed since? This year, only two Wizards received less than that rate: Hachimura and Thomas Bryant. Beal, who was the league’s most-featured player on dribble-handoffs by far, fielded more than 21 per 100.
These disparities aren’t a critique of Wall as much as they’re a measure of how much the offense has diversified since the last time his body was fully cooperating. The Wizards have ripened as Beal has. Wall seems fully aware of it. And Beal believes the world is going to see an adjusted version of a five-time All-Star.
“He’s been working on his pin downs and stuff, just coming off curls, coming off pin downs. And just imagine him coming off a screen going downhill to the hoop. It’s gonna be tough to stop,” Beal said. “So, I think it’s gonna work well, honestly. And I think his game is gonna grow in terms of his shooting, in terms of his catch and shoots and like I said before, his pin downs. And then for us both to be able to handle the ball, it just keeps everybody off balance. Like I said before, you don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know. It’s tough to talk about it because you don’t know, but I think when it happens, I think it’s gonna work.”
There are ways for the two to interact beyond trading off pick-and-rolls or scoring opportunities. They could screen for each other. They could seamlessly run “pistol” actions, which operate beautifully with a point guard like Wall, a wing like Beal and a big man. If Wall still has his speed, give-and-gos, or other handoffs from Beal could free him.
The Wizards genuinely believe they can compete next year — though the definition of “compete” is a little murky. Does that mean a playoff appearance? Winning a series? Winning two? Whatever it is, Wall and Beal are already game planning. The organization is already teaching the X’s and O’s to the young players who haven’t experienced the two guards at their heights.
For now, all they have is talk. Wall and Beal can have a blueprint, but it takes more than will to reconfigure eight years of chemistry or, in some cases, decades’ worth of on-court habits. At the very least, they know change is necessary. Clearly, they’re feeling good about it.
“Me challenging myself to be a better ball-handler, to be a facilitator and be a creator, to be a better scorer, I think it helped my game,” Beal said. “But I think it will also help his because now he gets to be able to focus his game on his jump shot, his spot-ups, his catch and shoots, his pin downs, things that he didn’t get to work on before because he had to create for everybody. … If I’m handling the ball, you’re gonna get a variety. You don’t know what’s coming: A 3-ball or pull-up or to the hoop. Same with John. And John’s been working on everything. So, I think it’s gonna be good.”
John Wall has spent almost two years watching Bradley Beal. He knows how his backcourt mate has progressed.
The last time Wall was healthy — and not just playing an NBA game, but really, truly healthy — Beal was a shooter who made much of his living dashing around screens. He didn’t pull buckets out of hats as he can now. He didn’t finish through contact like one of the league’s foremost foul forcers. He’d run the occasional pick-and-roll but didn’t have this kind of patience and most certainly didn’t flick that ever-so-subtle pocket pass to scampering big men with such ease.
The 2017 version of Beal is not equal to today’s rendition. And thus, the dynamic between the Wizards’ two guards will change next year. And if there’s one person who knows that, it’s Wall.
“You have the opportunity to sit there and watch and see how a person develops,” Wall told The Athletic. “Then also, you develop your game to be able to fit into the way he plays at times because there will be times when I don’t have the ball in my hands. So, how can I affect the game being off the ball like that? Can I become a better spot-up shooter? Yes. That helps Brad’s game out. There’s so many times when we’re both interchangeable.”
Wall and Beal have played together for almost a decade. They’ve shared the court for more than 183 hours of game time since Washington drafted Beal in 2012. And now, with Wall expecting to return for 2020-21 training camp after a series of injuries has kept him out for almost two years, he has to go through a unique process.
He may know Beal, the person, but he’s never played with this form of Beal, the player. And that means relearning someone who’s evolved into a new species of All-Star since that last really, truly healthy Wall season in 2016-17.
“John understands the growth that I’ve had the last few years,” Beal told The Athletic. “Like, I think he understands that a lot of times, I’m gonna bring the ball up the floor. And I think it’s beneficial for both of us, honestly, because it’s tough having to do that. It’s tough having to bring the ball up. It’s tough having to get guys in sets. It’s tough having to run the offense. It’s tough having to create. That’s not an easy task.”
Wall and Beal are far from the only two in D.C., thinking about their dynamic. The Wizards have no interest in trading Beal this offseason. He, meanwhile, has asserted countless times he wants to stay with the organization. One of the main reasons is that he wants to give this thing with his point guard another try.
The Wizards have spent the whole season thinking about next year, adding a harsh irony to the 4 ½ month, coronavirus-induced hiatus that extended their currently bleak reality. This season begats a losing record and a winless stretch in the NBA’s bubble with one game to go. They spliced preparation for Wall’s return into team activities during the spring and early summer. Before the Orlando restart, coaches sent to the team’s young core clips of past playoff series that featured Wall and Beal. Guys who the organization expects to keep around moving forward (Rui Hachimura, Troy Brown, Isaac Bonga, etc.) got detailed looks of what a season next to the two All-Star guards might look like.
“(It) let them see how good they are and then also understand how they make the game easier,” Scott Brooks said. “So, when we go into games, they will know all you have to do is just be in this spot, set a screen and roll this way, and you’re gonna be spoon-fed by both of those guys.”
The Wizards sent clips from the team’s 2015 second-round playoff series against the Hawks and 2017 second-round series against the Celtics. It was the best they could do, considering the Wall/Beal backcourt of yesteryear is a mere facsimile of what’s to come.
Wall hasn’t been his spryest since 2016-17 when he made his only All-NBA team. He had bone spurs removed from his knee in 2018, then ones removed from his heel in December of the same year. He tore his Achilles in January 2019. He hasn’t played since. The next time he plays an NBA game, he’ll be 30 years old. He was 26 when he made All-NBA. Even without injuries, a guard whose success is predicated on feet made of dynamite could regress when he reaches his 30s.
Yet, just about everyone up and down the organization — from any players to Brooks to general manager Tommy Sheppard — says Wall looks as good as ever. He, himself, has predicted his best hooping is ahead of him. The reality is, no one can know for sure until he plays some semblance of competitive basketball.
Beal, meanwhile, is far more advanced than he was in those games from half a decade ago.
“His ability to create off the dribble is a lot better now than it was then. … I would say that’s the biggest thing,” Troy Brown said after studying Beal in those past playoff series. “He’s able to finish at the rim at such a high level now, and it makes him a three-level scorer. You can’t really stop him from getting to his spots.”
Two creators, one basketball.
It’s not an inherently specious match. This is, after all, the NBA in 2020, when skills kill. But it was imperfect for the first eight years. The two All-Stars have helped the Wizards to the top-10 in points per possession only one time. They’ve never won 50 games, though they’ve won four playoff series.
This new version of Beal will command the ball more. It would help if Wall’s jumper improved during his time off. He’ll need to shoot and make spot-up 3s with enough accuracy and volume to force defenders to come to the arc and guard him.
Will he find other ways to affect the game while Beal handles? And he’ll most certainly need to facilitate in his comfort spots, too. Will he and Beal strike a balance that’s more fluid than what they had before?
“If you wanna be good in this league, you have to be able to sacrifice, not just the role players but every player on this team,” Brooks said. “I’ve always been a role player, and I hate the (idea of), ‘Hey, you gotta sacrifice because you’re not good enough to start.’ No! We all have to sacrifice if we wanna be on a championship-contending team.”
If Wall and Beal live by what they’re saying, the sacrifice is welcomed.
They will have to resist past flaws. The two would trudge into my-turn, your-turn stagnations too often. Wall’s activity when he didn’t have the ball could resemble The Thinker’s. The Wizards have changed aspects of their offense with him gone and would like to carry many of the tenets over into next year. He will have to learn how to play inside of them. Beal will have to make absorbing him into those concepts more smooth.
Both guys point to one strength first: They can be each other’s crutches. Beal was the Wizards’ everything man this year. Wall wasn’t all too different in years past. If Wall returns in close to his previous form, Washington has two elite playmakers, which means both can expel more energy on defense (which would solve some past issues) and neither has to go home so bruised or drained.
“Brad don’t wanna do that for 48 minutes. He wants a little pressure off of him,” Wall said. “So, that’s when I come in the picture like bam! OK, I’ll take the pressure off for a couple minutes. ‘OK, John you got it going.’ ‘Brad, take the pressure off me for a couple minutes.’ So, I think it’ll be fine.”
Wall has commanded an offense with lots of high pick-and-roll for most of his career. He’s dynamic getting to the rim and in transition. There may not be another point guard alive better at creating corner 3s. But the Wizards changed their principles this year when they entered training camp knowing their point guard would miss at least a large chunk of the season. Assistant coach Robert Pack, who runs the offense, didn’t just turn the attack over to Beal; he contoured it around his strengths.
Washington added more dribble-handoffs and more motion. There was more cutting. It allowed Dāvis Bertāns to become the personification of chutzpah. Wall has supposed that Bertāns would be “the best shooter I ever played with.” (Imagine the looks he could get Bertāns in the corner, by the way.) The Wizards averaged 113.1 points per 100 possessions when Beal was on the floor, a figure that would be good for third in the league if it belonged to a team.
Wall, meanwhile, doesn’t think the group should get away from what made it successful.
“We ran sets for certain people that we probably didn’t run sets for before, but that’s what Robert Pack wanted to do,” Wall said. “So, I’ve been talking to him all the time. We communicate a lot. It’s just, OK, these are the types of positions I wanna put you in on the court. I’m like, OK, I’m fine with that. People don’t understand. I don’t mind. I don’t have to have the ball all game. Half of them times, I’d be tired as hell having the ball the whole game. (When) you have to go push the pace every time, create for somebody all the time, you get tired at some point in time. So, when I can get off of that a little bit and score in other ways and score easier, that’s what I’m hoping to be able to do.”
Especially in recent seasons, Wall had become stoic without the ball, parking himself in the corner without much movement to follow.
He believes he’ll be more active and cites a reason for why he wasn’t before: Standing around off the ball provided an opportunity for rest, which was much-needed not only because the team relied on him so much to create for others but also because he was playing through pain from the bone spurs. The numbers are staggering, especially for basketball’s Usain Bolt. The only two NBA players who moved slower than Wall on offense last year, according to Second Spectrum’s metric that records average miles per hour, were injured big man DeMarcus Cousins and what was left of 40-year-old Dirk Nowitzki. The year before that, the only two players to move slower were … injured big man DeMarcus Cousins and what was left of 39-year-old Dirk Nowitzki.
“I think it was more or less when John would play off the ball then, he’s dead-ass tired,” Beal said. “I can imagine what it feels like because having to create for everybody — and I feel like I’ve had to do that the last what, year and a half, two years — is tough.”
Now, Wall is trying to correct it. He has spent his rehab practicing different routes he could run around all types of off-ball screens.
“That’s what I’ve been working on, all those type of things,” he said. “I understand my game. … And I just watch how Brad plays, adjust to this type of style. Adjust to that type of style. That’s what I’ve been looking at.”
Of course, it’s one thing to say something. It’s another to practice it. And it’s an even other to do it in actual NBA games. Wall’s never been an abundant cutter or screener — even in his healthiest days. He’s never operated with bountiful dribble-handoffs as this year’s offense did. He fielded 2.6 of them per 100 possessions from 2016 to 2019, according to information compiled by Second Spectrum and supplied to The Athletic. How much has the offense changed since? This year, only two Wizards received less than that rate: Hachimura and Thomas Bryant. Beal, who was the league’s most-featured player on dribble-handoffs by far, fielded more than 21 per 100.
These disparities aren’t a critique of Wall as much as they’re a measure of how much the offense has diversified since the last time his body was fully cooperating. The Wizards have ripened as Beal has. Wall seems fully aware of it. And Beal believes the world is going to see an adjusted version of a five-time All-Star.
“He’s been working on his pin downs and stuff, just coming off curls, coming off pin downs. And just imagine him coming off a screen going downhill to the hoop. It’s gonna be tough to stop,” Beal said. “So, I think it’s gonna work well, honestly. And I think his game is gonna grow in terms of his shooting, in terms of his catch and shoots and like I said before, his pin downs. And then for us both to be able to handle the ball, it just keeps everybody off balance. Like I said before, you don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know. It’s tough to talk about it because you don’t know, but I think when it happens, I think it’s gonna work.”
There are ways for the two to interact beyond trading off pick-and-rolls or scoring opportunities. They could screen for each other. They could seamlessly run “pistol” actions, which operate beautifully with a point guard like Wall, a wing like Beal and a big man. If Wall still has his speed, give-and-gos, or other handoffs from Beal could free him.
The Wizards genuinely believe they can compete next year — though the definition of “compete” is a little murky. Does that mean a playoff appearance? Winning a series? Winning two? Whatever it is, Wall and Beal are already game planning. The organization is already teaching the X’s and O’s to the young players who haven’t experienced the two guards at their heights.
For now, all they have is talk. Wall and Beal can have a blueprint, but it takes more than will to reconfigure eight years of chemistry or, in some cases, decades’ worth of on-court habits. At the very least, they know change is necessary. Clearly, they’re feeling good about it.
“Me challenging myself to be a better ball-handler, to be a facilitator and be a creator, to be a better scorer, I think it helped my game,” Beal said. “But I think it will also help his because now he gets to be able to focus his game on his jump shot, his spot-ups, his catch and shoots, his pin downs, things that he didn’t get to work on before because he had to create for everybody. … If I’m handling the ball, you’re gonna get a variety. You don’t know what’s coming: A 3-ball or pull-up or to the hoop. Same with John. And John’s been working on everything. So, I think it’s gonna be good.”
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