John Wall is doing his best carrying the Wizards with Bradley Beal out of the lineup with an injury. Wall, the latest player of the month for the Eastern conference who had his own nagging injuries, doesn’t think his efforts are being recognized and had some comments when the first count of all star votes came back and particularly where Irving was ranked considering he didn’t play yet during the season.
“It’s a joke,” Wall told CSNmidatlantic.com on Dec. 27. “I played (awful) the first month and a half, but I still was averaging like 16 [points] and eight [assists]. That’s not bad numbers. I guess it’s the (team’s) record.”
Kyrie Irving is back now and has played his best game last night against the Raptors drawing compliments from LeBron who said that if he is healthy being an All-Star is a given, he is more in the MVP discussion. Kyrie was asked about Wall’s comments and he was not interested into making it a controversy.
“There were no ill will emotions; there was no personal beef between John and me,” Irving said. “I respect him as a player, as a point guard in this league, and as a great player in this league. So for him to say that, the All-Star becomes a popularity contest and what the fans want to see. So their respective opinions [are] based on that. For me, my respect for what I have for John goes way beyond the court, so there was no ill-will beef or anything like that, but he did make a valid point on me only playing two games and he was Eastern Conference Player of the Month, so that kind of goes without saying. So when you have feats like that, accomplishments like that, all you can do is respect it.”
I understand what John Wall is saying he doesn’t think Kyrie played enough games this year to be in the conversation. He must be tired of being overlooked dating from the tryouts with the national team where he never makes the cut but you can’t deny Kyrie Irving’s popularity and that’s what the All-Star game is about. Kobe Bryant leads everybody in votes and I’m sure he will agree that he is not the best player in the NBA right now, John Wall will most likely make the All-Star via Coaches’ votes.