Wall Meets the Garden, Leaves a Memory
Filed under: NCAA Basketball
NEW YORK — The stinkeye, they call it. John Wall, driven to aggravation by his maniacal, foot-stomping coach, flashed the dirty look at least a couple of times Wednesday night at John Calipari. This will be a fascinating sociological study, the relationship between basketball’s next special player and the college game’s $31.65-million, NCAA-defiant, diamond-watch-glittering madman, a coach further burdened by the pressure of working at the unforgiving insane asylum known as the University of Kentucky.
“He’s the greatest kid,” said Calipari, painting a pretty picture. “He’ll walk into my office and come in just to give me a hug. He’ll come in, not say a thing, hug me and leave. He’s unique and special.”
“I wanted to play for him,” Wall said.
Is he sure?
With 7:16 left in his introduction to mainstream America, Wall intercepted a Connecticut pass, drove to the basket without a challenge and jammed home the ball with a semi-whirlybird dunk. Upon finishing, the freshman didn’t look at the Kentucky fans behind the basket or slap hands with his teammates. No, the first thing he did was look at his coach and give him a long stare. This is no news flash: Calipari has a tough-love bond with his players, sometimes on the edge of mutual hatred. But what this early-season test told us, in the SEC/Big East Invitational, is that Wall and his fellow freshmen could survive a mean experience in the big city, including the serial screamer in the Italian leather loafers.
For all the starpower around him — including Calipari and Jim Calhoun, two coaches who should settle their longstanding issues in a nearby Octagon — the silhouette was framed only on Wall. Every so often, a celebrated hoops phenom converges upon the world’s most famous arena for the first time. Such is what this event was about in Madison Square Garden, history and pomp, a mecca welcoming a teenaged point guard with otherworldly gifts and a boundless future.
Barring illness, scandal or a kidnapping by Rick Pitino or Roy Williams, Wall will be the No. 1 pick in the next NBA draft. Anyone who doubts the assertion should have seen the wall of NBA executives and scouts analyzing his every twitch, movement and explosive step in a blue uniform that he’ll wear until March or April, then discard for the franchise fortunate enough to win the draft lottery — did someone say the New York Knicks? — and a pro career sure to be filled with legendary battles against Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, Brandon Jennings and other contemporaries. Did Wall notice them? “I try to block that out,” he said, wisely. Wall is so spectacularly quick and powerful in the open court that he’s just about unguardable. He has to work on the same issues that dog other phenom guards, his jumpshot and his defense, but he has plenty of time to massage and uplift his game.
For now, I advise one and all to enjoy his introduction to the American hoops consciousness. All in all, this is not just another brick in the Wall, as his coach eagerly emphasizes. Remember how good Rose and Tyreke Evans were in their lone seasons for Calipari at Memphis? Wall already is better than both, he says. What Calipari has wanted to know all along is how Wall would respond in a difficult environment: such as inside the Garden against UConn, a program based a three-hour drive from Manhattan up I-95, close enough for fans to stampede the Garden. “John right now is farther along today than they were,” Calipari said. “Those two — when they got it and they felt the offense, they were unleashed and they weren’t afraid to make the play. When we’re in a tough game and it’s on the road, is he going to make the play that those two did?”
The answer came in the final minutes of a sloppy but exciting December game that whets the appetite for college hoops. Struggling with youth and inexperience, Kentucky needed a surge. “We decided to ride John Wall at the end of the game,” Calipari said. “We were groping for offense. We gave it to him and said, ‘Make some baskets.”’ He did just that, scoring 12 of his team’s final 15 points. With three minutes left, Wall had the ball in the open court and chose to stop and pop a jumper. Bang! So flabbergasted was Calhoun, he turned to his bench and shrugged. Wall was only starting. UConn rallied behind its own point guard, Kemba Walker, to take a 61-60 lead with 72 seconds left. “Come on, John Wall!” a female Kentucky fan drawled from behind the Seventh Avenue baseline. Even she knew what was coming, a memorable moment from a player who already is a legend in the Commonwealth.
At the top of the key, Wall waited for his crease. With 40 seconds left, he drove hard to the basket, got pounded by UConn’s Alex Oriakhi … and spun the shot off the glass and through the hole. Blessed with a hardbody, he peeled himself off the floor and flexed a muscle. “It was pretty hard,” Wall said of the hit. “I was just trying to make a play. At the end of the game, coaches want players who can make plays and win games.” Wall made the free throw and gave his team the lead for good in a 64-61, soul-strengthening victory.
He wound up with 25 points, 19 in the second half after an admittedly selfish and foul-troubled first half. He added six assists, prompting statistical minds to ask this question: Who was the last Knicks player to have 25 points and six steals in a game at Madison Square Garden? Would you believe Johnny Newman, in 1988? “Before the season, I said he was at least as good as Derrick Rose,” Calhoun said. “Now that I’ve seen him in person, he’s all of that. Simply a tremendous, tremendous player. He’s no freshman, there’s no name like that beside him. He won the game tonight.”
Naturally, Calipari was harder, more discriminating. After a painful first half, he told Wall that he was “trying to do it all himself.” The tone wasn’t soft. “We drank the poison in the first half, listened to all the hype about John Wall,” he said. “We didn’t make three passes in the first half.” At one point, Calipari was looking for a straitjacket, unable to handle this team of kids who are learning not only to play the game but simply perform the fundamentals with common sense.
“I’m gonna look like Dick Vitale by the time the season is over,” he said. “Or I’ll be solid gray and look like Bobby Cremins. We do stuff and I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ We got up and one point and celebrated like we won the national title. Are you kidding? I told them, ‘Guys, if we don’t start getting better, we’re setting ourselves up.’ ” For what, John? It’s the second week of December, three months before March Madness. That’s what Wall seemed to be conveying with his eyes when he stared down his coach, who said afterward that his 9-0 team should be “4-5.” Sheesh.
But in his quirky way, Calipari got to his star and penetrated his psyche. What came out when it mattered was Wall’s extraordinary poise and desire to have the ball in the crunch. “There’s no one who works harder,” Calipari raved. “He hasn’t missed a class, hasn’t missed a tutorial. No one works harder in the weight room. No one works harder in practice. All of that is building his self-esteem and confidence,”
The arrival of Wall coincides with the Calipari experience, which is greeted with glee in Bluegrass country despite his dubious record of dirt: He’s the only coach who had to vacate two Final Four berths, at Memphis, pending appeal, and Massachusetts, because of wrongdoing in his programs. Of course, the UK faithful don’t care, having dismissed their own scandals — academic fraud and recruiting under Eddie Sutton in the late 1980s and a 1949 point-shaving scandal in the Adolph Rupp era. Even Wall was nailed, suspended for a game and required to pay back $800 in expenses after he took unofficial visits to schools with an agent. The fans simply don’t care. At Lexington bars, they order a drink called the “John Wall,” a blend of blue raspberry vodka, sour mix and Sprite. There’s also a Wall Dance, based on his little manuever during the Big Blue Madness coming-out party. Seen the show “Cougar Town” on ABC?
Actor Josh Hopkins, a Kentucky fan, performed the Wall Dance on the show recently.
All of which compelled Calipari to ask his players a question the other day: “Anyone got a problem with John Wall getting all the press?” He looked at big man Patrick Patterson, an All-American and prime NBA prospect in his own right. “Patrick, you have a problem not being talked about?” Nope. “He’s phenomenal, one of the best basketball players out there,” Patterson said. “If we need a crunch-time basket, we know who will knock down the shot. John wants the ball. We get it to him.”
Whenever he is asked to assess himself, Wall rarely does. Wisely, he deflects the attention to the team or toward his own deficiencies. How did he feel about playing so well in the Garden? “It feels good,” he said. “In the first half, I was struggling and trying to do my thing. I made turnovers and got into foul trouble. In the second half, I ran the plays.”
He did so much more than that, of course. What he managed was a shout-out to a sports world that will be admiring him for, oh, the next 20 years. We just wish Calipari would leave him alone sometimes.
If not, the stinkeye awaits.
The original article and other great content can be found at this URL: http://jay-mariotti.fanhouse.com/2009/12/10/wall-meets-the-garden-leaves-a-memory/
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