The Washington Wizards struggled mightily without John Wall last season, but the injury that kept the young guard out at the beginning of the year could have been much worse. Wall says he nearly broke his kneecap last season, Howard Beck with Bleacher Report reported on Monday.
John Wall nearly broke his kneecap last season
John Wall’s shortened season was almost a whole lot shorter last year.
Alexandre Loureiro
The Wizards were set to give Wall the keys to the franchise in 2012, but they didn’t get to see their star in action until almost halfway through the the season. Wall was diagnosed with a stress injury in his left patella to begin the campaign.
Bullets Forever reacts to the John Wall news
In an extended interview with Bleacher Report's Howard Beck, John Wall said he's keeping track of his doubters and did indeed have a stress fracture last year. We discuss the latter revelation in depth. Wall missed the first 33 games of the season and the Wizards went 5-28, good for a franchise worst start. Turns out that Wall didn’t merely have a stress injury, he had a stress fracture.
Wall later divulged that the injury had become a stress fracture. “I was on the verge of breaking my knee cap,” he said last week. “Scary.”
A broken kneecap is what deprived the NBA of Blake Griffin’s rookie season, as well as much of Greg Oden’s playing career.
Wall wasn’t even sure he would have been able to come back while he was sidelined with the injury. As Beck reported, if Wall didn’t receive clearance to play, surgery would have been the only option to recovery.
Luckily, it wasn’t necessary. Wall came back and gave the Wizards the jumpstart they needed as they finished the season a respectable 24-25. The Wizards will need all the Wall they can get, and hopefully he builds off his limited time last season, when he averaged a career high 18.5 points per game on 44 percent shooting.
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