Everything about yesterday’s John Wall trade is exactly why sports has become such a struggle for me these days.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Wizards fan. I’ve been a Wizards fan for as long as I can remember. I was here for the Jordan era. I remember Antonio Daniels getting crossed up by Allen Iverson twice in one play. I was there for Gilbert Arenas. All of it. This is my team, for better or for worse. And I’ve been through it all with them.
But when ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Wizards had finally traded Wall and a protected 2023 first round pick to the Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook, I felt like I was done.
This team had betrayed me — betrayed its fan base. They’d sent the most beloved Washington Wizard in, at the very least, the last two decades away for a point guard who was well past his prime.
And Russell Westbrook is fine! He’s a great guy. He’s a former MVP and will be a Hall of Famer when he retires. But he’s not the same player he used to be, and certainly not one that will make this team appreciably better.
But really, that was beside the point. That wasn’t the issue. Looking at this in a vacuum, this trade is fine. To everyone outside of D.C.? This makes total sense. Wall hasn’t played basketball in two years! Russ is clearly the better option here.
But to the city? Wall deserved so much better. You have to be from here to truly understand why. Let me explain.
To know why John Wall means so much to the people of D.C., you have to know what the city was like when he got here and what it was before he ever knew he was going to be here.
Washington, D.C. was affectionately known as “Chocolate City” for decades — it was the first American city to have a majority Black population starting in 1957. That number skyrocketed to 71% by 1970 with many of the folks moving into the city coming from North Carolina.
But that was the apex of Chocolate City that, well, isn’t quite as chocolate anymore.
These days, D.C. is less of a safe haven for Black folks and more of a transient playground for transplants from other places around the country. You know, people more interested in politics, media, law. All that good stuff. Many of those people are white.
And like every other major city in America, D.C. is also plagued by gentrification. The Black families who have lived in the city for decades and been underserved have been uprooted and replaced to make room for those transplants.
By 2011, Chocolate City was nothing more than a fond memory. D.C. hadn’t felt Black anymore — not for a while. That was just the year it became official. The city’s Black population dipped below 50% for the first time in half a century.
Enter John Wall. In 2010, the Wizards draft this 6’4, 196 pound soaking wet kid from Kentucky by way of Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s an exciting time. Some folks are calling him the best prospect since LeBron James in 2003. And he’s from North Carolina, too? He’s basically from here. This is the guy.
Still, though, people are nervous. What’s this kid like? We hear he’s kind of a hot head. What if this doesn’t work out? What if he doesn’t like the city? Nobody likes the city.
First thing he does when he touches the Wizards court? It wasn’t a bucket. It wasn’t a crazy assist. It wasn’t an epic chasedown block. It was the Dougie.
WORD. This was it. This was the guy. This was D.C.’s guy. In a city that was slowly losing its identity, Wall restored some semblance of it on the first night of his career. He reminded D.C. what it was. Fun, brash, flashy, braggadocious, but also humble. And also really good.
But that’s really just where the relationship begins. That’s when D.C. met John Wall — it’s not when they fell in love with him. That happened over the course of the next 10 years.
That love grew every time Wall belted out “this is my city” after a ferocious dunk or chasedown block in the 4th quarter of a close game. It grew with every flashy pass he made that led to a dunk or a corner 3. It grew every time he played through an injury that he probably should’ve sat out with.
And that’s just on the court. Off the court? He held the city down in ways that not many players before him have and not many after him will.
Look, every player hosts some charity event and gives some significant donation to an important cause. They all have some spiel for doing what they’re doing. But it’s not always genuine. There’s not always a real commitment — a real connection.
With Wall? He was never afraid to go out and touch the people. Every time he held a backpack drive in the heart of the Southside of the city, he’d be there for hours on end handing out school supplies, signing autographs and playing with kids he doesn’t know.
When people in the city were in need, he held them down. His foundation raised $300,000 for the 202 Assist program to help residents in D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods pay their rent in the middle of a pandemic. Even last week, amid swirling trade rumors, he still handed out free meals and grocery gift cards to the neediest folks in the heart of the city.
As long as he’s played here, he’s always actually been here. He’s always had his boots on the ground in the city when people needed him the most. And folks appreciate that. They never forget it. That’s more valuable than any bucket he could score or any dime he could dish out.
So back to why sports fandom has become such a struggle for me.
Most of the sentiment from general NBA fans has been on the side of the Wizards. Just hop on the internet and look at the tweets. They range everywhere from “Wizards fans should be thankful that they got off that contract” to “Russell Westbrook is a much better player anyway.” There’s also the thing about him throwing gang signs up at a party in a video that surfaced back in September.
And, look. No one is defending that. That’s childish behavior from a 30-year old man who had no business doing what he was doing. It was stupid. And, yes, that contract is terrible for a player who hasn’t played in two years and is coming back from a torn Achilles. And, yes, Russell Westbrook might just be the better player.
But when you talk about that terrible contract, make sure you talk about all the dollars from it that have been invested into actually helping people. When you bring up that video to tear him down, be sure to talk about the people he’s uplifted in D.C.
So much of the discourse on athletes, in general, misses the little things like that. For me, John Wall was my last bastion of that. With him out of D.C., I don’t know if I’ll ever see that again.
And that’s what makes this all so sad to me.