John Wall explains his jersey number

John Wall explains his jersey number

John Wall announced that he'd be wearing No. 2 on Twitter Wednesday night, but he didn't offer much explanation, writing only that he "just felt #2 was a good number." A few hours later, though, he went on Comcast SportsNet with Chris Miller, and provided several reasons behind the choice.

* If he couldn't have 11, he wanted "anything with 1s in it, so 1 plus 1 equals 2," he told Miller.

* Two = two parents.

"One of the main reasons was for my two fans, my mom and my dad," he said, adding that he wore their initials on his sleeves at the draft. "I wanted a new number that means the most to me for my mom and my dad."

* For marketing purposes, he said he'll be able to use the Roman numeral II, which looks an awful lot like 11, which means his iconography won't have to change much.

"So we're gonna try to work some things out with it and make a good run with it," he said of his marketing team.

Miller then asked him what he'd do the first time he saw a young kid wearing a "Wall 2" jersey.

"I might ask him can I just sign it, before he even asks me," Wall said.

Also, for anyone wondering about my previous post in which I said Chris Webber wore No. 2 with the Bullets/Wizards, here's the deal. When Webber arrived in town, Scott Skiles was wearing No. 4, so Webber took the deuce. When Skiles left the next season and Webber agreed to a new contract, he took over No. 4, his collegiate number.

Also, this is from the news release announcing Webber's deal:

"This is an extremely exciting time for us," Bullets owner Abe Pollin said in the news release that announced Webber had agreed to terms. "We are going to bring an NBA championship to Washington, and Chris Webber is going to lead the way."

(And yes, you can add Wall's jersey number to "Strasburg all-star game" and "Haynesworth radio interviews" in the category of Things Steinberg Writes About Too Often.)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2010/07/john_wall_explains_his_jersey.html