Rule Change Pushes Wall To The Top

Rule changes push Raleigh star to top

Posted: Sunday, Jun. 20, 2010

Rick Bonnell covers the NBA and Charlotte Bobcats for The Charlotte Observer.



What does it take to start a dance craze? All former Kentucky Wildcats star John Wall had to do was flex.

I wonder if John Wall knows to send Pat Riley a thank-you note.
Wall, who was raised in Raleigh then played a season at Kentucky, appears a lock to be the Washington Wizards' choice as the No.1 overall pick in Thursday's NBA draft. Wall likely would have been the top pick regardless of who received it in the draft lottery.

That speaks as much to what point guard Wall does as how well he does it. That's where this winds back to Riley when he coached the New York Knicks and Miami Heat.

Riley's teams were as tough (or thuggish, depending on who you asked) as the NBA got. You couldn't cut through the lane without getting chucked and certainly didn't dribble to the rim without a defender's hand, forearm and elbow impeding you like you should be cocooned in hockey pads.

The NBA didn't want that esthetically, with games grinding along to the 70s, not the 90s. So eventually the rules were changed over several years to where hand-checking a ballhandler is just about an automatic foul.

That rule interpretation meant Wall was automatic, too - that weapon every team needs as the refereeing influences the coaching and the coaching influences the front offices.

"Our league is obsessed with trying to figure out a way to score," said Charlotte Bobcats coach Larry Brown, who's always had a defensive bent. "College is now much more physical than the NBA, in terms of guarding the ball."

Brown was between jobs - fired by the Knicks, not yet hired by the Bobcats - for the two seasons when the NBA re-thought its hand-check rules. When Brown returned to the sideline, he was stunned by the impact.

Suddenly a team's best ballhandler could go anywhere he wished, virtually unimpeded. Think of Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo, he of the non-existent jump shot. Anyone with a speed dribble and change-of-direction could lead a team to the NBA Finals.

So every coach in the league screamed, "Get me one of those!"
"It makes any perimeter player who can guard and also get the ball to the rim or run pick-and-roll" invaluable, Brown described.

"If you've got a kid like (Derrick) Rose or Wall or (Chris) Paul or (Deron) Williams or (Steve) Nash. They make everybody better, they're hard to guard because they can get the ball anywhere they want, and when they put their minds to it, they can guard as well."

Wall has that rare mix of size (6-foot-4), power (a cut 196 pounds), speed and ball-handling skill that exhausts any defender trying to stay in his path. And Wall had a coach in John Calipari as good as any at teaching the dribble-drive offense.

Calipari left Memphis for Kentucky before last season. His last two point guards at Memphis were Chicago Bull Rose and Sacramento King Tyreke Evans, who went on to be back-to-back NBA rookies of the year as - you guessed it - explosive dribble-drive point guards.

See a pattern?

"You look at Wall - if he had gone to Carolina, he'd still be the first pick in the draft - but John taught him how to play within a system without taking any of his ability away," said Brown, a close friend and mentor to Calipari.

"He prepares you to play on the next level as well as any (college) coach I know."

So Wall has the size, the speed, the handle, the training, and the rules give him an unfair advantage.

That's why he's this draft's "Get me one of those!" guy.