Photo Credit: Nick Wass/AP

Healthy John Wall Doesn’t Want To Play In Orlando: “I Just Don’t Feel Like It’s Safe”

John Wall hasn’t played a game of professional basketball since December 26, 2018, when the Wizards star suffered a ruptured Achilles. Wall was expected to be out for the entire 2019/20 season, in order to recover but with the NBA in hiatus for these past couple of months, and a targeted return date of July 30, things might look a little differently.

Even in the weeks before the global coronavirus pandemic, we got to see various clips of Wall dunking in pre-game warmups, jumping off and landing on his injured foot, while looking pretty healthy.

He was also already playing 1-on-1 against some of their assistant coaches again, and Wizards coach Scott Brooks even didn’t completely rule out a return for John Wall this season, prior to the season suspension.

But, does a healthy John Wall even want to play when the season resumes? This seems to be up in the air for now. In an interview with Uproxx, Wall revealed that he doesn’t feel that playing basketball is safe right now.

“For me, if I was playing, I wouldn’t want to go to it, to be honest. I just don’t feel like it’s safe. I just don’t feel like it is. I understand why they want to do it and what they’re trying to get to, but I wouldn’t want to,”

This is his stance when it comes to safety, concerning his personal health amidst the global coronavirus pandemic. 

When it comes to Kyrie Irving’s points regarding the Black Livers Matter movement, Wall seems to agree with him on this topic, even though he acknowledged that Kyrie’s statements and philosophy of life aren’t always the most understandable.

“Kyrie has his things where he be in his own world… ‘The Earth is flat,’. But to be honest, I think he has a point. A lot of people feel that way. I think that’s why they tried to get on that call to see how many people really want to go play and how many people don’t want to play. Because with all this ‘Black Lives Matter’ going on and protesting and trying to get justice and all that; a lot of people feel like it’s not safe to go there. That’s what he stands on,”