John Wall Wins “Comeback Player of the Year”

While the “Comeback Player of the Year” award is not a real award anymore, as it was last given out following the 1985-86 to Marques Johnson of the Los Angeles Clippers, it is still something that matters in the minds of NBA fans and personnel. While he has not played a single NBA game since December of 2018, John Wall is going to be great with the Houston Rockets. 

Wall has had plenty of time to recuperate and become fully healthy and with James Harden as the team’s main facilitator, John Wall will not have an enormous amount of pressure on him to be great. Wall can play at his own pace and as a result, could be very successful in his first season in Houston.

John Wall has always been a great defensive player and impossible to stop in transition, which is where he can thrive with the Houston Rockets. Houston has struggled with perimeter defense over the years and with his explosive speed, could be a guy that James Harden gives the ball up to in transition to go and score at the other end of the floor in a blink of the eye. This is all assuming Wall can be the player he once was pre-injury. 

When looking at the Rockets roster from last season, it was clear to see at times that Harden and Westbrook would bat heads in terms of who has the ball at certain points in the game, but in the end this is James Harden’s team. He is the most elite one-on-one basketball player in the league today and has led the league in scoring in three consecutive seasons.

With Westbrook gone, he should once again lead the league in scoring, inching closer to Michael Jordan’s record of seven consecutive years being the NBA’s scoring champion. James Harden will elevate John Wall’s game as well because of his abilities to find him in the open-court. It is yet to be seen what John Wall can do after his two year hiatus, but as long as he can still be a high-level athlete, he will start back up right where he left off before his injuries.