FanPost

Should We Be Concerned About John Wall's Preseason Regression?!?

Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

The preseason is over, and it couldn't have ended soon enough. The team went 2-5, and many of the losses were downright ugly. Only in the Miami game did the team's starters look good, and the absence of Emeka Okafor is showing just how deficient this team is from a rebounding and interior defense standpoint.

That said, the guy I'm most concerned about is the team's newly minted "max-contact" recipient, John Wall. Most think Wall is going to be the guy who guides us to the promised land, because he had the team playing .500 ball last year and it was reasonable to expect some carryover. Sadly, he has looked downright awful in every aspect of the game thus far.

In 7 preseason games, Wall shot a depressing 35% from the field, a frigid 11% from beyond the arc, and a pedestrian 77% from the line on a limited number of attempts. In short, he seems to have fallen in love with that elbow jumper and it seems to have fallen out of love with him. Wall's turnovers are also up. It's like he's a rookie all over again, but if you were paying attention last season, Wall's gaudy shooting numbers came with a disclaimer. I talked about this till I was blue in the face here, but eternal fools optimists that we are, most hoped the "Ohn Wall" days were over. Perhaps they actually aren't.

I know many of you are going to say I'm overreacting, or that it's just the preseason, or that Randy was "experimenting" with something or other, but numbers don't lie. Unless Wall flips some magic "shot-making" switch and becomes the 20-8 guy we saw for a stretch last season, we might need to start watching Kansas Jayhawks games. Emeka or no Emeka, if Wall doesn't play better, we're back to talking about "next year". And that sucks.

Do we need to panic here, or has Wall been saving the good stuff for games that actually matter?

This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.