Early Wednesday morning, Peter Vecsey came out of left field to drop a couple of very interesting tweets that if correct, would somehow make an already disastrous season for the Wizards that much worse:
Prior 2 Wiz playoff elimination L v Pistons, injured John Wall cursed out Wittman & team. Randy promptly suspended...home practice, I'm told
— Peter Vecsey (@PeterVecsey1) April 13, 2016
Clearly, Wittman and Ernie Grunfeld are in severe job jeopardy. Meanwhile, Wall's acute lack of leadership is a searing hot internal topic
— Peter Vecsey (@PeterVecsey1) April 13, 2016
Wall and the Wizards wasted no time denying the report. CSN Mid-Atlantic's J. Michael is reporting Wall and three other players said it did not happen:
While Wall uttered an expletive to describe the lack of accuracy, three other players -- in individual chats with CSNmidatlantic.com -- said there was no argument between coach and player or player and player.
Wall denied report about practice incident last week: "I've never cussed my teammates out."
— Jorge Castillo (@jorgeccastillo) April 13, 2016
Well, I just got confirmation from someone on the team that Peter Vecsey's report is "totally false." You can put that to rest.
— Ben M (@BenMehicNBA) April 13, 2016
This is a very tricky story that's missing a lot of pertinent details but let's try to unpack everything to get a better understanding of what's going on here.
Why it could make sense
Certainly, John Wall has to be upset about how this season has gone. He talked with Michael Lee back in February about not wasting a season by missing the playoffs. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened. If the story is true, you could fault him for going over the line, but you couldn't fault him for being upset.
Why it doesn't make sense
With all due respect to Vescey, a man enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame, it's very odd to see that he's the one breaking the news here. He's not based in Washington, and he retired back in 2012. While it's fair to point out he did help break the story about the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton incident back in 2010, even still there are disputes over certain aspects of his report, as The Big Lead and Truth About It have noted.
Likelihood
There's just too many questions here to take this report very seriously. Odds are, nothing happened here, and even if something did happen, it probably wasn't to the extent that it was initially described. Either way, it's hard to imagine Wall's leadership is the "searing hot internal topic" getting the most focus inside Wizards headquarters at this exact moment.