By CHRIS HARRIS, CJ Staff Writer
Remember the old “Saturday Night Live” sketch about Bill Brasky?
Bill Brasky was the stuff of legend. He could do anything, according to buddies who sat around celebrating the man’s life and shouting, “To Bill Brasky!” Bill Brasky once visited SeaWorld and tossed Shamu into the audience after the whale splashed him. He had dandruff the size of mice. He’s an 8-foot-tall, two-ton monster who can palm a medicine ball, and he jumped the Empire State Building ... and only sprained an ankle.
John Wall is Kentucky’s answer to Bill Brasky.
Wall entered the University of Kentucky with gargantuan expectations. When you’re the top-ranked high school player in the nation, you carry a lot of baggage with you. When people who know such things say you’d have been the top pick in the NBA Draft out of high school, you don’t just have baggage: You’d better have millions of Israelites in tow, and the ability to part the Red Sea.
So is John Wall really that good?
According to Friday night’s results: Probably, yeah.
The caveat here is that the Wildcats only played an exhibition contest against Division 2 Clarion — which sounds more like a make-up product than a college — so the verdict on just how dominant Wall can be is still out until we see him play a Louisville, or a North Carolina, or even a Cleveland State. Still, anyone who “ooh”ed and “ahh”ed to Wall’s exploits Friday — played to the tune of 27 points, nine assists and four rebounds, and a whole lot of non-statistical “wow” factor — has to be pleased with UK’s newest toy (or should that be toy wonder?).
John Wall didn’t make plays. He made spectacular plays. In a real game — not a glorified practice session — for the first time, UK fans got to see what Wall would do to his opponents. Apparently, he will run right past them and stick the ball in the basket with enough mustard to make French’s jealous. Or he will run right past them and drop a perfectly-placed pass in traffic to DeMarcus Cousins (who was more impressive Friday than he has been so far, moving more like the Lamar Odom he can be than the bloated Shaq he had been like). Or he will just run right past them, just for the fun of it.
(And make no mistake: Wall had fun. The whole team did. The contagious smile on Wall’s face, the howl when he made a nice dunk, suggests that fun may be the single biggest difference between this team and the product we’ve seen the last couple of years under Coach You-Know-Who. Fun is highly underrated as a fuel in sports, and no one seems to be having more fun on the court than Wall.)
To fully appreciate the legendary speed of UK’s most important recruit since Ralph Sampson in 1979 (except UK narrowly missed on Sampson), you can’t watch on TV and you can’t even be up in the stands (unless you’ve got a really good seat). You need to be on the floor with him, staring right at the speeding bullet as he’s heading straight for you. The smoothness with which Wall shifts gears and cruises, not plows, to the hole was evident early in the game. Faster than a speeding bullet. Able to leap to the basket in a single bound. Ferrari should make a car called the John Wall.
Just ask Clarion’s coach, Ron Righter, who had maybe the best seat in the house to witness the wonder Wall.
“I knew how good John Wall was, but he’s the real deal,” said Righter (translated: Recruiting rankings can only tell you so much; eventually you have to see it with your own eyes). “I hope you can keep him another year or two, ‘cause he’s in a different league.”
Indeed, UK fans expect to be watching Wall in a different league next year: the NBA. Players like him don’t stick around very long these days, not when there’s money to be made. That’s why the fans who got to see Wall in his first real game in Rupp should hold onto their ticket stubs as souvenirs: There won’t be many of these opportunities. Treasure the ones you get.
Even Superman has kryptonite, and even Wall hit the wall, so to speak, late in the first half, when he started making turnovers and missing layups. But the way he started the game, with a crisp assist to Cousins, a three pointer, even making his free throws (his first, with an edge-of-your-seat bounce before it fell in, that proves even the rims love John Wall) ... that was everything UK fans expected. The way he turned on the jets to drive into the lane and swoop for the shot, or hit his teammate with the pass had to be everything Cat fans were hoping for coming in. The insane straight-up vertical elevation he showed on a tip-in of a Patrick Patterson miss to make the score 70-29 in the second half made you want to munch popcorn like you were watching a good action movie.
The best thing about Wall, however, wasn’t his own accomplishments. It was his effect on the team as a whole. Wall missed the first exhibition against Campbellsville in order to take care of some unfinished eligibility business (the NCAA may be the only effective Lex Luthor to Wall’s Superman this season), and UK didn’t exactly look sharp, often merely muddling through a 74-38 win over the NAIA school. This wasn’t the debut of the much ballyhooed Dribble Drive Offense UK fans had hoped for.
With Wall at the controls though — over what Clarion alum Calipari called a superior team to Campbellsville — UK ran like a well-oiled machine. Teammates cut. Assists were delivered promptly and efficiently. Easy shots were made. All in all, 117 points were scored. No offense to fellow freshman phenom Eric Bledsoe, but while he was nursing an injury, Wall got to direct what is probably UK’s best line-up — himself, Patterson, Cousins, Darnell Dodson, and Darius Miller. If these five — experienced, tall, and talented beyond belief — are the five Calipari rides throughout the season, UK fans will be very happy at season’s end.
Calipari said the difference between the first exhibition and this one was defense, and to some extent, that’s true. But the big blue elephant in that room is Wall, and it’s not hard to see his impact, turning an offense that was kind of a mess into a marvel of basketball engineering. Even Righter noticed.
“The biggest difference was spacing and the Dribble Drive,” said Righter. “It was night-and-day.”
Don’t think Calipari wasn’t impressed with his now prodigy, however. “I asked Wall, ‘Is that your A-game?’” said Calipari. “Pretty good.”
Just pretty good? Really, coach? Calipari’s next praise was a little higher.
“He’s a leader,” UK’s new coach said of its newest superstar. “He knows he has to have a feel for the team (and) keep everyone involved.”
Oh, everyone was involved, all right. Wall’s teammates, the audience, the guy selling concessions. Everyone watched Wall with rapt attention.
Remember it fondly, UK fans. When Wall is in the NBA — likely sooner rather than later — you’ll be sitting back, telling Bill Brasky-esque stories about him. John Wall once made a Rick Pitino cry like a baby. John Wall once dunked a ball with one hand tied behind his back. John Wall put another NCAA Final Four banner in Rupp Arena.
To John Wall!
