CHICAGO – John Wall really hasn’t been planning on being a Net. Oh, if it happens, fine – in fact he would welcome it, he said. But the Kentucky point guard, the consensus No. 1 pick in next month’s NBA draft, figured the Nets would fizzle at the lottery.
And they did, falling to No. 3.
“To be honest, I really wasn’t focused on who,” Wall, here with 50 other top draft candidates at the NBA combine, said of lottery night. “When I looked into it, they said the teams that had the losing records never get the No. 1 pick so I was like, ‘Hey, they might not get it so I really don’t know. I was just sitting back and enjoying the moment.”
While the Nets were mixing an arsenic and bleach cocktail for themselves.
“The Nets would have been a great team to go,” said Wall, unintentionally rubbing it in.
Wall will still meet and talk with the Nets – he’s chatting with “the top five teams and one other.”
The Nets not only lost out on Wall – and likely Evan Turner – when they dropped to three. But their hopes of getting LeBron James took a hit. They still have Mikhail Prokhorov’s power of persuasion (and checkbook) but it was long rumored that Wall’s friendship with LeBron might be one piece of a complex enticement puzzle.
“That would be pretty big, playing with one of the top players in the NBA,” Wall said. “If it happens, it happens. If not, I’ve got to prepare myself to play against him. If you get a guy like that on your team he can help you with so much.”
No kidding. So what’s the latest with LeBron?
“I talked to him when the playoffs were going on. But I’m just giving him his space. They had a tough loss,” Wall said. “They wanted to win and go far so it’s a tough loss. I’m just giving him his space.”