“We didn’t know how to win” – John Wall talks about his partnership with Bradley Beal and the missing piece for the Wizards to take it to another level originally appeared on Basketball Network.
John Wall and Bradley Beal formed one of the best backcourt duos in the NBA during the 2010s. But good as they were individually and together as a tandem, they never got the chance to make a significant playoff push, at least to the Conference Finals.
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Looking back, Wall talked about how good that Washington Wizards team was and why they could never take it to the next level, despite having a good team that matched up well with the other top contenders in their conference.
“I think for me and Brad, we blossomed early. It was a good tandem, but we just didn’t know how to win and be those closers at the time. And then we start to figure it out a little later, and that’s when I had got injured and early on in his career, he was injured a little bit. But the year we had Paul Pierce, like I think him, just showing us how to be a closer, how to be a worker every day doing those little things,” said Wall.
Wall thinks they had a shot to beat the Cavs in 2015
Pierce signed with the Wizards in 2014 after playing the previous campaign in Brooklyn, where the Celtics traded him. Although this was past-his-time Paul, he was still a clutch scorer and came up big for the Wizards when they needed him most.
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In the second round, the Wizards faced the top-seeded Atlanta Hawks. But while they managed to steal Game 1, they lost Wall to a hand injury, and he missed the next three games of the series. After Washington took a 2-1 series lead, the Hawks went on to win three in a row to close out their series. John thinks that was their big chance to win it all.
“But I feel like that was our window to get to play the Cavs in the Eastern Conference Finals because Paul wasn’t the same Paul before. Nobody’s gonna stop Bron. Bron going to get his numbers. But Bron had to respect Paul because he know what Paul can get. And I feel that Me, Kai, we’re going to do our thing. Brad and J.R., we cool with that. Gortat and Tristan, we felt we just matched up well with them. And if you watch the regular season, it was always great games between us two,” he added.
They had one more good run in 2017, but otherwise, injuries hurt them
That summer, Pierce opted out of the second year of his Washington contract to sign with the L.A. Clippers. Meanwhile, Beal played a career-low 55 games during the 2015-16 campaign due to many injuries, and Washington went from finishing 5th the previous season to 10th in the regular season standings.
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Both Wall and Beal were healthy in 2016-17, and the Wizards won 49 regular-season games, their most since 1979 when they had 54 wins. Washington took the No.1 seeded Boston Celtics to a Game 7, but Wall struggled on 8-23 shooting while Beal scored 38 in a 105-115 defeat.
It was Wall’s turn to get hurt next, and he played only 72 games in the next three campaigns before he was traded to the Houston Rockets. Beal stayed in D.C. until 2022-23, but it was no longer the same without his backcourt partner. Brad left for the Phoenix Suns in 2023, officially ending the era without making it past the second round of the playoffs.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 26, 2025, where it first appeared.