Washington Wizards head coach Scott Brooks isn’t shy about his expectations for Bradley Beal and John Wall.
He believes they can be the best damn backcourt in the league, period.
Sort of.
During an interview with The Vertical’s Chris Mannix (h/t Bleacher Report), Scott Brooks offered up the following on his backcourt duo:
“I think they could be the top two-way backcourt in basketball.”
Stephen Curry’s and Klay Thompson’s ears are burning right now.
The “two-way” designation is an ambiguous one. Brooks doesn’t call Beal and Wall the best backcourt in basketball right now, nor does he outright say that’s their ceiling. He means to suggest that they could become the most balanced pairing, excelling at a high level on both defense and offense.
This, to be sure, is like saying the Wizards can have the best guard combination in the league, overall, bar none. If you’re the top two-way amalgam, you’re the top dyad. End of story.
Curry’s ultraridiculous offensive game is perhaps the lone exception. So long as he’s ruining defenses on that end, the Warriors could have the best backcourt in basketball while seldom ever playing a lick of defense. That, in turn, is Beal’s and Wall’s saving grace. They are the first backcourt in recent memory that could technically form the best two-way coupling without actually ranking as the best overall point guard-shooting guard combination.
This all gets very drab after a while, though. Beal needs to make strides defensively before Brooks’ vision reaches fruition, and the Wizards already deploy one of the most formidable backcourts in the game. They are right up there with Curry and Thompson, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan and Chris Paul and J.J. Redick. They just aren’t, nor will they ever be, on the same plane as Golden State’s crew.
