So John Wall takes early-February regular-season games pretty seriously.
Strike that: Very seriously.
Per CSN Mid-Atlantic’s J. Michael Falgoust, Wall called the Washington Wizards’ Monday night matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers the biggest of his NBA career:
Wall calls Mon game v #Cavs the biggest regular season game of his career. "Its on" #WizPelicans #NOPatWAS
— J. Michael (@ThisIsJMichael) February 5, 2017
This, more likely than not, is just Wall’s way of saying the game against the Cavaliers is a huge deal—that this is a measuring stick for a Wizards outfit that has won 14 of its last 16 games and each of its last 17 outings at home. If the Cavaliers come in, as the Eastern Conference’s best team, albeit one suffering from something of a dry spell, and fail to end that stretch of dominance, it’ll be yet another message on the long list of reminders the Wizards have sent since beginning the year 6-12.
Washington is 24-8 since that point and has now taken sole ownership of third place in the East. It trails the second-place Boston Celtics by 2.5 games and is a very manageable 4.5 games behind the first-place Cavaliers.
With Wall dead set on carrying these Wizards to the Eastern Conference Finals, it makes sense that he wants this one more, apparently, than any other regular-season matchup in his career. This is the Wizards’ chance to prove, yet again but with more meaning, that they’re a team to be taken seriously in the conference—that they have reached a point where even the supposedly untouchable Cavaliers need to be looking over their shoulder.
