John Wall played in the NBA for 11 seasons over 15 years before finally announcing his retirement from professional basketball in August 2025. He recently sat down with the crew of ‘The Pivot Podcast’ and spoke about dealing with injuries throughout his career.
“Let me explain to you, like I don’t think a lot of people really know. I really never tore my Achilles as all these other guys did. So I had a bone spur. It’s like two inches long in my Achilles, and I had one in my knee at the same time, both on my left side.”
“So it’s crazy because in the year 2016-17, I had double knee surgery, but I had just scoped my right knee, and took the bone spur out of this knee. I’m going to show y’all a picture afterwards. You’re going to be like, ‘No way I played with this for like six, seven years.'”
“So I go to the doctor, he’s like, ‘How the hell do you play with this?’ I’m like I just they told me it was just tendonitis. So I’m just in pain tolerance. I’m going through it. So they lift my Achilles up, take the bone out.”
“Then you have to put my Achilles back, which is now weak. So I’m in my walking boot, and then I have my scooter. It gets caught on the carpet. I fall over, and it kind of tears partially.”
“Everybody talking, ‘I fell in the shower,’ I ain’t fall in no shower. My shower had a chair, and I could sit down. So I was sitting in the shower. I won’t stand up. But my scooter got caught, and it fell,” clarified Wall on how he tore his Achilles while he was already injured.
“I go to get the thing off, and they take the stitch out. I wake up like, they’re like, ‘Yo, we got to go back again.’ What do you mean you have to go back again? ‘Oh, you tore your Achilles.’ What the hell? So I go through that phase again.”
“Mind you, a lot of people don’t even know. I had four infections. So, last infection, I went to Baltimore. They throw these red bees in there. Like, ‘this is the last opportunity we got to try to kill the infection. If not, you’ve got to amputate your foot.'”
“So for me, it’s not even about basketball anymore, right? It’s about life. Like, can I run around, play with my kids, can I be able to walk, do those things? So once I finally got past that, I was like, okay, cool. I know I can get back to basketball cause I know the work I put in through my rehab.”
“And I always tell everybody, your first three months of any surgery, anything, those are the key to you getting back to what you want to be. So that part wasn’t a fact. I came back more athletic than I was before I left.”
“It was just getting through that infection, and that scare part that a lot of people didn’t know… It was like one, but it wouldn’t go away. So like I tried like four different things, and I’m like, bro, we got to figure something out. Like you can’t cut my foot off… That’s all I was worried about. Like I’m even like f**k basketball. Like, just get me to be able to walk,” concluded Wall.
Wall dealt with this infection in 2019 and was looking to bounce back in 2020 before COVID-19 eventually hit. Following the pandemic, Wall was traded to the Rockets and almost never found the same groove he had before his surgeries.
The last time Wall played in the NBA was during the 2022-23 season for the Clippers. He averaged 11.4 points, 5.2 assists, and 2.7 rebounds in the 34 games he played while shooting 40.8% from the field.
This was a shell of what he could do at the prime of his career. In 2016-17, he arguably had the best season of his career, and two knee surgeries at the same time. He averaged 23.1 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 10.7 assists per game while shooting 45.1% from the field in that season.
Across 11 seasons, Wall could have possibly played in 902 regular season games, but he only played in 647 of them, nearly missing one-third of the potential games, majorly struggling with injuries towards the end of his career.
Yet, he earned approximately $276.5 million over the 11 years he spent in the NBA. He is a five-time All-Star and will always be remembered in the Wizards’ history as one of the most electric point guards to ever play in the league.
The circumstances under which his career ended were nowhere close to the respect he deserves, at least from the Wizards franchise. Wall is currently working as an analyst for Amazon Prime’s coverage of the NBA.
