WASHINGTON — John Wall gets why the Washington Wizards have been overlooked or flat-out ignored by pundits and prognosticators when discussing the elite teams of the Eastern Conference. The Wizards slipped last season — done in by funky chemistry and another knee procedure for the franchise player — and followed up with an offseason that appeared to further test a fragile locker room rather than address any lingering problems.

Wall, however, chooses to look at the potential upside of a new collection of talent to complement an experienced core that remains relatively young. And when he looks around a conference that has been made more wide open by the departure of the best player of this generation, Wall doesn’t believe that any team from the league’s junior varsity can claim enough separation to be considered an overwhelming favorite. Boston, Philadelphia and Toronto are often mentioned as the teams best prepared to get slaughtered by Golden State in the next NBA Finals but — like Washington — they also have questions.

“I feel like we’re all equal,” Wall told Yahoo Sports recently from his annual backpack giveaway at Barry Farm. “None of them won a championship. This is no knock on no other team. Don’t get me wrong. Boston is a hell of a team. Philly has great young talent with those guys [Joel] Embiid, [Ben] Simmons. And Toronto, losing DeMar [DeRozan], they still get Kawhi [Leonard]. Y’all might have been to the Eastern Conference finals, where we haven’t been to, but none of y’all were going to the Finals. It was one guy going to the Finals. Ain’t nobody separated from nothing. I know one guy that separated himself from the Eastern Conference every year and that was LeBron James and the Cavs. Other than that … if you lose in the second round, or the conference finals, you still didn’t get to your ultimate goal.

“On paper, everybody looks great,” Wall continued. “We look great. Boston looks great on paper. But how are all those young guys going to mesh with Kyrie [Irving] being back? Or Gordon Hayward being back? Nobody knows how that’s going to work. Now, they’ve got a hell of a coach in Brad Stevens, and [with GM and president] Danny Ainge, they’re going to figure it out. But you still got to put it all together. You’ve still got to make it work on the court. We don’t know how Kawhi is going to work. We know what Simmons and Embiid are going to give you, but it’s a new year.”

The Wizards experienced a noticeable regression in their second season under coach Scott Brooks that went beyond an early season knee injury to Wall that cost him a career-high 41 games and much of his usual explosiveness. Their record with Wall (23-18) and without was almost identical (21-20), which either suggested how hobbled he was or the depth of the dysfunction. The campaign was encapsulated by an image from their playoff loss to Toronto in which Wall and Marcin Gortat were bickering during a timeout while a disgusted Bradley Beal buried his head in a towel. “It was just guys all for themselves last year,” Wall told Yahoo Sports. “That’s what I felt it was about. It wasn’t the same as the year before when we were all having fun. It was hard to find any fun on the court. You didn’t see any smiling or excitement. I don’t know, that [expletive] was just weird. If you don’t know your roles, everybody wants to be ‘the man’ and when they do that, it hurts.”

View photos The Wizards’ big addition this offseason is Dwight Howard . (AP) More

Wall implored management to make changes afterward and Gortat — with whom Wall had an icy relationship — was shipped to the Los Angeles Clippers in exchange for Austin Rivers. General manager Ernie Grunfeld later made a move that could finally launch the Wall-Beal pairing into orbit or blow up the situation altogether by signing Dwight Howard, whose reputation as a disruptive force who alienates teammates led to him being dumped by three teams in the past two summers. An Instagram direct message and a phone call from Wall persuaded Howard to join the Wizards as a free agent. Howard has discussed his desire to change the narrative of the post-Orlando stage of his career, and Wall is ready to give him a chance.

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