This one time, for this one special occasion, just playing was enough to celebrate. John Wall had played nine NBA seasons. He had been the national player of the year at Kentucky, the first pick of the draft, a five-time NBA All Star.
Yet he could not sleep the night before his debut Thursday with the Rockets. He thought about it all day. When the game was over, he said he felt like a high schooler and made plans to save and cherish the uniform he wore.
He pointed to the 735 days between his NBA games and said it felt like a fresh start.
“I feel amazing,” Wall said between broad smiles after the Rockets beat the Kings. “I feel I’m in high school all over again. I feel like I’m not even 30 years old. That’s kind of crazy to say with all the injuries I’ve been through and all the pounding I’ve been going through. I feel great. I couldn’t ask for anything better.”
Along with the sense that Wall was back to what he was before the surgeries, before he tried to play through the pain for several seasons, there was confidence in his new backcourt partnership with James Harden.
That potential first required that Wall return to form. With stunning explosiveness, Wall scored 22 points with nine assists and six rebounds, nearly mirroring career averages that make him one of three players — with Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson — in NBA history to average at least 19 points, nine assists and four rebounds.
“He looks like he’s back in his All-Star mode,” Rockets center Christian Wood said.
“He was extremely aggressive, making plays, defensively getting after it,” Harden said. “He looked really, really good, especially for not playing in … two years. Once we get a rhythm, the guys get into their roles and find their best fit for the team, we’ll be even better.”
Even in their first game together, sharing the floor for 27 minutes, Wall and Harden demonstrated ways they can work together differently than Harden had with Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook in three previous Rockets seasons.
As with Westbrook and Paul, Wall was off the ball much more often than he had been as a full-time point guard before joining the Rockets. But Harden also moved without the ball more often than he often has.
“Coach did a good job of putting me in good positions, not always on the basketball but just off the ball in scoring positions,” Harden said. “I’m always a scoring threat.”
The Rockets also showed at least one of the ways they plan to deal with the double teams and halfcourt traps teams send to get the ball out of Harden’s hands. Last season, when teams took that to unprecedented extremes, the Rockets had him give up the ball to have Westbrook go to work.
Westbrook, often serving as the point guard going four-on-three, took off from late December through mid-March. But Harden slumped. When the Rockets staggered through a four-game losing streak before the stoppage and in the series against the Lakers, teams used late double teams to leave little time to work.
Drawing the defense away from their second point guard could continue to be an option for the Rockets. But besides initiating the offense, they had Harden get the ball within the offense, working out of the corners or off-ball screens.
“Very important,” Rockets coach Stephen Silas said of that option. “Teams are throwing double teams at him. When he’s bringing the ball up the floor, he’s the focus of attention. With John bringing up the ball and James playing off the ball but doing stuff so he can get it and go quickly or get a switch and get to his iso game is important for us. Making sure he stays aggressive even though he doesn’t have the ball is a very big part of what we got going offensively.”
Harden seems to have adjusted in other ways. He is not dribbling anywhere near as often as he had been, especially cutting back Thursday when Wall made his debut. Harden averaged 5.77 dribbles per touch last season and 5.09 in the games without Wall. He cut that back to 3.38 dribbles per touch Thursday.
“I think it was cool,” Wall said of pairing with Harden. “I think we have a long ways (to go) to keep getting better. My job is to help James as much as possible, make it a little easier for him. When we need a bucket and get to a crunch-time situation, we know what he’s capable of.”
They got a glimpse of what Wall can still do, too. But the night was special for him not just as the start of his new partnership, but as the end of two long years working his way back. So even after presenting Silas with the game ball for his first coaching win, Wall made plans to keep a souvenir.
“I definitely wanted to keep it, but it was coach’s first win,” Wall said. “I think he deserved it. But I got an opportunity to keep my jersey. That’s definitely going in my trophy room.”
jonathan.feigen@chron.com
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