Man, when I saw the headline “John Wall retires,” I had to do a double take. It hit me like a time stamp on a whole era. Wall was the No. 1 pick in 2010, a blur out of Kentucky who immediately became one of the fastest guards alive . Steph Curry? Drafted a year earlier in 2009 at No. 7, skinny kid from Davidson who people doubted could even last in the league. They came into the NBA just twelve months apart, two very different archetypes of point guard—the raw, explosive athlete versus the undersized, pure shooter.

Wall hanging it up now feels like a marker in time for that whole mid-2000s to early-2010s point guard revolution. That was the generation of Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul, John Wall, and yes, Curry. The guys who shifted the league away from traditional bigs and into an era of speed, spacing, and guards dictating everything. With Wall officially calling it a career, it feels like the book closing on that class of slash-and-burn, rim-attacking floor generals.

Look at this next photograph. Let it settle in your mind like the last note of a symphony you wish would never end.

Chris Paul in those Mardi Gras pinstripes, every inch the floor general with that surgical precision already etched in his young eyes. Russell Westbrook draped in Thunder blue, a kinetic storm waiting to be unleashed on the league. Baby-faced Steph Curry in pre-dynasty royal, looking almost fragile next to these titans of athleticism. John Wall in Wizards teal, speed incarnate, built like he could outrun lightning itself. Derrick Rose in Chicago black and red, carrying the weight of a city’s championship dreams on shoulders that seemed broad enough to bear anything.

Five young maestros at the dawn of what should have been a golden age. Five different philosophical approaches to the point guard position. Five cautionary tales about what happens when the beautiful brutality of professional basketball collides with the fragile machinery of human anatomy.

Because here’s what we need to understand about these legends: every single one of them had their destiny interrupted, their bodies betrayed by the very gifts that made them transcendent. Except Curry figured out how to get a fistful of championship rings out it.

Prime Chris Paul was basketball poetry in motion. He was 6-foot surgeon who dissected defenses with the cold precision of someone who understood the game at a molecular level. His basketball IQ was off the charts, his leadership undeniable. But those hamstrings, man. They betrayed him when it mattered most, most painfully in Houston’s near-miss against the Warriors in 2018 when championship glory slipped through his fingers like sand.

Russell Westbrook was pure kinetic energy, a comet streaking across hardwood skies with triple-double violence that defied physics. He played basketball like he was personally offended by the concept of limits. But knees and quads and apparently Kevin Durant’s desire to be a teammate with Russ don’t care about yhis motor, and eventually, that nuclear-powered explosion has fallen off from Triple Double King.

And then young Derrick Rose. He was a cheat code wrapped in human form, MVP at 22, elevating with an anger and athleticism that felt like destiny itself. When he moved, it was like watching someone rewrite the laws of gravity in real time. Then his ACL snapped, and Chicago’s title dreams crumbled like ancient architecture.

John Wall just retired this month, walking away after 11 seasons defined first by blinding speed that made him arguably the fastest end-to-end player the league had ever seen, then derailed by years of surgeries and absences that turned that burst into a memory. At his peak, Wall was a blur with a basketball, a master of controlled chaos who could change the entire complexion of a game in three dribbles.

Every single one of these transcendent talents built their superstardom on physical dominance. Every single one of them eventually watched that foundation crack under the weight of what they were asking their bodies to do night after night, season after season.

And then there’s Wardell Curry II.

By any conventional basketball scouting metric, Steph was the most vulnerable player in that photograph. He wasn’t flying through traffic like Rose, wasn’t bulldozing to the rim like Westbrook, didn’t have Wall’s end-to-end speed or Paul’s stocky defensive toughness. What he had was the shot and ankles that, ironically, nearly ended his story before it truly began.

People forget how close Curry came to being another “what if” casualty. Those ankle injuries in his early years weren’t just setbacks. Take it from me, they were existential threats to his entire basketball identity. The Warriors had to make a decision: invest in this fragile, unproven talent or cut their losses.

Instead of disappearing into the footnotes of basketball history, Steph did something revolutionary. He adapted. He reinvented himself. He rebuilt those problematic ankles with core strength, balance training, and biomechanics so elite they transformed his body from liability into secret weapon.

His athleticism was never vertical—it was lateral, endurance-based, built for running marathons of movement. He turned the halfcourt into his personal dance floor, transformed the three-point line into a gravitational force that warped entire defensive schemes.

More than a decade later, Curry remains a top-10 player at 37. Four championships! Folks, that’s more than Paul, Westbrook, Rose, and Wall combined. Don’t forget the two MVPs, including that unanimous selection, and a Finals MVP to boot. A legacy that rewrote basketball’s tactical DNA.

That photograph was supposed to represent the future of point guards. But Steph isn’t in the conversation anymore…he is the conversation.

And yet, even as he raged through year 16, Curry’s injury luck hasn’t stayed golden. Missing four of five games in GSW’s second-round series against Minnesota after winning Game 1 reminded us that Father Time remains undefeated. The difference? When Curry’s body betrayed him this time, he had already put banners up in the Bay.

As we honor John Wall’s blazing career, that photograph captures something profound about athletic mortality. Four legends fought their bodies and lost prime years to betrayal. Curry took his scrawny, fragile frame and through obsessive preparation and audacious shot selection, became the sole survivor at the summit.

Athleticism is extremely important, but the greats of this game at the point guard position are measured by adaptation and endurance. When the dust settled on this generation of guard excellence, the Baby-Faced assassin had become a dynasty unto himself.

0 Comments