In a recent interview with Mike Wise for ESPN, John Wall illuminated the turbulent past that plagues many NBA players.

“Where would you be if the NBA never worked out for you?” Wise asked.

“I’d probably be in the streets or in jail. … I was going down the same road as my dad,” Wall said.

Wall’s father, John Carroll Wall Sr., was a felon. The Wizards’ point guard’s past was plagued with crime, prison visits and the untimely death of his father to liver cancer when John was eight years old.

Wall went on to tell ESPN about how basketball, as cliche as it sounds, was his escape. It saved him. To avoid the fighting and the mischief that colored the future superstar’s childhood, Wall turned to basketball. It stopped him from going too far, from pulling the trigger, from pulling out a knife, from plunging himself into a life from which he never could have escaped.

In his senior year of high school, Wall was expected to play for the Memphis Tigers under Head Coach John Calipari. However, in a stunning move, Calipari took a coaching job at the University of Kentucky in March 2009, and Wall immediately followed Calipari to join the Wildcats for the 2009-2010 season.

Throughout his freshman year, Wall was electrifying. He was the best point guard in the country. Along with DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Patrick Patterson, he led Kentucky to a stellar season.

In spite of his success, scouts and critics still doubted him. They questioned whether he had too much attitude, if he was willing to work hard to win and if he could control himself on the court.

The Washington Wizards selected Wall as the first overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft. Questions followed his selection, just as they had followed him in college — would Wall pan out or would he bust? Would he be just another reckless NBA point guard with an attitude problem?

In his first three seasons, Wall failed to give definitive answers to those questions, and the Wizards lost more games over that three-year stretch than any team other than the Charlotte Bobcats (now Hornets) and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who had just lost LeBron James to the Miami Heat.

Though the Wizards’ record was troubled, it wasn’t wholly Wall’s fault. He didn’t win Rookie of the Year, overshadowed by Blake Griffin’s monster rookie season. Wall’s statistics didn’t stand out, aside from one that showed that he turned the ball over too much, and he had terrible shot selection.

In spite of his shortcomings, Wall’s athleticism was still as marvelous as ever. He could still run the full length of the court in 3.5 seconds. He could still dunk over anyone with his non-dominant left hand.

It was just a matter of time before Wall, and the Wizards as a team, blossomed. A string of sudden, under-the-radar offseason moves brought Nene, Marcin Gortat and Trevor Ariza to the nation’s capital. In addition, the Wizards drafted guard Bradley Beal to play alongside their incumbent point guard.

And then Wall changed. It happened sometime last season, when he realized that going 100 miles per hour straight to the rim could end in a pass to a teammate instead of a wild shot.

Wall has learned to fuse his athleticism with his incredible passing ability and a much more developed basketball IQ. The Wizards finished fifth in the NBA’s Eastern Conference last year and squared off against the injury-plagued Chicago Bulls, an old rival. Wall and the rest of the team dispatched them in five games before facing the heavily favored, top-seeded Indiana Pacers. Though the Wiz-kids fell in a grueling six-game series, Wall flashed his potential, showing that his ceiling wasn’t even in sight.

This year, he has come back even better. Named to the Eastern Conference All-Star team as a starter, Wall has led the Wizards to the third-best record in this year’s Eastern Conference, arguably a much more competitive conference than last year’s. Wall’s success transcends his team and his conference; the point guard has risen to superstar status. Known for his acrobatic 360-degree layups and incredibly athletic passes, Wall leads the NBA in assists with 10.2 per game and has erased all of the doubts surrounding his game.

The same experts who raised doubts about his game and his character are now the ones labeling him as the best point guard in the East and a top-five point guard in the league. The tables have turned, but it wasn’t by chance — John Wall turned his own tables. And maybe, just maybe, he has turned a Wizards franchise that has struggled for most of the past two decades around for good.

Paolo Santamaria is a freshman in the College. SAXA SYNERGY appears every Friday.