For years, the Washington Wizards have been regarded as John Wall’s team.

After all, the point guard is considered to be one of the best overall players in the league and has made five-straight All-Star teams.

The beginning of this season was no different. But, a couple bouts of adversity hit the Wizards and in the process, a co-leader emerged.

Despite advancing to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals last season, the Wizards failed to live up to expectations and have hovered just above .500 all season long. (They’re now 31-24.) Despite consistently showing up against worthy opponents, the Wizards have had an obvious issue to take care of business against lesser squads.

Then, Wall decided to undergo knee surgery after spending much of the year playing through pain. He will still be out a number of weeks while recovering.

Although Bradley Beal was the obvious choice to step up in Wall’s absence, he has shown off a couple of attributes this year that were previously hidden. As a result, he’s headed to his first All-Star Game next week and could very well help change the course of the franchise once Wall returns to full health.

An emerging leader

At the beginning of the season, Beal was quick to voice his opinion about his team’s struggles, even with Wall present and with a number of outspoken veterans on the Wizards roster.

“We can’t knock facts. The fact of it is we haven’t been producing the way we know we’re capable of producing. People are going to critique us and criticize us to a T, and we do the same to ourselves. Sometimes after the game we’re like, ‘Man, what just happened? What’s going on?’ We’ve got to figure it out. Granted, it’s a long year, we’re an experienced team, we’ve been in the trenches before, we’ve played in the playoffs, we know that we’re capable of making a run like everybody expected us to, but we’ve got to be more consistent with everything,” he said at the time, per Candace Buckner of the Washington Post.

Rather than running from their problems, Beal helped make sure that his teammates stayed within the moment and made necessary changes.

“We embrace it. Nobody is more upset than we are in ourselves,” he admitted at the time. “The fans, the critics, writers — nobody is more upset than we are. We’re more upset in ourselves and we know that 100 percent of the responsibility falls on our shoulders. So we embrace that. We take it. We take it on the chin and we just keep it moving, man. We can’t break down and pout about it or try to argue back with what other people say, because at the end of the day, we agree with them, we shouldn’t be where we are. But reality is reality, so it’s just up to us, we’ve got to do a better job at leading, at playing, showing up every game and making sure that our teammates are good to go and making sure that they are pulling their weight just as well as we’re leading. We don’t pay any attention to it. We notice it, but we sweep it under the rug.”

Since he spoke out, the Wizards have gone 5-3, but experienced a heartbreaking loss to the Boston Celtics in overtime. Therefore, they could have easily gone 6-2 (6-1 without Wall, who has missed the last seven games as he recovers).

Finding teammates with ease

Without Wall on the floor, Beal has been forced into even more of a ball-handling role over the last seven contests. In that span, he has played over 40 minutes three different times while averaging 6.4 assists per game, up from the 4.1 dimes that he’s averaging on the season.

While his field goal attempts have also increased due to the extra usage created with Wall’s absence, he has become increasingly comfortable with dishing the ball out to his teammates and creating offense, something that Wall was usually expected to do most times down the floor.

"Everybody eats," Beal said after a recent win without Wall. "That’s our motto when we move the ball.” 

“It’s fun basketball,” Beal said about moving the ball around. “Everybody gets a touch, everybody gets shots. It makes life easier. It keeps the locker room close, it keeps the camaraderie going. At the same time, that’s the type of team we need to be in order for us to be successful.”

When Wall returns, it will be interesting to see how coach Scott Brooks uses Beal. Based on what the All-Star has shown, he might be a strong candidate to lead the team’s second unit with Wall off the court in a type of staggered rotation similar to how Terry Stotts uses C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard. Since McCollum is comfortable running the offense without Lillard on the floor, he usually subs out midway through the first quarter. Lillard finishes the first quarter and then McCollum re-enters at the start of the second quarter as the primary ball handler. Having both players on the court at the same time will still occur for most of the game, of course, but Beal's emergence might erase the team's need to add another point guard or to trust Tomas Satoransky or Tim Frazier, both of which have been inconsistent.

Brooks used Beal and Wall on the court without each other, but not in a predictable fashion to start the year. Given the lack of production on the Wizards’ bench, it would be in Washington’s best interest to have either star on the floor at any given time.