No longer a rookie so unfamiliar with the NBA game that he sometimes didn’t know what he was saying last season, the 21-year-old Wall is unfazed about still being the youngest player on team with seven players aged 23 or younger. He believes he can guide the Wizards through the rigors of a truncated 66-game season.

“I kind of know what it takes to win games. I know what it takes to control things,” Wall said. “I think it’s going to be a little easier, but it’s still going to be tough going against top point guards every night and trying to lead a young team.”

After being held back by injuries and his own lack of expertise last season, Wall is ready to truly be unleashed this season. “I feel this is my year to break out,” Wall said. “I’m 100 percent now. I’m way better than I was. I’m feeling the same way I felt when I first started playing here last year.

“I got goals set for myself, but I don’t like talking about it,” he said. “I’m focusing on team goals. All the elite point guards in the league right now, they all are winners. They care about your stats here or there, but if you’re winning games and take your teams and considered championship kind of teams, that’s what it’s all about.”

Saunders recognized Wall’s efforts in the first day of practice by giving him a construction helmet with the team’s new red, white and blue “dc” logo to symbolize the hardest worker. He gave Wall the option to keep it or give it to someone else, but Wall didn’t remove it for the duration of practice, believing he had earned it.

“If you think about it, everybody that play hard, you might get a little treat,” Wall said of the hard hat, which Saunders hopes will represent the attitude of a team that won just 23 games last season. “I think last year, we didn’t play as a team a lot. We didn’t play hard. That’s one thing, as a young team, you have to play hard every time out there. I think adding a couple of people that we got, a couple of draft picks, and some people that we’re thinking about signing or signed, I think they can help us.”

The Wizards brought back veteran guard Roger Mason Jr. and added veteran forward Ronny Turiaf from the New York Knicks in a three-team trade with Dallas that also yielded a 2013 second-round pick and $3 million from the Knicks, and a 2012 second-round pick from the Mavericks. Dallas received a protected second-round pick from the Wizards.

The team is also counting on a healthy Rashard Lewis and Andray Blatche, and the development of JaVale McGee and Jordan Crawford, who is slated to start at shooting guard if the team is unable to re-sign restricted free agent Nick Young.

But Saunders realizes the team will only improve by how much Wall progresses from his first season. Wall averaged 16.4 points, 8.3 assists and 4.6 rebounds as a rookie, despite dealing with injuries to his right knee and left foot. He regained his explosiveness and used his athleticism to burn up courts throughout the country during the summer, but the real work has finally begun.

“His biggest thing is staying healthy,” Saunders said. “There’s no question he’s a lot healthier right now than he was a year ago. I mean, it’s like night and day watching him out there on the floor, and the things he can do now that he wasn’t able to do last year. The thing is, when you’re the face of the franchise, there’s always high expectations. But I think that’s something he relishes the opportunity to take that challenge.”

Wall is more vocal in practice, offering instruction and words of encouragement to rookies Shelvin Mack, Chris Singleton and Jan Vesely, who has the adjacent locker room stall. Practicing with Wall for the first time, Mason noticed his willingness to lead by example and “get dirty” by diving for loose balls and blocking shots. Blatche also believes Wall is better prepared to handle the tests that come with being a former No. 1 overall pick.

“John, he had a year to mature under his belt,” Blatche said. “He knows what it takes. He knows what other teams are going to try to do to defend him, and Flip and Sam been in his ear about controlling the game, what’s your pace, less turnovers. I think John is going to be ready this season to help us out a lot.”

As players continue to trickle into Verizon Center before the start of Friday’s training camp, Rashard Lewis and Jordan Crawford took to the Washington Wizards‘ new practice court for the first time.

When the NBA lockout ended, it was Lewis who faced an uncertain future, and Crawford an uncertain role.

The supremely confident Crawford, who has compared himself to Michael Jordan, didn’t know if he’d be the starting two guard behind Nick Young, or if he’d be slated to come off the bench. He still doesn’t. But he knows what he’d like to do.

“I’m going to compete for the starting spot. Believe that,” Crawford said after Wednesday’s workout.

Not that Crawford doesn’t want Young back; just the opposite.

“I hope Nick comes back because we need him,” Crawford said. “But I’m going to approach training camp the same way I do in a game – attack. That’s how I am, that’s how it’s going to be.”

Crawford and John Wall have an undeniable chemistry in the Wizards‘ backcourt; it was evident after just a few games at the end of last season. But the two of them took different paths during the lockout, with Wall playing in as many summer league games as he could and Crawford avoiding the spotlight.

“I just laid low, worked on my defense and on getting stronger so I won’t have little injuries like I did last year,” Crawford said. “I’ve been really preparing myself this summer, stretching, preventing injuries. It’s going to be tough [the shortened season]. Were just going to have to grind it out.”

That 66-game grind may be a little easier on Crawford, 23, than Lewis, 32 and coming off a knee injury that bothered him last season.

“You can tell that he’s healthy, that he really wants to play,” Crawford said of Lewis. “He wants to come back and not just be here, but contribute. I’ve seen Rashard play since I was little. I know what he’s capable of.”

Lewis, whose salary is in the $20 million-per-season range, has been the talk of the league as an amnesty candidate. Under the terms of the new collective bargaining agreement, which is expected to be ratified within days, a team can use the amnesty clause to release a player and wipe his salary from the cap and the luxury tax.

Wizards general manager Ernie Grunfeld put those rumors to rest by stating at a news conference last week that the team has no plans to amnesty Lewis.

“My main focus was, if it did happen [being amnestied], hopefully I would get picked up,” Lewis said. “I have to be ready to play, regardless of where I was playing. But they told me I would be here as a Washington Wizard, and my main focus is to get this team in the playoffs, and I think we have the young talent to do it.”

Lewis was a rookie during the 1998-99 season, the last time a lockout led to a shortened season. Knowing what to expect is something he can share with his young teammates.

“One thing I remember about the last lockout is a lot of games in a short period of time, not very much practice time,” Lewis said. “So I think this year will be more mental, that the young guys as well as myself are going to have to listen more than anything because there’s not going to be a lot of practice time.

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“You do come to grips. I had an opportunity,” Saunders said in a recent telephone interview. “I think the one thing that does happen when you become a little more removed, you try to put it out of your mind, and you forget a little bit about how she suffered maybe at the end. And what happens is, you just kind of think about the good times.”

The NBA lockout has already resulted in the elimination of summer league, the postponement of training camps and the cancellation of the preseason and the first two weeks of the regular season. With team employees prohibited from making contact with players, Saunders has had to adjust his usual preparation. But he still met regularly with members of his staff in Washington and Minnesota, devising a game plan for the upcoming season.

He was also afforded the opportunity to spend more time with his family and make more frequent trips to suburban Cleveland to be with his father, Walter, who is alone for the first time after 65 years of marriage.

Saunders provided his father with some much-needed companionship, helped him clean up when the basement flooded and brought flowers to the cemetery every opportunity that he could. He spoke to his mother at the grave site and reflected on pleasant memories.

His mother’s funeral prompted family members to organize a reunion for nearly 100 people in Columbus, Ohio, where they held a clam bake this summer. “I think the one thing that this did, for coaches, especially for coaches that have been in it for a while and gone through the rigors, you’ve had a chance to decompress and really gear up moving forward,” Saunders said of his extended offseason. “I probably spent more time [at home] in the last year than I did the previous five or six years combined, because of getting back as much as I could when my mom was sick and, of course, because of our situation, just having time to be there.”

Even through he had more down time, Saunders said he never lost his focus on improving a team that has gone just 49-115 since he took over before the 2009-10 season. His coaching staff has changed, with Wes Unseld Jr. leaving to become an assistant with the Golden State Warriors and Mike Wells assuming a job as an assistant at George Mason. But Randy Wittman, Sam Cassell, Don Zierden, Gene Banks and Saunders’s son, Ryan, were retained after signing two-year extensions that keep them for the duration of Saunders’s four-year, $18 million pact with the Wizards.

Saunders brought his assistants together to break down film and discuss strategies over dinners in Washington, while having individual meetings with Wittman and Zierden, who live in Minnesota, like Saunders, during the offseason.