Maryland’s Australian punter Wade Lees is entering his second year as a Terp. Lees’ freshman campaign was successful enough that he is now on the preseason watchlist for the Ray Guy Award for the best punter in the country.
While Lees has done a fine job adjusting to a new sport in a new country, he has also started to embrace the local professional teams in the DMV, especially the Wizards.
A quick search of Lees’ profile finds plenty of tweets about the Wizards and their star point guard, John Wall.
Lees spoke about how he adopted the Wizards as his local team at Maryland’s media availability on Tuesday.
“I wanted a team to adopt and the Wizards were going okay but weren’t the greatest team,” Lees said. “I went to a couple of games and started falling in love with them and I’m on the bandwagon now.”
Lees also noted that he believes that John Wall is the best point guard in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.
“I like [Bradley] Beal and [Kelly] Oubre as well, they’re two good players,” he added when talking about his new favorite team.
Despite not being a Wizard, Kyrie Irving is another basketball player near and dear to Lees’ heart. Why? Irving was born in Australia and has dual citizenship for his place of birth and the United States.
“Hopefully he comes to the Wizards,” Lees said. The punter hopes that Wall and Irving could work together with one playing point guard and the other playing shooting guard.
