Photo by Kyle Weidie.

To satisfy your your Wizards fix, DCist is teaming up with Kyle Weidie and Rashad Mobley of Truth About It, who will take turns penning a column on Washington’s professional basketball team every Wednesday throughout the season. You can read Kyle and Rashad on all things Wiz here.

I called it composure. Washington head coach Flip Saunders instead opted for “will to win.” I suppose that will work for describing how John Wall led his team to their first victory in a season three games young — and he did it in overtime of the Wizards’ home opener, no less.

“Instead of composure, I’m going to say “will to win.’ … He’s got an unbelievable will to win. I mean, he wills the team,” said Saunders of Wall after the game. “He wants to take the last shot, he wants to take the big shot, he wants to make the play. He got into some trouble tonight at times, but he fought through it and was able to make some big plays at the end. I think that his ability, when you get nine steals in a game, you just change the complexion of the game so much at that end. And it got us aggressive.”

That’s right, nine steals (tying a franchise record) to go along with 29 points on 9-for-16 shooting (and 11-14 from the free-throw line) and 13 assists. Oh yeah, don’t forget Wall’s eight turnovers, which set off plenty of “quadruple double” alerts on Twitter. (Saunders said that the refs probably missed a few of those.)

But what is a “will to win”? Seems akin to someone possessing the unexplainable it, or, as many readily tell me, how former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once described hardcore porn: “I know it when I see it.”