The main goal for John Wall is not to cry Thursday.
“That’s the most important thing,” Wall said earlier this month.
He’s a crier. Through much of his playing career in Washington with the Wizards, Wall cried openly at public moments of joy and sorrow. He cried after Kentucky was upset by West Virginia in the Elite Eight in 2010 (which caught the attention of his then-Wildcats teammate DeMarcus Cousins); he cried when the Wizards started 8-25 his rookie season; he cried after he got his first big contract extension, in 2013; he cried in the moments after leading the Wizards to a double-overtime win over Boston in 2014, just days after a 6-year-old child he’d befriended passed away from Burkitt’s Lymphoma.
Wall’s playing days officially ended last August, when he announced his retirement, following futile attempts to restart his career, almost two years after he last played with the Clippers. A quick pivot toward television is his next move. Wall, 35, is now working with Amazon Prime, one of the NBA’s new broadcast partners, as a studio analyst. Blake Griffin, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Candace Parker and Udonis Haslem are also part of Amazon’s broadcasts.
But he’ll be doing a game broadcast for Amazon on Thursday, when he returns to Capital One Arena to do color commentary for the Wizards’ game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
That isn’t a coincidence. The organization is also honoring Wall, the team’s all-time leader in assists (5,282) and steals (976) during the game, which is being billed as “John Wall appreciation night,” part of multiple festivities honoring Wall, the top pick in the 2010 draft.
“John is in our pantheon,” Wizards owner and governor Ted Leonsis said.
It will be the latest chapter in publicly re-tying the once-frayed bonds between Wall and the Wizards, which led to Washington trading Wall to Houston in 2020, along with a protected 2023 first-round pick (that, six years later, is still central to Washington’s rebuilding plans) for Russell Westbrook. The relationship between the Wizards and their former star point guard and five-time All-Star deteriorated rapidly after knee, heel and Achilles injuries stopped Wall’s career in its tracks.
The Wizards, impatient at waiting so long for Wall to recover, pivoted to building around Bradley Beal. Leonsis, also, was rightly furious that his franchise player, who’d thrown up hand gestures during games over the years affiliated with gangs, was still doing it in 2020, when he was videotaped doing so while shirtless at his birthday party in New York City. (Wall apologized for that one, before the trade.) Wall was nonetheless shocked that the team, which had literally rolled out the red carpet for him upon his arrival a decade earlier, cut ties with him so abruptly.
But time changes hearts and minds.
Not only is Wall doing TV for Amazon, he’s now doing it for the Wizards, as part of the team’s Monumental Sports studio crew, a rapprochement intentional in purpose on both sides. Wall still lives in Miami, where he trained during the offseason while playing. But he’s been welcomed back with open arms, as most teams ultimately do with their franchise’s most iconic talents, no matter the previous bad blood between them.
And that makes Thursday more special for Wall.
“I think just feeling the love, getting that appreciation,” Wall said. “And I think most for me, just seeing my kids (Ace and Amir) there. That’s what it’s all about for me. They didn’t get to see me play in the element and be here, but they was born here. And they get to see what’s it’s all about. And I think bringing my friends back, everybody, kind of like when I came back and played, when I was with the Clippers.
“Feeling that kind of love, but now it’s like I don’t have to play. I’ll be sitting on the sidelines, broadcasting, in a new career, new role for me.”
Wall merchandise will be on sale tonight during the Wizards’ game with the Trail Blazers. The scorer’s table upon which Wall leapt after his game-winning shot propelled Washington to a Game 7 with the Celtics in the 2017 Eastern Conference semifinals will be on display in the Capital One concourse.
(Oh, Wizards. Don’t ever change.)
The team is not retiring his jersey on Thursday. The latest chapter in that saga came at Trae Young’s introductory news conference Jan. 9, when he incorrectly said that Wall’s No. 2 was going up in the rafters at this celebration.
Honest mistake. But since Young brought it up: What about that, Ted?
“No one should feel insecure about our relationship with John,” Leonsis said in a conference room at the team’s downtown offices earlier this month. “It’s not going to happen on bobblehead night. Really? Do you think we would do something big and important with a bobblehead? We’re not announcing anything (Thursday).
“I look at it as, we’re in this long relationship with John. He’s the most important player since I’ve owned the team, and we have a great relationship. I don’t feel like I really need to address it. It will happen when it happens.”
A fair point: It would be kind of chintzy to raise the jersey while handing out 15,000 plastic figurines. Wall deserves, and certainly will get, his ultimate moment of redemption with the franchise, without any giveaways. That will close the circle.
Wall is in a good place now, he says. The thoughts of self-harm he so poignantly described in a Players Tribune first-person essay a couple of years ago have abated thanks to therapy, leaning on his circle of friends and family, and needing and wanting to be there for Ace and Amir.
“I think most people, and I think I said it on The Pivot (podcast), of owning up to my 50 percent of what I’ve done,” Wall said. “I wasn’t the perfect guy, I didn’t do everything the right way. You make mistakes, you grow through it. So I’ve recognized and owned up to that aspect of it. I think having the opportunity to be back working for Monumental, to fix that relationship and get everything back on the right path, I think that’s the maturity and growth in me as a person. And just being a bigger person of, things happen. At the time it happened, yes, you’re frustrated, because of everything you’ve done, and wanting to be in one place for one time. But it’s always been love, nothing bad about it.
“The fans are gonna feel how they feel; I felt how I felt. And I’ve always felt like, you’ve got to get over it. It happened, time is over, they’re going into a new chapter now, in what they’re doing. Just be patient and let them build and try to see what they can get from it. But I think I’m in a great place now, just having a relationship with Ted and Zach (Leonsis, the president of media and new enterprises for Monumental) and those guys.”
At his best, Wall was as impactful as just about any non-Steph Curry point guard in the show. The Wizards made the second round of the playoffs twice during his prime, and were certainly the most relevant they’d been under Leonsis’ stewardship. Whether Wall was doing the Dougie before his first game in D.C., showing his best stuff in Christmas Day wins over the Knicks and the Celtics (remember when the Wizards, oh, so briefly, were part of the league’s holiday rotation?) or doing his thing during All-Star weekends, he was compelling.
In the last three decades of mostly wretched basketball around here, Wall and Gilbert Arenas were, by far, the franchise’s two most iconic players. Neither’s stint as a player here ended well. So, during the intervening years after the trade, I wondered, did Leonsis ever think “We’ve got to fix that” with Wall?
“No, because it’s the NBA,” Leonsis said. “There seems to be a lot of drama. And it’s usually not happy endings. I want all our narratives to have happy endings. So you’ve got to go through (the) first act (with a) young person, comes out of nowhere, is the hero, takes over things. Second act, maybe there’s a little bit of a fall, a little bit of drama. And then the third act, he’s back.
“But he just retired a year ago, and he lives in Miami. I think he understands if he got into the Hall of Fame, he’s wearing a Wizards jersey. And he’s representing us now, in the right way. And he’s very important to a lot of young kids who grew up here. That, I’m happy, grateful for. …We’re just starting the love affair again.”
Fifteen years ago, the @WashWizards selected @JohnWall with the first overall pick out of Kentucky. We knew we were getting an elite point guard to join the Wizards ranks… and we ended up with so much more. Ten years of John Wall on the Wizards and a legacy to last a lifetime.… pic.twitter.com/umrQTeVEmm
— Ted Leonsis (@TedLeonsis) August 19, 2025
Post-career, Wall wanted, and still aspires, to be a general manager of an NBA team. Broadcasting wasn’t on the radar. He did the 2024 G-League Showcase in Orlando for NBA TV, but he thought that was a one-off; he still hoped to come back and play after playing in 34 games during the 2022-23 season for the Clippers. Then, Amazon, which had already made its mark in recent years in sports broadcasting with its NFL package, came calling. Wall’s depth of knowledge and interest in the game at all levels — high school, college, boys, girls — made an impression.
“When I first did the G League Showcase, I never thought about it,” Wall said. “This opportunity came up and I was like, just give it a shot. ‘Cause I was still working out, trying to figure out if I could get back in. Then reality was like, it’s been two years since I played. In reality, it’s probably not happening. I can see where the league is going, going younger. Or, you kind of get a vet that don’t want to play at all, and just sit on the sidelines. And I’m like, I can’t do that. I don’t want to just be traveling, practicing every day, and I never play. I’m too competitive for that.
“So, then the opportunity came with Amazon, and I thought this just might be my next chapter. ‘Cause I go from the G League Showcase to NBA TV, a couple of sets, and then Amazon comes, and Monumental, and then NBA TV came again. So I’m like, this might be it. So it’s bittersweet. It’s like, ’cause people want to see if I want to take this serious. All right; we don’t know if he’s still trying to play, or if he’s going to take this serious. So, I’m like, OK, I can end this chapter. It’s bittersweet. I wish I was still able to play and do those things. But, I’m enjoying it. I’m having fun. It’s exciting.”
Wall was once just like the achingly young current Wizards’ core, just tapping into his immense talent, the future long and seemingly limitless. And then life intervened. And now, a young man in almost any other vocation other than the one he chose, Wall can look back not with regret or anger or pain, but with appreciation. He was always beloved in the streets and neighborhoods of the city, where he would make appearances frequently on behalf of the team, and others with no fanfare whatsoever, to help out the community when it needed him.
“It’s like I never left,” he said. “It’s a lot of love. It’s a lot of love, and it’s fun for me, because I enjoy it. I still feel like, that’s what you want. No matter what, it’s the impact you have off the court. Like I could have did everything on the court, but never did anything in the community, or to the people. And I feel like that’s the biggest platform for me, that I love. Not saying I can walk around and feel like I’m a president here, but I can walk around and feel comfortable, and don’t have to worry about people bothering me. It’s always love.
“I went to a lunch earlier, a new spot, Highlands, on Pennsylvania Avenue. And the lady was in there like, ‘I never thought I would see you a day in my life; can I get an autograph?’ For me, that’s what it’s all about. Like, what you do on the court, yes, that means a lot. But it’s do you touch the people?”
