John Wall accepts role as President of Basketball Operations at Howard

John Wall is returning to college basketball — but not at Kentucky. ESPN reports that Wall is the new president of basketball operations at Howard, the top-ranked HBCU in the country.

Howard is located in Washington, D.C., so Wall will be returning to the nation’s capital, where he played for the Wizards for a decade after being selected No. 1 in the 2010 NBA Draft following his season at Kentucky. During his 13-year pro career, Wall played for three teams: the Wizards, the Houston Rockets, and the Los Angeles Clippers. He was named an NBA All-Star five times, All-NBA Third Team in 2017, All-Defensive Second Team in 2015, and won the Slam Dunk Contest in 2014.

According to Shams Charania, the courtship between Wall and Howard first began on Jan. 31, when he served as the team’s honorary captain and expressed the desire to one day be a president of basketball operations at the NBA level. That journey will start at Howard, and Wall is already hard at work.

“Wall has already taken a hands-on approach to the role at Howard, playing an active role in team meetings and evaluations of recruits and transfer targets,” Charania reports. “He has helped shape the program’s overall strategic vision with focus on roster management, name, image, and likeness deals, revenue sharing, agent negotiations and player mentorship. He will work alongside Howard coach Kenny Blakeney and team general manager Daniel Marks in the new capacity.”

Wall is the latest basketball star to take a front office role for a college basketball team. Steph Curry was the first, accepting the role of assistant general manager at Davidson in March 2025. Since then, Trae Young has taken a similar position at Oklahoma, as has Terrence Mann at Florida State. Jayson Tatum also took a volunteer advisory role at Duke as Chief Basketball Officer. The difference is that all of those players are partnering with their alma mater, while Wall is taking a role at Brown, not Kentucky.

Kentucky, I will remind you, is still building its front office, with only Keegan Brown on board as Director of Roster Management thus far. Having Wall, an iconic former player and ambassador of the sport, be part of it would have been awesome. He has supported the program plenty over the years, even after John Calipari left for Arkansas, becoming an important voice in the transition to the Mark Pope era. He even made an appearance at Big Blue Madness last October, memorably recreating the John Wall Dance alongside Pope on stage.

Alas, Wall is taking his talents to Howard, which has made the NCAA Tournament three of the last four seasons and won its first-ever tournament game in March, beating UMBC in the First Four. Maybe after learning the ropes at Howard, he will come back to his old Kentucky home one day.