Wizards Owner Expects John Wall To Sign Extension

Wizards owner Ted Leonsis was in attendance today at a press conference to re-introduce Otto Porter, and in addition to discussing his newest maximum salary player, Leonsis also addressed another one of the club’s potential max deals. According to Candace Buckner of The Washington Post (Twitter link), the Wizards owner said that he expects John Wall to sign a Designated Player Extension to remain in D.C.

Like the Thunder did with Russell Westbrook, the Wizards put a DPE offer on the table for Wall when the new league year began. Both players are eligible for the super-max extension under the league’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement after earning All-NBA honors this past season.

Wall still has two years left on his current deal, which pays him just over $18MM in 2017/18 and $19MM in ’18/19. A Designated Veteran Extension would go into effect for the 2019/20 season and would keep him locked up for another four years. It would start at 35% of the salary cap, which is currently projected to be $108MM.

That projection could – and likely will – change by the summer of 2019, but based on the current estimations, a four-year extension for Wall would be worth more than $169MM from 2019/20 through 2022/23 — the same amount as James Harden‘s new deal over that four-year stretch.

While that’s a mammoth offer, Wall has thus far been noncommittal to actually signing it. When word first broke that the Wizards would offer Wall a Designated Player Extension, the star point guard suggested that he wanted to take his time to consider the team’s direction and mull the decision.

“I just want to kind of see what they do throughout free agency, talk to my family, talk to my agency and my managers and see what we want to do,” Wall said last month. “It’s definitely a place I want to be … I’ve just got to make sure things are going in the right direction, and make sure we are building the team in the way we want to be, and don’t get locked up in a situation where you might not feel comfortable … But I love being in Washington, I love playing there, and there’s not another city I’d really want to play for.”

Word out of Oklahoma City has suggested that local reporters expect Westbrook to sign his DPE at some point in the coming weeks or months, and Leonsis’ comments today indicate he expects Wall to do the same for the Wizards. Both point guards can finalize those extensions at any point before the regular season begins, so there’s no urgency to get them done right away.