JANUARY 26TH, 2:17pm: Wall has officially hired Paul and the Klutch Sports Group, a spokesperson for Paul told Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link).
2:21pm: Wall will sign with Paul, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group and the Cleveland Plain Dealer has been told, but Wall said to TNT’s David Aldridge that he hasn’t signed with anyone yet, calling his departure from Fegan a “long story” (Twitter links).
2:04pm: Wall is leaning toward signing with Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, the agent for LeBron James, as sources have indicated to Heitner (Twitter link).
JANUARY 12TH, 1:53pm: John Wall has fired agent Dan Fegan of Relativity Sports, as sources tell Darren Heitner of Forbes and the Sports Agent Blog, and as Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post confirms (Twitter link). Wall is in the second season of a five-year, maximum-salary extension worth $84,789,500 that Fegan negotiated for him in 2013. The Wizards point guard seemed to express frustration this summer about having missed out on the projected escalations to the salary cap, pointing to the five-year, $80MM contract Reggie Jackson signed with the Pistons. Wall could have been an unrestricted free agent this summer if he had played out his rookie scale contract and signed a qualifying offer with the Wizards in 2014, but that would have meant a significant financial sacrifice last season, and players rarely turn down max extensions. Still, the deal doesn’t include a player option on the final season, a feature that many max extensions have.
Fegan is one of the NBA’s most powerful agents, though his client list took a hit over the offseason in the wake of the DeAndre Jordan saga. Jordan dropped him and fellow agent Jarinn Akana in August, more than a month after his about-face on his decision to sign with the Mavericks. Fegan has close ties to Mavs owner Mark Cuban. Austin Rivers, the son of Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers, also left Relativity in 2015 after a brief time with the agency, and Relativity lost Ed Davis, too, as Heitner points out (on Twitter). However, Jordan, Rivers and Davis all departed after signing free agent deals, so Fegan and his partners are still getting their percentages.
Happy Walters, another prominent Relativity agent, left the agency this past fall. Fegan still has a long list of NBA clients, including DeMarcus Cousins, Dwight Howard and Chandler Parsons.