Underestimate Jon Wallace at your own risk.

That’s a lesson John Thompson III learned back in 2004. Patrick Ewing learned the same in 2019, and Nuggets fans are doing the same this summer.

Thompson had resigned as coach of his alma mater, Princeton, to take the job at Georgetown where his father coached the Hoyas to three Final Fours and the 1984 national championship. The younger Thompson was recruiting the Nuggets’ new executive vice president of player personnel, who was then a 6-foot-1 guard from Harvest, Ala., an unincorporated community of nearly 6,000 people near the Tennessee border, to Princeton before the change.

Thompson knew Wallace was the kind of person he wanted in his program. Wallace was a student government president and National Honor Society student who also volunteered at the local Red Cross, according to his college biography. Georgetown’s new coach wasn’t so sure the standout at Sparkman High School was ready for Big East basketball. That was something he had to address in a phone call with Wallace and his parents.

“I remember him asking, ‘Will I get a fair shot?’ I was like ‘Sure, I want to put the best players out there. I want to put the guys out there that are going to give us the best opportunity to win.’ But I made it clear to him I didn’t think he was going to play that much at all,” Thompson III told The Denver Gazette on Wednesday.

“At Georgetown, I can honestly say I wanted Jon Wallace the person as much as Jon Wallace the basketball player. Now, I quickly realized ‘Woah, this little boy can play. He is a Big East guard.’”

Wallace ended up starting all 136 games of his college career. Georgetown advanced to the NCAA Tournament three times in four years with Wallace running the point.

“As a coach, the more people you can put on the court that understand what you’re looking for and how you see the game, it just makes life easier,” Thompson said.

“I just felt safe when he was in there. His teammates felt safe when he was in the game, meaning he would not let you fail. He would not put you in a position as a teammate to make you look bad.”

The guard who grew up on a cattle farm in small-town Alabama stepped up in college basketball’s biggest stage. The second-seeded Hoyas trailed No. 1 seed North Carolina by three points in the final minute of the quarterfinals of the 2007 NCAA Tournament before Wallace hit a game-tying 3 from the top of the key with 32 seconds left. Georgetown won, 96-84, in overtime behind Wallace’s 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting and seven assists against one turnover.

“I don’t think he took a shot I didn’t think was going in. He could shoot the cover off the ball, big-time shooter. He also could place people,” Thompson said.

“Jon Wallace made one of the biggest shots in Georgetown history.”

A year later, Wallace was accepted into Georgetown’s law school. He decided to embark on a playing career that included stops in Slovenia, Germany, Belgium and Angola and a season in the G League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. The playing days ended in 2016, and Thompson wasted little time getting Wallace back on campus as special assistant to the head coach.

“Jon’s strength is the ability to convey the message to those around him and to help unify and get everyone with one accord. That is a very strong gift that he has,” Thompson said.

“Where he is now, I’m sure he will be able to take the owner’s vision and come up with a game plan to execute that. He has the adaptability and intelligence to know when to make changes, when to alter, when to shift.”

Thompson’s time at Georgetown ended a year later, but Patrick Ewing decided to keep Wallace on staff. Ewing got to know Wallace after his son, Patrick Jr., transferred from Indiana to Georgetown.

“The dedication and the hard work that he put in has definitely been that way from the first time I met him,” Ewing told The Denver Gazette.

“He’s great. He and my son have been friends ever since back then in school. … I trust my son and the people that he brings around him, the people that he brought around me.”

Wallace stayed at Georgetown for a few more seasons before the Nuggets hired him as a basketball operations assistant in 2019. That’s when Ewing learned not to underestimate his son’s old friend.

“I told him when he left that he should be a coach. I thought he had a great mind to be a coach,” Ewing said. “Obviously, he chose the right profession for him.”

Wallace was promoted to Denver’s scouting coordinator before moving to Minnesota to become the Timberwolves’ director of player personnel and general manger of the franchise’s G League affiliate.

“Denver’s done an outstanding job of bringing him back to the fold,” Ewing said. “I think he’s going to do an outstanding job there. Like everyone, I want him to be successful.”

Back in Denver, it didn’t take long for Wallace and Ben Tenzer, the executive vice president of basketball operations, to reshape Denver’s roster even if it wasn’t the splashy hire some Nuggets fans hoped for this summer. At their joint introductory press conference, Wallace put a premium on increasing depth and shooting. The Nuggets did that by trading for Cam Johnson and Jonas Valanciunas and signing Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr.

“Jon Wallace is a hoop head, who, oh, by the way, is also extremely intelligent, who, oh, by the way, is a connector and understands the dynamics of putting a unit together,” Thompson said.

“He’ll be able to take the owner’s vision and be able to execute that. I think he will do many aspects of the job at a very high level.”