LOS ANGELES – Wesley Johnson wanted to grow as a player, stay in a winning environment and be around people who welcomed him in and made him feel comfortable.
“All that factored into me wanting to come back,” said Johnson, who officially re-signed last week with the Clippers.
And now that he’s back, he’ll finally get to make an impact while feeling like himself again.
Johnson tried not to make a fuss about the plantar fasciitis severely inhibiting his movement late last season. He switched out orthotics trying to find a way to play through the pain, but efforts to fix the issue without rest would be futile.
First it was one foot, then the other. By season’s end, the pain lingered in both feet as Johnson fought on, playing in 80 games.
Now, with the offseason here and a couple months off, the pain is finally gone.
“The feet are a lot better,” Johnson said. “Got to rest after the season, take a little bit of time off from it. It’s 100 percent better.”
That’s a major relief for Johnson, whose frustration started to reach a boiling point late last year. Beyond the obvious pain, he said he could hardly run, jump or explode the way he wanted to.
“It would be like a sharp pain all the time in the bottom of my feet,�� Johnson said. “Being out of that and now being able to run and jump again, it feels great.”
Johnson played a couple different roles last year for the Clippers, starting in nine games and playing in all but two. He settled in mostly as a wing for the backup group, though he also played a career-high 38 percent of his minutes at the four, according to Basketball Reference, with the Clippers often electing to use a small-ball lineup with the backups.
The 6-7 forward’s length and versatility allowed him to provide depth at multiple spots, and he found comfort playing for a Clippers team who tried to instill confidence in him at all times. If he got the ball, they wanted it going up.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Get it, it doesn’t matter if you go 0-for-20, we want you to shoot it,’” Johnson said. “It was refreshing, like I always said throughout the season, to hear people have that confidence in me just to let it go. Definitely, it was encouraging throughout the season to hear.”
Johnson had everything he wanted last year with the Clippers. It was the first time in his career he played for a winning team, let alone a playoff team, which is why he reached back out to the Clippers early in free agency expressing his interest in staying.
“Just being around those guys every day, getting to know them at practice, getting to know their families, I think that all factored in,” Johnson said. “My wife and my kids got to know everybody else’s wife and kids. Seeing how they interact with everybody and knowing there was a possibility for us to come back, we didn’t want to start over.”
Johnson and Luc Mbah a Moute were the first two free agents to officially re-sign, entering the Clippers’ practice facility at the same time late last week. Last year, for the first time in their NBA careers, they were part of a team with championship aspirations.
They wanted that feeling back again.
“We’re staying,” Johnson said.