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Press Conference with Wesley Johnson | Preseason

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Jay Johnson

DURHAM, N.C. – Five years ago, Austin Rivers went down in Duke lore, sinking a buzzer-beating, game-winning 3-pointer to stun North Carolina, snapping the Tar Heels’ record 31-game home winning streak.

A decade earlier, J.J. Redick began what would become one of the greatest college basketball careers ever, leaving Duke as the school’s all-time leading scorer.

The former Blue Devils, now both Clippers teammates, traveled Thursday night down to Durham to watch Duke beat North Carolina in person, 86-78.

“It’s fun to come back here, especially a day like today – this is one of the biggest rivalries in sports,” Rivers said. “Lot of bad blood. It’s the best of the best in college basketball. Half these kids will be in the NBA one day. Hall of Fame coaches, just to see them compete is fun.”

Much to the chagrin of Clippers rookie and former North Carolina forward Brice Johnson, who was on the other side of the building in the North Carolina section supporting his Tar Heels, it was even more fun for Rivers and Redick to leave with a win.

The number of Clippers’ ties to the game runs deep. There’s Redick, Rivers and Johnson. There’s assistant coach Patrick Sullivan, who played in three NCAA Final Fours at North Carolina and coached at the school as an assistant.

There’s also Raymond Felton, who played against Redick as a member of the Tar Heels. He wasn’t able to make Thursday’s reunion, as the South Carolina native went to see family, showing up at his nephew’s senior night as a surprise.

Redick said as soon as he got to the NBA 11 years ago, he’d cross-reference his pro team’s schedule with the NCAA schedule to see any opportunities to catch a Duke game.

Usually, he’s out of luck. This year was an exception.

The Clippers left a snowstorm in New York and landed in Charlotte in the late afternoon Thursday. Redick and Rivers then immediately booked it for Durham. For Redick, it was the first time in seven years the NBA schedule aligned to where he could go to a Duke game.

“It just so happens it’s Duke-UNC,” Redick said. “So, I’m very lucky this year.”

The video scoreboard is new at Cameron Indoor Stadium. So, too, are two of the national championship banners. Other than that, Redick didn’t notice much of a change in the atmosphere from when he was playing.

“It’s as good as it’s ever been,” Redick said.

Particularly when North Carolina’s in town.

“Literally, it’s all anyone talks about in this state for the entire year,” Redick said. “I can’t go anywhere in this state without hearing something about UNC or Tyler Hansbrough.”

Despite Hansbrough foiling Redick’s Senior Night in a North Carolina win 11 years ago, Redick will always remember the grandeur and buildup of four years of matchups against the Tar Heels. There’s a special sort of intimacy at Cameron Indoor, an arena built for fewer than 10,000 fans, with the sounds of the student section and the deafening cheers reverberating from one side of the court to the other.

Every fan feels within arm distance of the players of the court, so much so that Redick said if he were still playing, the last person in the last row of the arena could’ve seen the black eye he was sporting from an elbow he took two games prior.

“Whether it’s a Duke-UNC game or I come in here and Cameron’s empty, it’s always an emotional experience to come back to a place I have so many memories,” Redick said.

While he wishes he would’ve left with a national title, his jersey hanging above him in the rafters shows how much the former national player of the year will always mean to the program.

Redick will forever be remembered at Duke for the records he set, while Rivers, who only played one season before going pro, will forever have a place in his school’s history for one moment in particular.

“I hit the shot,” Rivers said. “Everybody brings it up. Every time I come here, everybody’s always asking, ‘Are we going to get another game like that tonight?”

Luckily for Duke fans, Thursday night didn’t require stressing until the final second, as Grayson Allen’s 3-pointer put the Blue Devils ahead by a comfortable five points with just over a minute remaining. Redick, whose family also attended the game, and Rivers both stayed until the end, celebrating and taking pictures with the Duke faithful.

“It’s always good to see old faces, people who helped me along the way,” Rivers said.

For Johnson, the result was more somber, but the experience was one he couldn’t miss. After playing in the rivalry game as recently as last year, he said it might’ve been even crazier to see it from the stands for the first time.

When Johnson thinks back to where Duke-North Carolina games rank for him in terms of college sports memories, they’re right at the top, behind only the Final Four.

“Can’t really describe it,” Johnson said. “It’s insane. It’s an entire week, from Monday to the game, it’s crazy…We respect each other as players, but when it’s time to come on the court, we hate each other.”

With two former Duke players now teammates, though, that hate has to dissipate. For his former teammates still at North Carolina, though, it remains as prevalent as ever.

As the Tar Heels went to the locker room following the loss, Johnson left them with a hopeful message.

After all, when March 4 hits, the craziness of Duke-North Carolina begins again, this time back at Johnson’s old stomping grounds.

“I told them, ‘It’s all right, long season,’” Johnson said. “Couple more games, they’ll get them again.”

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Redick, Rivers, Johnson Make Trip To Duke-North Carolina

Robyn Dixon

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.

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Feet Feeling "100 Percent Better" As Johnson Rejoins Clippers

The LA Clippers announced today the team has re-signed free agents Jamal Crawford, Wesley Johnson, Luc Mbah A Moute and Austin Rivers.

Crawford, the reigning NBA Sixth Man of the Year, averaged 14.2 points and 2.3 assists last season for the Clippers in 79 games (five starts). In his fourth season with the Clippers, he ranked second in the NBA in free throw shooting (.904) and scored in double figures 58 times. One of the most explosive bench scorers in NBA history and the only three-time winner of the Sixth Man of the Year award, Crawford ranks 89th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list (17,076 points) and is 7th on the NBA’s all-time three-pointers list (1,933 three-pointers). Crawford, 36, has averaged 15.5 points and 3.6 assists in 1,100 career games (432 starts) with Chicago, New York, Golden State, Atlanta, Portland and the Clippers.

A six-year NBA veteran, Johnson, 28 averaged 6.9 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 80 games (nine starts) during his first season with the Clippers. The former fourth overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, Johnson scored in double figures 22 times and ranked first in the NBA with a 1.65 steal/turnover ratio last season. In 419 career games (278 starts) with Minnesota, Phoenix, the Lakers and Clippers, the forward has averaged 8.2 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.3.

Mbah A Moute, 29, returns to the Clippers for his second season in L.A. after averaging 3.1 points, 2.3 rebounds and 0.6 steals in 75 games (61 starts). The Clippers went 42-19 in games that he started at forward, as the former UCLA standout allowed the fewest points per defensive possession in isolation in the NBA last season (.469, 50+ defensive possessions). A Cameroon native, Mbah A Moute holds career averages of 6.3 points and 4.5 rebounds in 541 games (362 starts) with Milwaukee, Sacramento, Minnesota, Philadelphia and the Clippers.

Returning to the Clippers backcourt is the 23-year old Rivers. Last season, Rivers averaged 8.9 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 67 games (seven starts) in his first full season in L.A. Rivers appeared in six playoff games for the team last season, averaging 17.0 points, 5.5 assists and 4.5 rebounds in two Playoff starts. The Duke product had 25 games of double-digit scoring in the regular season and led the team in scoring four times. The 10th overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, Rivers holds career averages of 7.4 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 273 games (42 starts) with New Orleans and the Clippers. 

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Press Release: Clippers Re-sign Free Agents Crawford, Johnson, Mbah A Moute And Rivers

7) Wesley Johnson, Dec. 31 vs. New Orleans

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Angelica Yaghoubi

Rowan Kavner  Digital Content Coordinator

LOS ANGELES - Austin Rivers knew what Wesley Johnson was going through.

After five NBA seasons, Johnson finally found himself on a team bound for the postseason for the first time, an experience Rivers got to go through for the first time last year.

“I was extremely nervous – not scared nervous, just nervous because you’ve never played at that level of intensity before,” Rivers recalled.

When Johnson first checked into the game at the 4:09 mark in the first quarter, in between two Blake Griffin free throws, Rivers could tell Johnson felt the same way.

It’s tough to tell how the mild-mannered and easygoing forward is feeling. His facial expression rarely changes, save for a few grins on the court.

“I don’t know if Wes is happy or sad,” Rivers said. “Wes would be a great card player, poker player. You can tell when he’s happy about something, he’ll smile. But when he’s mad, you don’t know. I’ll ask, ‘Is something wrong,’ and even then he’ll be like, ‘Nah, I’m good.’ You just don’t know.”

On Sunday, whether his countenance showed it or not, it was all anxious giddiness inside.

Johnson talked to teammates and got advice before the end of the regular season about how the environment changes. After all, he’s the only player on the Clippers other than rookie Branden Dawson without any postseason experience.

“Everybody’s telling me it’s a different atmosphere, a different feel,” Johnson said. “The intensity rises.”

That excited Johnson, who couldn’t help but get a grin on his face while sitting at his locker in Phoenix on the last day of the regular season, knowing what was ahead.

Johnson put up numbers in two years in Minnesota, another year in Phoenix and two years with the Lakers, but never saw what it was like to play past 82 regular season games. He had waited longer than Rivers had for his first taste of the playoffs, and even the road to get there this year had its tolls.

He played with plantar fasciitis in both feet toward the end of the season, forcing him to switch out orthotics and try different methods to get out on the court. He said the beginning of games is typically the toughest as he tries to warm up, and he hopes that the breaks between games in the postseason will lessen the load on his feet.

Johnson wasn’t going to miss his first chance to play in the playoffs, so after getting a couple games off to rest late in the year, he returned for the final three games of the regular season for a final tune-up as part of a bench unit that’s lessened the load on the Clippers’ starters this season.

“There’s been a lot of guys that have stepped up and taken on bigger roles,” Griffin said. “I’m really proud of Wes, the way he’s stuck with it all year dealing with plantar fasciitis and dealing with different stuff here and there.”

When Johnson finally recorded his first career playoff minutes in Game 1, he did his best to keep composed, though he committed a foul about 13 seconds into the game.

“That’s how I felt last year, I was extremely nervous,” Rivers said. “But once you start playing, you’re good.”

Johnson played nine minutes, dishing out a quick assist before finishing with two rebounds, a block and a 3-pointer in the corner by the end of the night.

“It was definitely what I thought it was going to be,” Johnson said. “When I was out there, I was really just trying to stick to the same rotations. But after I hit the first shot, everything went away, and I was all right.”

Unfortunately for Johnson, that 3-point shot didn’t come until less than a minute remained in the game. Ideally for Johnson, the momentum from that shot, which calmed the nerves, carries over to Wednesday’s Game 2.

“He hit that last three of the game, and he was like, ‘OK, I’m good now,’ Rivers said. “That was all he needed.”

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First Taste Of Playoffs All Wesley Johnson Imagined

DENVER - What everyone saw Tuesday night was the original blueprint.

When the Clippers started training camp, Wesley Johnson ran with the starters at small forward. Now, in the Clippers’ 14th regular season game and with their seventh different starting lineup of the year, Johnson showed why the original vision could end up sticking.

 Johnson made his first start of the year and scored 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting, finishing plus-8 in 25 minutes and looking the way the Clippers had envisioned before they changed the rotations late in the preseason and early in the regular season.

 “He was great,” said head coach Doc Rivers. “He was really good. I think we threw him in to start the season in training camp, and I thought that probably hurt him. He hadn’t played with that group, so I probably messed him up. Now, I think he’s ready for it.”

 The player who took the floor Tuesday in Denver was not the same one learning the new system months ago. Johnson said he was trying to fit in more than play his game back in September.

 “I wasn’t out there playing freely,” Johnson said. “I was thinking too much. As we had more practices and was playing with the second unit and watching film and watching these guys live and watching how they play, I was able to migrate in.”

 It takes only a few main talents to thrive as a small forward in the Clippers’ system – take and make open 3-pointers, provide energy, win hustle plays and play defense. Johnson knows the open looks are going to come. Defensively, his role Tuesday meant taking on the taller Danilo Gallinari, who had 20 points but went just 2-of-10 from the floor.

 “Gallinari is their go-to guy, and Wes gave him some trouble with his length,” said DeAndre Jordan. “When (Johnson) is open, he’s going to knock down shots. If he can continue to play like that, he’s going to be great for us.”

 The assignment on Gallinari got Johnson in foul trouble, which cut his minutes short, but not before a performance Chris Paul called “amazing.” Asked whether or not he wanted to prove he could start for this team Tuesday, the normally reserved small forward left no doubts. 

 “No question,” Johnson answered bluntly.

 It helped the small forward that he got off to a hot start.

 Johnson and J.J. Redick both began the night 2-for-2 from 3-point range, bringing back memories of what Matt Barnes provided while he was part of the most efficient starting unit in the league last season. With Johnson on the floor Tuesday, every Clippers starter finished plus-8 or better, but Paul said what Johnson provided went beyond a stat sheet.

 “A few deflections, a few helps,” Paul said. “Early in the game, just the way he runs the court, shot the ball well. We needed that.”

 Before the game, Johnson said Paul told him to just be himself. The starters didn’t want him to change anything he did from the games leading up to Tuesday.

 “I tell him all the time, just play,” Paul said. “Wes is a great player. I think sometimes we have more confidence in him than he has in himself. We just need him to be him, and he was great tonight.”

 Jordan complimented Johnson’s ability to handle everything thrown at him – starting, coming off the bench, defending, knocking down open threes. Tuesday provided more of that, and it was a performance the rest of the starters appreciated.

 “Loved it,” said Blake Griffin. “He’s been doing great learning the offense and getting into his rhythm. I think we all kind of agreed he’d be a great fit for us.”

 Griffin added it’s great to have players who are interchangeable at small forward, but Johnson’s emergence particularly helps knowing Paul Pierce won’t play big minutes every night. The Clippers need another small forward to rely on, and nothing Johnson did Tuesday would suggest he’s incapable.

 Whether or not Rivers sticks with that look is still up in the air, and it could change from night-to-night.

 “We’ll see,” Rivers said. “That lineup is a lineup I’m going to keep moving depending on guys. I like Wes the most because of his size, ability to shoot...We’re just going to keep moving it around.” 