WASHINGTON — It looked like a wave and sounded like a party as fans here rose from their lower-bowl seats and roared for the visiting point guard Washington once called its own for a decade.
“At guard, 6-foot-2, from Kentucky,” the public-address announcer boomed during Saturday’s introduction of the visiting starting lineup, and that was enough for John Wall’s homecoming to begin.
Only minutes later, during a first-quarter timeout, another standing ovation followed Washington’s 90-second tribute video for Wall left the former Wizards star raising both arms and waving. There were calls of “I love you!” from the lower bowl. And there was the scene Wall had perhaps envisioned the most since signing with the Clippers in July, seeing that his first return to Washington with fans in attendance since being traded in 2020 would fall on a Saturday night in December.
With the Clippers off to a disastrous second-quarter start, their deficit 10 points yet again against a skidding Wizards team that entered having lost five straight, Wall answered with six consecutive points. The last two swished on his step-back jumper from 13 feet, and Wall spun toward Section 110 and pointed both index fingers toward the court. Walking across the court into a timeout, Wall continued spouting his message to Section 100 as fans stood in their seats again.
“Still my s---!” Wall yelled, an echo of nearly the same declaration he’d made five years earlier when he called this his city after sinking a game-winning playoff jumper — still the high-water mark of his Wizards tenure. He hopes, he said at shoot-around hours before tipoff, that the Wizards will one day retire his jersey.
Wall wanted this moment. Perhaps he needed it, after a hellish past four years, from the leg injuries to his diminished stature to the deaths of his mother and grandmother that leveled him personally, to effectively being out of the league last season. It‘s as much catharsis as a reunion, and he departed having received “his flowers,” coach Tyronn Lue said.
Just as notable, for a team battling inconsistency, was what they also left with: Finally, a win.
Trailing by as many as 13 points in the third quarter as Kyle Kuzma made his first six 3-pointers and Kristaps Porzingis rolled to 24 points and 11 rebounds in only 28 minutes, the Clippers unfurled a 15-0 run during a four-minute stretch to close the quarter and ignite a comeback they desperately needed to clinch a 114-107 win to bust a two-game losing skid and improve to 15-13.
Luke Kennard, whose 3-pointer last season capped a remarkable 35-point comeback to beat the Wizards, sank a 3-pointer to beat the third-quarter buzzer and provide the Clippers’ first lead, 86-84, directly in front of a suddenly reanimated bench.
It was the crowd and Washington, though, that were given renewed hope seven minutes later when they retook the lead after Wall lost control of his isolation dribble and it spilled away, eventually leading to a fast-break dunk by Corey Kispert for a 98-97 Wizards lead. Wall tightened his expression, and within 40 seconds the Clippers clawed back to regain their edge after a Nicolas Batum 3-pointer with just more than four minutes to play.
Batum was a rock, playing the game’s final 19 minutes, and finished with 12 points and six rebounds as the Clippers turned to lineups without a center. The tactic paid off when Kawhi Leonard passed out of a double team, finding Batum, who drilled a go-ahead 3-pointer with 23 seconds to play to forge a three-point lead.
It created the enduring philosophical coaching question of whether to foul when leading by three. Lue opted not to, believing in Leonard to defend Porzingis without fouling on a 3-pointer that misfired with 15 seconds left, giving the ball back to the Clippers, whose clinching free throws bookended this four-game road trip with a victory.
Paul George finished with 36 points, and Marcus Morris Sr. was consistent on each end, with 19 points and defensive stops.
Wall finished with 13 points on 13 shots, and after the last buzzer went through a receiving line of friends and acquaintances along the sideline. In his last seconds before entering a tunnel to the locker room, dozens of fans draped their arms over a railing. Wall blew two kisses.
