NBA TV
Monday night saw John Wall’s return visit to the nation’s capital after he was traded this offseason to the Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook, and the focus was on the former All-Star’s exploits against his old team. He had a big first half, scoring 22 points and dishing out seven assists, dueling with his old friend Bradley Beal, who had 19 at the break, in yet another high-scoring affair in D.C.
Unfortunately for Wall and Wizards fans, no one is allowed in the arena in Washington for games and as such, there wasn’t a chance for the D.C. faithful, who loved Wall, to give him a proper reminder of how much they appreciated his time with the Wizards. The stands at the Capital One Arena are tarped up and pushed back, as is the case most everywhere in the league, and we learned one of the sneaky downsides to this setup on Monday.
In the early third quarter the game ball rolled out of bounds and somehow snuck under the stands, leaving the Wizards do-everything All-Star to go retrieve the thing.
Bradley Beal going under the bleachers for the ball. What. pic.twitter.com/XIwXHcN7xu
— Tas Melas (@TasMelas) February 16, 2021
Beal quite literally does it all for Washington, leading the NBA in scoring and even crawling under stands to make sure the game ball doesn’t get lost. This is something that you usually only see at a pickup run in an empty high school gym, but the 2020-21 season is full of surprises and we were blessed with what will surely become a highly used GIF of Beal crawling under the stands.
It’s a good thing he went and got the ball, because he caught fire in the third, piling up 12 points in the period to help the Wizards get out to a 10-point lead before he took a rest late.
Beal is in the ZONE!
He’s up to 31 PTS. pic.twitter.com/QErb5wy9Fs
— NBA TV (@NBATV) February 16, 2021
