Johnson’s Mind Matters In Nets’ Solid Start
The Nets Social Media Team spends every waking hour searching for ways to highlight players’ attributes, both on and off the court. When it comes to wing Cam Johnson, the sky is literally NOT the limit.
In a post on Thursday, Johnson was recorded going one-on-one with renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson...on the subject of outer space phenomena. Though a road game, presumably at Hayden Planetarium, where deGrasse Tyson has been a director since 1996, Johnson held his own, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has listened to his basketball analysis in interviews since he arrived in Brooklyn in the February blockbuster that sent superstar Kevin Durant to Phoenix.
Johnson, who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in three years before going to North Carolina to work on his Master’s degree, is one of the most intelligent NBA performers. The brilliance extends to his game. He’s not the biggest (6-foot 8, 210 pounds), quickest, or most athletic of players, but his fundamentals are so sound that he can make opponents appear to play in slow motion.
His shooting stroke, which he can dissect to the most minute detail (his offseason discussion with J.J. Redick on “The Old Man and The Three” podcast about the difference in shooting mechanics between going right versus left was fascinating to me), is so sweet that I’m in shock every time he misses. In his three-plus seasons in Pheonix, he connected on 39.6% of his three-point attempts.
That efficiency has slightly decreased to 37.3% since he was asked to take on a larger offensive role in Brooklyn. The Nets have pushed him to be a more complete player, just like they have with his “Twin”, Mikal Bridges, who was also part of the KD trade.
I get that Bridges has taken a massive leap to the cusp of stardom while Johnson’s advance has been more marginal. It’s why there may be some who questioned whether Johnson, 27, was worth the four-year, $94.5 million extension he signed before hitting restricted free agency this past summer. He’ll have an occasional game like Friday night’s 124-97 thrashing of visiting Washington where he went 3-for-8, including 1-for-5 from deep.
However, every step still counts. Since Johnson’s development has allowed the Nets to trust that he will typically make the correct basketball play, he has been involved as a pick-and-roll ballhandler an average of 1.9 times per game this season—his high as a Sun was 0.6 per game, per NBA.com’s tracking. It has elevated his playmaking skills to the tune of 2.7 assists per game, which would nearly double his Suns’ high if sustained through the season.
You can tell that Johnson is a studious defensive player as well by the way he manages to stay on his assignment’s shooting hand, even when it looks like he got beat off the dribble. According to NBA.com, he has been called for just four fouls in the act of shooting all season, and it’s not because he’s been lax in contesting shots—his opponents’ cumulative field goal percentage with Johnson as the nearest defender is 2.1% below their normal rate. Like the rest of his teammates, Johnson has also exhibited a commitment to gang rebounding, as his 5.9 boards per game would also be a career high.
Johnson stepped up his game immensely during the playoffs last season, where he averaged 18.5 ppg, 5.8 rebounds, and 2.8 assists with a 50.9/42.9/85.7 shooting split in Brooklyn’s four-game sweep at the hands of Philadelphia. It impressed the Nets enough that extending him was a no-brainer.
But while Johnson’s brain is rock solid reliable, his body can sometimes betray him. He has never suited up for more than 66 games in any of his five pro seasons and he’s already been out for seven games this season with a calf strain he suffered before training camp.
Hopefully, he can stay healthy, because his contributions to the Nets’ surprising success (12-9) to start this season are often underrated, even if some might view his gross production numbers as not at the level of his new deal. He has the third-highest net rating on the team, trailing only Day’Ron Sharpe and Spencer Dinwiddie.
It’s because he is what Head Coach Jacque Vaughn calls a connector, a player who spaces the floor, can handle and pass, and just knows, among other things, how to play basketball.