Bringing game to big screen
Former Maury High basketball phenom Jeff Johnson hopes to take a star turn as a director, as he presents the short film “Luv In Da City,” which documents his basketball career.
Jeff Johnson is used to entertaining fans on the basketball court.
As a star guard for Maury High, he packed gymnasiums as he dazzled fans and frustrated opponents with his jaw-dropping dribbling ability.
Former Lake Taylor High coach Kenny Brown remembers Johnson for his “crazy handles” and “quick-as-lightning” play.
“Jeff was a pure playmaker,” said Brown, who also was a former Maury basketball legend. “His ball-handling skills were second to none. Very athletic. Tough defender. Mentally tough. Give him the jumper because surely he is going to blow by you. He made teams stay in a zone because he was hard to defend in one-on-one situations.”
At 38, the former first-team All-Tidewater selection still has dreams of impressing fans. But now he wants to do it on the big screen.
Johnson is an independent film maker in New York City. Earlier this year, he released a short film entitled “Luv In Da City.” The film was about a basketball player trying to make it through life’s obstacles.
The story is based around Johnson’s life. He writes about making
bad decisions and being blackballed as he tried to follow his dream of playing professional basketball.
“I was thinking, ‘Let me do a story on myself, so I can give people the real story,’ ” Johnson said. “I wanted to tell my story about basketball. It was my whole story.”
Johnson’s basketball career took many turns. He accepts blame for most of it. He was a gifted and talented player, but let his cockiness get in the way. It led to many bad decisions that he regrets today.
“I didn’t respect the game,” he said. “You have to be humble and be coachable. Being coachable will get you to another level.”
In 2000, Johnson was secondteam All-Tidewater and firstteam All-Eastern District. He averaged 11.1 points and nearly 10 assists per game as he led the Commodores to a district regular-season title. They advanced to the Eastern Region semifinals.
“He was very gifted. He may be the quickest player I’ve ever coached over the years,” said legendary Maury coach Jack Baker, who retired in 2017 after 41 seasons and 746 wins. “He was more of a street player. He was so quick and such a good ball-handler that I really let him go more than most of my players.”
Johnson, a 6-foot point guard, remembers that well. He said Baker used to tell him if he played Baker’s way the first three quarters, the last part Johnson could freelance.
“He would say, ‘If we’re up by 10 or 12, the last three minutes you can do whatever you want to,’” said Johnson, chuckling. And that’s what Johnson did. Virginia State coach Lonnie Blow Jr. just laughed when asked about Johnson. Blow, who coached at Granby High, compared Johnson’s skills to former Harlem Globetrotter Curly Neal because of his dribbling ability.
“The kid could really handle the ball,” Blow said. “He could get anywhere he wanted to get on the floor. He was quick. He was fast. He could pass the ball. He could create shots for his teammates. He could really impact the game in a lot of ways because of his quickness. But I really remember his ball wizardry. He could really handle that thing.”
Johnson said several colleges were interested in him, including Old Dominion.
“I was supposed to go to ODU, but my grades weren’t straight,” he said. “So I went to Glen Oaks Community College in Michigan.”
He led the Vikings to the conference championship and was named Rookie of the Year as he averaged 15.2 points, 8.6 assists and two steals.
“I did good, but my cocky attitude held me back,” he said.
He ended up at Columbia College in Sonora, California. He averaged 11 points, nine assists and four steals to lead the Cougars to a regional title with a 28-6 record. He graduated with an associate’s degree in sports management. He had several schools looking at him, including Fresno State. He ended up moving back to the Midwest to attend Indiana Tech, in Fort Wayne. But things didn’t work out there as he sat out due to academics.
“I was still being cocky, and I felt like Fort Wayne was too small for me,” he said.
He ended up at Virginia Union under legendary coach Dave Robbins, who had won 713 games and three NCAA Division II basketball titles.
Robbins wanted Johnson to come off the bench. Johnson didn’t want to. So, after one month, he left.
“That was the worst decision that I could have made,” Johnson says now. “Coach Robbins asked me to come off the bench. I was thinking, ‘I’m not coming off no bench,’ not knowing that he was trying to groom me. He was trying to let me know that you can’t just go in and be the star all the time. But I left and went to Johnson C. Smith.”
He went to the Division II school in Charlotte, North Carolina, and won a CIAA title.
Following college, he had tryouts with the Charlotte Bobcats, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers. He also tried out with the Bakersfield Jam of the D League (now called the G League).
But nothing materialized. He returned to Hampton Roads, where he played several seasons with the Tru Hope Trailblazers and with several other semipro teams before getting a chance to play with the Connecticut Topballerz of the American Basketball Association. He did well, but he never got the big break he had hoped. He later learned that several teams overseas were interested in him, but backed off because they thought he was much older.
Johnson has a little regret that basketball didn’t turn out the way he thought. But he found another love when a friend asked him if he was interested in acting. He decided to give it a try and appeared in two independent films. He also used money he saved from playing basketball to start his own company called Inventors Vision Films.
“I found something that I really liked to do,” said Johnson, who has lived the past three years in New York City.
He found further inspiration when he met legendary rapper turned actor Ice-T on the set of “Law & Order” in Central Park.
“One of the things he always told me to do is be ready,” Johnson said. “He told me that they invited him on for four episodes of ‘Law & Order,’ and now it’s turned into 21 years.”
Johnson said film directing and basketball are similar in a lot of ways.
“The hardest part about it is keeping everyone in the same place and the cohesiveness of it,” he said. “It’s like I’m still a point guard trying to keep everyone on the same page.”
Johnson, who works full-time at Bed, Bath & Beyond in New York City, hopes to have three more independent films out in the next five years, including one he’s already entitled “Black Power.”
“I’m in love with this,” he said about producing and acting. “It’s like basketball. I had skills and talent. I’m just showing them in a different way now.”