Johnson learns humbling NBA lessons

With opponents game-planning to stop him, second-year forward adjusts to defensive pressure

Spurs guard Derrick White looked unstoppable when he erupted for a career-high 36 points on 15-of-21 shooting in Game 3 of a first-round playoff series against Denver in 2019.

But the Nuggets adjusted by getting physical with the thensecond-year guard, and he averaged just 9.3 points during the next four games while being held to 13 or fewer points in each game.

The Spurs lost the series, but if there was a silver lining, it’s that White learned some valuable lessons along the way.

“He’s a willing young man and is going to have a great future, but he’s got to have this kind of experience,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said after White scored 12 points in an 18-point loss in Game 5 while being hounded by Nuggets defensive ace Gary Harris.

Almost two years later, Spurs second-year forward Keldon Johnson is going through something similar to what White experienced against Denver.

Johnson entered Saturday night’s game against Indiana averaging 13.0 points on 46.8 percent from the field and 6.3 rebounds.

But after becoming the first Spur since Tim Duncan to have a 20-point, 20-rebound doubledouble in racking up 23 and 21 in a win at Cleveland on March 19 and following it with 17 points in loss at Milwaukee the next night, he is averaging just 8.0 points on 39.0 percent shooting and 4.9 rebounds during the last seven games.

The sub-par stretch included a five-point effort on 2-of-8 shooting in Thursday’s 134-129 loss to Atlanta in double overtime.

“That’s just the NBA for you,” White said. “It’ll humble you. The league kind of figures you out, and you just got to make adjustments.”

After breaking out in the bubble last August in Orlando, where he averaged 14.1 points on 63.8 percent shooting from the field over eight games and landing a spot on the 2021 Rising Stars roster last month, Johnson is a priority for every opponent when

they game plan for the Spurs.

“They have a heck of a player on their hands, an aggressive player,” Charlotte coach James Borrego, a former Spurs assistant, said before the Hornets faced the Spurs on March 22. “I see him impacting the game, making winning plays, putting a lot of pressure on the rim.”

The game against the Hornets came two days after Johnson’s muscular double-double against the Cavaliers. He scored only

nine points on 4-of-12 shooting against a Hornets team determined to slow him down.

Opponents devising ways to stop him isn’t the only factor in Johnson’s drop off in production. He’s shooting just 32.5 percent from 3-point range on 2.7 attempts per game, meaning defenses can sag off him to clog the paint and prevent him from making his trademark locomotive-like drives to the basket.

Another factor: With the pandemic-shortened

72-game schedule, the Spurs aren’t getting any practice time, where Johnson could work on his game.

“That’s kind of where you can get your rhythm, kind of understand what you did right, what you did wrong and get back out there on the court and correct it,” Spurs forward DeMar DeRozan said. “Now the only time you can really correct it is out there on the court.”

Still, Johnson is on pace to

become the first Spurs to average at least 14.0 points and 6.0 rebounds in his second season since Duncan averaged 21.7 and 11.4 in 1998-99. Johnson is also just one of five Spurs with 700-plus points in their first 60 career games. The others are Duncan (1998), David Robinson (1990), Willie Anderson (1989) and Walter Berry (1987).

“He looks like a hungry young man working his tail off and getting better,” Borrego said. “I know they were excited about him last year and they should be even more excited now. He is going to have a major impact on this program for many years to come.”

Johnson’s coach and teammates predict the same. They trust that he will be able to adjust to the increased defensive pressure just fine.

“He’s working hard, doing everything he always does,” Popovich said.

Said DeRozan: “He’s going to be OK. I tell him all the time, ‘It happens. Don’t get down on yourself.’ I don’t care who you are, you are going to have those early struggles. It’s better to embrace and accept it now because later down the line, that’s when it’s going to matter.”

Johnson is grateful for that sage advice.

“It’s not always going to be good,” he said. “You got to embrace the downs as well and keep fighting and stay focused and get through it.”

That’s what White did after Denver clamped down on him in the playoffs.

“I believe in him,” White said of Johnson. “He believes in himself. We are not too worried about it.”

Kin Man Hui / Staff photographer Keldon Johnson became the first Spurs player since Tim Duncan to have a 20-point, 20-rebound double-double with 23 points and 21 rebounds in a victory against the Cavaliers on March 19.