Spurs back at home tonight.
After surprise start in opener, Johnson aims to keep building on bubble breakout
Keldon Johnson got the news during a walk-through Wednesday morning in Memphis.
That’s when he learned he would not only be active for his first competitive basketball game in four months, he would be in the Spurs’ starting lineup.
For the second-year forward, who had been sidelined with a sprained toe the entire preseason, it would mark the second start of his career — and the first outside the sanitized confines of the NBA’s Orlando, Fla., bubble.
Of course, there were butterflies.
“I was a little bit nervous for him,” coach Gregg Popovich said. “It was really his first night where the real lights were on.”
Johnson’s coach might have been anxious for him. Johnson, not so much.
The unflappable former Kentucky standout picked up where he left off in an 131-119 season-opening victory over the Grizzlies, finishing with 16 points, five rebounds and three steals — all while supplying the Spurs with a much-needed dose of moxie.
“I was caught off guard (to be starting) because it was my first game back,” Johnson said. “But I was prepared.”
Now Johnson will try for an encore when the Spurs open the home portion of their schedule tonight against Toronto.
It will mark the Spurs’ first regular-season game at the AT&T Center since a March 10 win over Dallas.
A day later, the NBA suspended the 201920 season amid coronavirus concerns.
The No. 29 overall pick in the 2019 draft, Johnson had played sparingly to that point. He did not appear in his third NBA game as a rookie until early February, and he did not log more than four minutes in a game until Feb. 23.
That all changed when the Spurs reset in Orlando. Johnson was a standout in eight games there, averaging 14.1 points in 26 minutes per night, wreaking most of his havoc off the bench.
He closed with back-to-back 24-point games against Houston and Utah, earning his first career start in the latter.
“I feel like definitely I have some momentum coming out of the bubble, but I’ve always got confidence,” Johnson said. “I put in
the work.”
Whether Johnson could keep that momentum going to open his second NBA campaign was something of an open question.
A freak accident just before the start of training camp — he severely stubbed a toe running up the stairs at his home — rendered Johnson unable to practice.
He did not return to 3-on-3 workouts until a week or so before the Spurs’ opener. Johnson did not begin playing 5-on-5 until just before the team left for Memphis.
If there were doubts about Johnson’s ability to find his rhythm, he erased them 52 seconds into Wednesday’s game, swishing a 3-pointer for the Spurs’ first points of the season.
“After watching him in Orlando, what we saw (in Memphis) is really his game,” Popovich said. “He can really drive the basketball. He competes on the boards. His 3-point shot is improving daily. It wasn’t a surprise.”
Johnson’s teammates will tell you they saw all of this coming before the rest of the NBA did.
“He really wants to be great,” veteran forward Rudy Gay said. “I even called it last year in the bubble, that he’s going to be a great player.”
What separates Johnson from the typical 21-year-old is his sheer audacity.
He doesn’t seem awed by the fact that he is in the NBA.
Twice during Wednesday’s opener, the 6-foot-5 Johnson careened into the lane with a head of steam to finish tough baskets with 6-11 Memphis center Jonas Valanciunas standing tall at the rim.
In the Spurs’ four-month hiatus between the end of the NBA bubble and the start of the 2020-21 season, Johnson hit the weight room to put on about eight pounds of muscle.
His teammates have noticed that, too.
“He tries to bully me, and
that’s not going to happen,” Gay said. “Hopefully it works with other people.”
With an aggression meter stuck permanently in the “on” position, Johnson bowled his way to seven free throw attempts against the Grizzlies, making five. He was second on the team in both categories behind DeMar DeRozan.
Gay calls Johnson “a ball of energy” that the Spurs feed on.
“He has unlimited energy, and he brings it every day,” Gay said. “That’s something we need.”
Dejounte Murray uses a different noun to describe the team’s youngest starter in Memphis.
“He is a dog,” Murray said. Johnson’s doggedness was
on display the last time he played in a game that counted at the AT&T Center.
Back in March, Johnson provided his first signature moment during a 13-minute cameo against the Mavericks.
In one second-half sequence, Johnson — then very much still an unknown quantity — engulfed Luka Doncic on a drive. His annihilating block of the Dallas star kick-started a Spurs fast break in the other direction.
“He is just an energy guy,” Murray said. “He is smiling all the time, and that stuff is contagious.”
For the Spurs and for Johnson, the road only gets more difficult from here.
Beginning tonight against
the Raptors, the Spurs will play seven straight games facing teams projected to finish better than Memphis.
Three games in that stretch are against the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers.
The Spurs would be wise to remain realistic about what lies ahead. But when it comes to Johnson, the butterflies can stay in hibernation.
“As long as we are winning, I’m happy,” Johnson said. “I could come off the bench, but if we win, I’m happy. I can start, we win, I’m happy. I just need to do whatever coach Pop and my teammates ask of me.”