JOHNSON: WE’VE CASHED IN, SO PLAY LIKE HUNGRY DOGS
INDIANAPOLIS — It was the rarest of topics in a meeting for a Miami Heat team during the Pat Riley era: How did we get so fat?
No, not in terms of the team’s stringent conditioning standards, but in terms of getting too comfortable with those oversized contracts Riley and the front office had rewarded for heart, hustle and development.
The payoff was Wednesday night’s 120-107 victory over the Brooklyn Nets at the start of this two-game trip that concludes Friday against the Indiana Pacers.
But to guard Tyler Johnson the discussion went far deeper than a single moment in time.
“Without getting like too pumped up in your head,” Johnson said, “most of us got paid. Most of us got good contracts to be able to come back here. So, what are we complaining about?
“I think what’s crazy is before any of us got any money, we were just some dogs. I think that’s what the beautiful thing is. We had to just come together.”
With fourteen players back from last season, a group that pushed back to the postseason, Johnson said there was no tiptoeing in the meeting. Just raw, real, visceral. “Why it’s so special to be with a group for so long is that we can really check each other,” Johnson said. “We have real heart-to-heart conversations with one another. And I think [Wednesday] we went out and really just played for each other.”
Guard Goran Dragic said the session, as well as the leadership of coach Erik Spoelstra, allowed
the Heat to regain a degree of swag after three consecutive losses.
“We had a little meeting to just try to get that swag back,” he said. “Everybody was pumped. Everybody was cheering for each other. And we just followed the recipe of how Spo and the coaching staff told us before the game of how we need to defend and how we need to play. When we do that and focus, it’s a little bit easier.”
Johnson, who led the Heat with 24 points, said the only true way to tell whether the meeting worked is whether it has enduring value.
“It has to sustain,” he said, “because then it’s fake. If we’re having to have this discussion all the time, then nobody really heard it -- it was just rah-rah for one quick moment.
“I think that’s what the beautiful thing is. We can really check each other and we don’t hurt each other’s feeling. We’ve been together long enough to know that it’s nothing more than we just want to win.”
Johnson said it also was a matter of turning inward, recently having played well during the first half of games and then falling off, a troublesome turn for a team already without Dion Waiters and now without Dwyane Wade, amid his paternity leave. The Heat also were without Derrick Jones Jr. on Wednesday night due to illness.
“Really,” Johnson said, “what it was was just not getting discouraged, because things were trending in the right way. Just, I think my whole life has always been things are really good or they’ve been really bad. So it’s just taking the time to just progressively build things the right way, so you have a solid foundation to keep moving forward.”
This all, of course, while Johnson is playing amid a pay leap to $19.2 million per season.
He said the session with teammates helped produce a clear mind for himself as well as the rest of the roster.
“I think it was just like I said,” he said. “I think in the past it was either really good or I was down in the basement. I think the guys have done a great job of continuing to encourage me and it means a lot when they do that.”