Johnson working hard on redemption
Forward returns to form following recent benching
Spurs forward Keldon Johnson dealt with his recent benching with determination rather than defensiveness.
“I knew I had to play better,” he said of the mindset he adopted after coach Gregg Popovich yanked him early in the second half of last Wednesday’s loss to New Orleans.
The benching came during another rough shooting night for Johnson and seconds after he committed a turnover with a bad pass that led to a Pelicans layup for a 21-point lead.
“I was letting myself down, my team down, my coaches down,” he said. “I just knew I had to play better.”
Two games later, Johnson was back to his usual productive self, finishing with 26 points and 10 rebounds — both team highs — before fouling out with 31 seconds left in Saturday’s 143-138 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers before an announced sellout crowd of 18,354 at the AT&T Center.
The fourth-year pro said his benching underscored how
Popovich strictly holds everyone on the roster — from “one to 15” as Johnson put it — accountable.
“Pop, our whole coaching staff, they are hard on us,” he said. “But to have them behind us and keep pushing us is great.”
In recording his second double-double of the season and 18th of his career, Johnson scored 13 points in the fourth quarter on 5 of 9 from the field (2 of 4 from the 3-point stripe).
He’s hopeful his strong shooting performance in the final period will mark the end of a slump in which he’s shoot just 28.4 percent from the floor and 16.7 percent from beyond the arc in his last five games after shooting 45.1 percent from the field and 42.3 percent from deep in his first 14 appearances.
He finished 10 of 28 and 3 of 9 in collecting his first game of 20 or more points since scoring 20 against Portland on Nov. 15.
In the four games in between, Johnson’s highest-scoring game was 15 points in a loss to the Lakers on Friday. The stretch included a seasonlow five points against the Pelicans in 16 minutes after he failed to re-enter the game after Popovich benched him
“I feel like every player goes through rough patches,” said Johnson, who has led the team in scoring most of the season but is now tied with guard Devin Vassell for the team lead with a 20.4 average.
“It’s hard to shoot the ball at whatever percentage I was shooting at the beginning of the season when I was really, really, hot,” Johnson said. “Then a little setback came, and I adjusted and came back out here tonight ready to go.”
Johnson stayed in the present Saturday rather than focusing on what’s gone wrong in the past several games.
“He’s in a little bit of a shooting slump, obviously,” Popovich said. “I think he’s got to not think about it. When he’s open, keep firing it because he’s been doing a good job of that all year.
Lakers coach Darvin Ham believes Johnson will be just fine as long as he keeps listening to Popovich.
“I am a huge Keldon Johnson fan, with his size and physicality and the way he can shoot the ball and how he’s relentless in attacking,” Ham said.
“Johnson and (Vassell) are both great up-andcoming kids in a great system with a phenomenal and historic head coach. It would behoove then to embrace everything being thrown at them.”
Despite Johnson’s efforts, the Spurs lost for the 13th time in their last 14 games, including eight straight, to fall to 6-15. The skid is tied for the fourth longest in franchise history.
If they lose at Oklahoma City on Wednesday, it will be the club’s longest skid since losing nine straight to end the 1988-89 season. Earlier in that campaign, they lost a franchise record 13 in a row.
Johnson was asked how he and his teammates are handling this stretch of futility.
Tuning out all the negative facts helps, he said.
“We were counted out before the season even started, so what does it matter what the media says now?” he said. “It doesn’t bother us. We started off good and everybody in the media was saying, ‘They’re going to be bad.’ Then we hit a rough patch and the media is saying we’re bad. So, it doesn’t really matter.
“We go out there and play and compete and have fun, trust each other, move the ball and play our way of basketball. This is what we love to do, no matter what anyone says or anything like that.”
Johnson said encouragement from his teammates and coaches has kept his spirits high while he searches to rediscover his shooting stroke.
“I can’t thank my teammates and my coaches enough for continuing to believe in me, telling me to keep shooting the ball,” he said.
“As a young player, that means the world to me that my teammates and coaches believe in me through thick and thin. To have a whole team and staff behind you, believing in you 100 percent, I can’t even explain it. It’s like a dream come true.”