https://youtu.be/ZgklwduRKnE
Last season, Stanley Johnson played sparingly for the Raptors. Up until the final game of the season, his highest point total was just seven points. Then, he dropped 23 in the regular season finale when the Raptors were presumably locked into their playoff seed. I made a highlight video where I expressed surprise at Johnson’s sudden resurrection from the dead.
History is repeating itself. Prior to this game, Johnson’s season-high was fourteen points. He played 25 games where he scored zero points, and that’s not counting the DNP-CD’s. And now he randomly goes off for a career high 35 points, despite not demonstrating anywhere NEAR this amount of basketball-playing competence at any point during the season? Hitting six threes, despite spending his entire career as a subpar shooter?
So the moral of the story is that Johnson can only succeed in late-season games that don’t matter. When the outcome of the game no longer has any effect on anything, he turns into a capable scorer. Last season, the Raptors were cruising to the playoffs and didn’t need to worry about the result of their final game. This season, the Raptors are cruising to a lottery pick and are secretly pining for losses. Both scenarios provide a pressure-free environment for Johnson to go out there and pretend he’s the #1 option for a while.
My question is whether this performance by itself will be enough to earn Johnson another NBA contract. While it seems like he’s been in the NBA forever, he’s still young at age 25, and everybody remembers that time he locked up LeBron James in the playoffs (my memory doesn’t work well enough to know whether that display of defensive prowess is an urban legend or not). Lots of teams would theoretically be interested in a Tony Allen-type player who can play lockdown defense while occasionally hitting shots. That’s theoretically what Johnson would provide, if he could hit shots more often than once per season.
I’m thinking that Johnson does get picked up by another team on a minimum deal. I want to believe that he can be good and I’m sure there are GM’s who think the same. Especially after they watch this highlight video and are amazed not only by the crisp editing and sublime audio work, but by the brutal clinic of absolute BUCKETAGE that Johnson puts on.