Joe Johnson’s Timing Still As Clutch As Ever
By Adam McGee
Across the world of sport, no matter what league you look at, timing is everything. For example, a run of great form towards the end of the season can lead to big rewards, where a bad injury at a decisive time of the year can cause everything to fall apart. One man who understands the importance of timing in his sport better than most is Joe Johnson.
Throughout his lengthy NBA career, Johnson has shown an impeccable knack for arriving when his teams need him most. So much so that in the dying seconds, with the game on the line, there aren’t many players I’d trust more than Johnson to make a shot. Yet for one reason or another, those shots haven’t dropped for him recently.
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He’s done it over and over again throughout the years, proving himself to be the definition of clutch, and now the Brooklyn Nets need him more than ever to do it one more time. The Nets have really struggled this season, yet slowly but surely they’re pulling themselves back to relevancy in this year’s playoff picture.
Currently sitting in the seventh seed, Brooklyn are two games below .500. It’s a mark they keep pulling themselves within reach of only to fall back at the last moment.
Monday night presented another chance for Brooklyn to reach that mark as they faced off with the Dallas Mavericks, yet after a cagey game that was resolved by overtime, it wasn’t to be.
It could have all ended in regulation though, if only Johnson could have made his late game-winning attempt off a trademark isolation set. He didn’t though, and in all honesty, he hasn’t this season.
Tim Bontemps of the New York Post noted this in his piece Monday night:
"Johnson arguably was the NBA’s most clutch player in his first two years as a Net, but the All-Star shooting guard has gone cold at the end of games this season."
Bontemps puts it as him not being “Joe Cool” for the Nets any time this season, and wonders if his clutch magic has fizzled. On the surface it may be easy to say yes to that, but digging a little deeper shows that Johnson still has great timing, it just may be coming into effect on a larger scale this season.
For example, the Nets came crawling out of the gates in November, but December proved to be a big month for them. They pulled themselves back into playoff position, and there was no man more responsible than Johnson, who upped his game significantly over a busy stretch of games when his team badly needed him.
For the month of December, Johnson averaged 17.2 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.9 assists, all while shooting 46.9 percent from the field and 41.5 percent from three-point range. The early signs in January suggest he could do similar this month too.
Considering this is a player who has been averaging close to a couple of points below that during his time as a Net, there’s an element of clutch in his timing to step up when his team needs him.
Although that may not be transpiring in late game situations at the moment, with Johnson you feel it’s only a matter of time, and the Nets are wisely going to keep going to him.
Coach Lionel Hollins told Bontemps:
“Without him, we are not in that position. … Joe hit two big 3s, he hit another bucket. He carried us. You make some, and you miss some. The thing about Joe is he’s not afraid to take them. Because, when you miss, people say, ‘Well, he is not making these clutch shots.’ But he has made them. They do not all have to be game-winners, but you got to get there, and he got us there.”
My bet is it will be sooner rather than later before they’re dropping again at the end of games for Joe Johnson too.