It was probably at the training camp before the 1984 NBA season where I was rebounding shots for Andrew Toney during his regular, after-practice routine. As the resident gym rat at F&M’s Mayser Gym and a neighborhood kid who used the campus as a playground (and sometimes turned up at fraternity parties on College Ave. long before getting to the seventh grade), plum jobs during the annual 76ers’ training camp were a good way to learn about the game.
Because I watched him shoot so much and threw him thousands of passes, my own shot was almost a copy of Toney’s. There was the little step with the right foot before rising to release one with a right hand that found the bottom of the net more often than the iron of the rim. No, Andrew Toney wasn’t a bad guy to develop a shot with.
But during this outing as the fans who packed the gym to watch practice and a scrimmage were filing out, one man shouted at Toney – the noted “Boston Strangler” – that the Sixers’ top rival in the Atlantic Division didn’t have a guard that could keep him in check:
“The Celtics are worried, Andrew. They don’t have any one who can stop you. No one.”
But before returning the ball to Toney, I hesitated for a second and said to him just before firing another pass, “Yeah, but they just got D.J. didn’t they?”
“That’s why we’re here,” he said, shooting another one… and then another one... and then many, many more until it felt like my arms were going to fall off. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned D.J.?
D.J., of course, is the great Dennis Johnson, the defensive stalwart the Celtics acquired from Phoenix specifically to put the clamps on the Boston Strangler. Reports all over the Internet are that Johnson collapsed and died after a post-practice one-on-one game in Austin, Tex. where he coached in the NBA Developmental league. He was just 52 years old.
Meanwhile, the rest who can recall watching D.J. play in vivid detail just got a little bit older.
But as far as clutch players go, Johnson was right up there amongst the greatest who ever played. He had the wherewithal to streak to the hoop, catch the pass and lay it in after Bird swiped Isaiah’s pass in that playoff game at the Garden. He also stepped up and drilled a 20-footer at the buzzer – a shot that soared like a flying dagger at the hoop – to beat the Lakers and tie the NBA Finals in Game 4 in ’85.
In addition to putting the clamps on Toney, Johnson was also charged with guarding Magic in the Finals and making sure Bird and Kevin McHale got their shots as the quarterback of two championship teams during the 1980s. When D.J. was handling the ball for your team, you felt safe.
“He was one of the most underrated players in the history of the game, in my opinion, and one of the greatest Celtic acquisitions of all time,” said former Boston teammate Danny Ainge. “D.J. was a free spirit and a fun personality who loved to laugh and play the game. We had spoken at length just the other night about basketball and his excitement about coaching the Austin Toros.”
Larry Bird once called Johnson the best teammate he ever had.
That’s not bad for a guy who didn’t even play on his high school team and drove a forklift following school. Yet somehow Johnson was able to wind up at Pepperdine University for one season and the NBA a year after that.
Three years after that he was named MVP of the NBA Finals.
Johnson came to the Celtics after leading the Seattle Supersonics to the 1979 NBA title over the defending champion Washington Bullets. I remember watching the clinching game when we lived in Washington and thinking, “Man, that Johnson dude is a pest.” And when the Celtics got him I thought that the balance of power in the Atlantic Division just shifted away from Philadelphia and back to Boston.
Johnson went on to greater acclaim with the Celtics largely in part because he was the perfect anecdote for superstars Bird, McHale and Robert Parish. Back in those days the Celtics were clearly Bird’s team, but it was D.J.’s show. Bird was the man but Johnson made everything run on time.
But the one thing that keeps coming out in the reports on such a difficult day is just how fun Johnson was. That’s a pretty good way to be remembered.
And man oh man could he ever play.