Kevin Johnson (basketball player)

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Basketball player
Kevin Johnson
Kevin Johnson, Mayor of Sacramento, CA, skyline of Sacramento.jpg
Player information
Full name Kevin Maurice Johnson
Nickname KJ
birthday 4th March 1966 (age 54)
place of birth Sacramento , California , USA
size 185 cm
Weight 86 kg
position Point guard
college University of California, Berkeley
NBA draft 1987 , 7th Pick, Cleveland Cavaliers
Clubs as active
1987–1988 Cleveland Cavaliers 1988–1998 Phoenix Suns 2000 Phoenix SunsUnited StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
00 00United StatesUnited States
National team
000 0 1994 United StatesUnited States United States

Kevin Maurice Johnson (born March 4, 1966 in Sacramento , California ) is a retired American basketball player who was active in the NBA from 1987 to 2000 for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Phoenix Suns . During his time in the league, he was elected three times in the NBA All-Star Game and won the Most Improved Player award in 1989 .

After his playing career, Johnson became a politician and was Mayor of Sacramento , the capital of the state of California , from 2008 to 2016 .

NBA career

Johnson was selected 7th in the 1987 NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers . He was initially a backup of the regular point guard Mark Price and was transferred to the Phoenix Suns during the all-star break (halfway through the season) . There Johnson became a regular player and scored 12 points and 9 assists per game in his freshman year .

In the following 1988/89 season his breakthrough came when he increased his yield to 19 points and 12 assists per game. As a reward, he received the NBA Most Improved Player Award for the most improved player and was elected to the All-NBA team for the first of five times .

Together with Tom Chambers , Dan Majerle and long-range shooter Jeff Hornacek , he formed the core of those strong offensive Suns teams that caused a sensation in the early 90s, but never made a big hit due to their defensive weakness. Johnson consistently scored 22 points and 11 assists per game during this period. In 1991 he was also awarded the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award for his social commitment .

In 1992, superstar Charles Barkley was transferred to the Suns. With Barkley close to the basket and Johnson from a distance, the Suns made it to the NBA final in 1993 , but were defeated in six games by the Chicago Bulls around Michael Jordan . Due to many small injuries, Johnson stagnated at a high level in the following years.

For the 1993/94 season , however, he came back strongly by reaching 20 points and 9.5 assists per game and led the Suns into the Western Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets . Despite a strong series in which he performed a spectacular slam dunk on Rockets superstar Hakeem Olajuwon, among others , the Suns were eliminated in seven games. Johnson held himself harmless in the 1994 Basketball World Cup , where he won the gold medal with the USA.

1994 was Johnson's last big year. The injury-prone point guard continued to decline physically, so that he quit in 1998 at the age of 31. Two years later he made a brief comeback for the Suns and played six more games as a replacement for the injured Jason Kidd before retiring entirely. After retiring, Johnson's jersey number 7 was withdrawn by the Suns and has not been awarded by the team since.

Style of play

Johnson was known in his heyday as one of the most attacking playmakers in the NBA. He was feared for his pull to the basket and his ability to both throw safely at full speed and to pass the free man. Johnson is one of three players in NBA history, with Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas , to have more than 20 points and 12 assists per game in one season , and one of three, with Johnson and Oscar Robertson , to have both scored 20 in three consecutive seasons Achieved points and 10 templates per game.

Awards

Career after the NBA

After his playing career, Johnson was initially a basketball commentator for the US television channel NBC .

In 2008, Johnson announced that he wanted to become mayor of his hometown Sacramento . In the June 2008 primaries, he won 46.08% of the vote as an independent candidate. Kevin Johnson won the runoff election against incumbent Heather Fargo with 57.5% of the vote. On November 25, 2008, he officially took office as mayor.

Scandals and repeated allegations of sexually molesting women overshadowed his tenure as mayor, which ended in 2016. He was succeeded by Darrell Steinberg .

Web links

Commons : Kevin Johnson  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kevin Johnson on nba.com ( Memento from October 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Election results for Sacramento primaries ( Memento from June 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 191 kB), June 3, 2008
  3. ^ Election results for the Sacramento runoff , November 5, 2008
  4. ↑ Ryan Lillis: No confetti, choirs as Kevin Johnson leaves Sacramento mayor's post . In: The Sacramento Bee . December 4, 2016, ISSN  0890-5738 ( sacbee.com [accessed July 9, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Johnson, Kevin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnson, Kevin Maurice (full name); KJ (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American basketball player and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 4th 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento , California