Nick Johnson (basketball player)

Nick Johnson
Player information
Full name	Nicholas Alexander Johnson
birthday	22nd December 1992 (age 27)
place of birth	Tempe , Arizona , United States
size	191 cm
position	Shooting Guard / Point Guard
college	Arizona
NBA draft	2014 42nd Pick, Houston Rockets
Clubs as active
2011–2014 Arizona Wildcats ( NCAA ) 2014–2015 Houston Rockets 2014–2015 → Rio Grande Valley Vipers 2015–2016 Austin Spurs 2016–2017 FC Bayern Munich

Nicholas Alexander "Nick" Johnson (born December 22, 1992 in Tempe , Arizona ) is an American basketball player . After studying in his home country, Johnson was selected by the Houston Rockets in the Entry Draft of the top-endowed professional league NBA 2014 and played for this club in the NBA and for farm teams in the D-League . After he could not establish himself in the NBA in the medium term, he played in the basketball Bundesliga 2016/17 for the German first division club FC Bayern Munich.

Career

His father "Jumpin Joey" Johnson made his living playing basketball and had remarkable athleticism and extraordinary jumping ability, while his older brother Dennis Johnson , the uncle of Nick Johnson, was one of the most important players of the 1980s, who was with two different Club won three NBA championships, was NBA Finals MVP in 1979, and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame posthumously in 2010 . Nick Johnson spent the first two years of high school at Highland High in Gilbert, Arizona , which is adjacent to his birthplace in Maricopa County , the metropolitan area of Phoenix . For the remaining two years of high school, Johnson moved to Findlay Prep in Henderson (Nevada) , which has particularly distinguished itself in the training of basketball players. Before Johnson, Avery Bradley , Cory Joseph , DeAndre Liggins and Tristan Thompson were trained there, all of whom later played in the NBA . After graduating in 2011, Johnson returned to Arizona and received a scholarship from the University of Arizona at Tucson , where he played in the NCAA's Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) for the college team Wildcats , the more renowned rivals of the Arizona State Sun Devils from Johnson's birthplace Tempe. Together with senior Kyle Fogg , who later also played in the German Basketball League (BBL), Johnson reached the final game in the Pac-12 championship tournament in 2012, which was lost to the Buffaloes of the University of Colorado , and was placed in the Pac -12 All-Freshmen Team of the five best newcomers to the conference appointed. As the top team in their regional group, however, they lost the opening game in the National Invitation Tournament 2012 against the Bucknell Bison . In the following two years it was enough at the end of the season to participate in the national NCAA finals , which had been more prestigious since the 1970s , but in the Pac-12 championship tournament they lost each time to the UCLA Bruins , once in the semifinals in 2013 and again in the final game in 2014 After the defeat in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA finals in 2013 against the Ohio State Buckeyes , the Wildcats with Johnson and among others Transfer TJ McConnell , "Sophomore" Brandon Ashley , also a later BBL professional, and the "Freshmen" Aaron Gordon and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson set a new team-internal starting record of 21 straight wins at the start of the 2013-14 season before Ashley sustained a season-ending foot injury in the next game. In the final round, the Wildcats moved as the top-seeded team in their regional group up to the Regional Final Elite Eight , in which they lost to the Badgers of the University of Wisconsin after extra time and just missed out on the Final Four . Together with his teammate Aaron Gordon, Johnson was appointed to the "Regional All-Tournament Team" and both then signed up early for the entry draft of the NBA's most highly endowed professional league . Johnson was also named Pac-12 Player of the Year and was considered the “Consensus All-American First Team” of the five best NCAA players of the season.

While freshman Aaron Gordon was already selected in fourth position in the 2014 NBA draft , Johnson had to wait until the second round before he was selected in 42nd position by the Houston Rockets. Still, Johnson apparently got a guaranteed three-year contract from the Rockets after the 2014 NBA Summer League . Nevertheless, shortly after the start of the season, the Rockets Johnson deposited their farm team Rio Grande Valley Vipers from Hidalgo (Texas) on the Texan- Mexican border, which plays in the minor league NBA Development League (D-League), for the first time in mid-November . Especially after the turn of the year, the interplay between relegation to the D-League and being brought back to the NBA roster was repeated over and over again, so that Johnson finally made 28 appearances in his rookie season in the NBA with an average of just under ten minutes per game. In the D-League, Johnson made 20 appearances with a good 18 points and an average of five assists per game, whereby, as in the NBA , he showed weaknesses when throws from a distance from behind the three-point line , which he did with a success rate of less than 30 % met. Despite a positive season record , the Valley Vipers missed the play-off for the D-League title for the first time in three years . Instead, Johnson got nine short appearances in the play-offs of the NBA 2014/15 , where the Rockets moved into the Conference final as winners of the Southwest Division , where they were defeated by the eventual overall winner Golden State Warriors after just one win in five games. In the following summer of 2015, however, the Rockets exchanged Johnson together with other players again, so that Johnson came to the Denver Nuggets , who released him from his obligations a week before the start of the NBA 2015/16 season as the last player exchanged. Johnson then returned to the D-League and joined the Spurs from Austin (Texas) . The Spurs in turn won the Southwest Division of the D-League and won in the first play-off round against Johnson's former team Valley Vipers before they were eliminated from the title award after the lost semi-final series against the Los Angeles D-Fenders . Johnson had not been promoted to an NBA roster during the season as he had been in the previous season, but was recommended for a pre-season contract with the Orlando Magic via the 2016 NBA Summer League , where he was again in a roster with Aaron Gordon . After six weeks, the Magic ended this contract a good week before the start of the season.

After Johnson's attempts to establish himself in the NBA failed for the time being, he finally went to Europe and signed a contract with the German first division club FC Bayern from Munich until the end of the season a week after the contract termination with the Magic at the end of October 2016 . Here he was referred to as the player of choice and was given a lot of praise, which he was able to confirm in individual games of the EuroCup 2016/17 as a "match winner" in the final seconds. Otherwise, Johnson proved to be unfamiliar with the style of play in Europe, which was reflected in the comparatively frequent loss of the ball , and coach Saša Đorđević limited Johnson's playing time in the second half of the season. After a convincing performance in the group stages of the EuroCup, in which Bayern had twice defeated the Spanish representative Unicaja Málaga , they had to admit defeat in the play-off quarter-finals despite home rights in the decisive third game of this team, which then won the title . In the easycredit BBL-Pokal 2017 Bayern were able to retaliate in the semi-finals for the previous year's defeat in front of their own audience at host Alba Berlin after a strong performance by Johnson, but in the final Bayern were defeated by champion Brose Bamberg with 71:74 after Johnson was decisively blocked in the final seconds . Bayern moved into the play-offs for the German championship as third, in which they again defeated Alba Berlin in four games in the quarterfinals, before defeating defending champion and cup winner Brose Bamberg in three games without their own victory. In the play-offs, Johnson's operating time was reduced to less than 15 minutes per game and in the last two defeats against Bamberg he was no longer used at all.

Web links

• easyCredit BBL - Nick Johnson - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball-Bundesliga website
• JOHNSON, NICK - Player profile on the website of the Euro Cup ( English )
• Nick Johnson - player profile on basketball-reference.com
• Nick Johnson - 2013–14 Men's Basketball Roster - Profile on the sports website of the University of Arizona (English; as of 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Branch: A Father's Legs and an Uncle's Skills. The New York Times , March 20, 2014, accessed May 29, 2017 . 
2. ↑ Slideshow: Arizona's 20 longest winning streaks in school history. Arizona Daily Star : tucson.com, January 26, 2014, accessed May 28, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Wisconsin after OT thriller on. Sport1 , March 30, 2014, accessed May 28, 2017 . 
4. ^ Arizona Basketball falls to Wisconsin in Final Four. YouTube , March 29, 2014, accessed on May 28, 2017 (English, video report by KGUN-9 of the Tucson broadcaster KGUN-TV ). 
5. ↑ 2014–15 NCAA Men's Basketball Records Book: Award Winners. (PDF (217 KB)) NCAA , October 21, 2014, p. 5 , accessed on May 28, 2017 (English, list of the winning players). 
6. ↑ Kevin Zimmerman: Nick Johnson to sign 3-year, guaranteed deal with Rockets. Sports Blog Nation : AZDesertSwarm.com, July 23, 2014, accessed May 28, 2017 . 
7. ^ Nuggets Acquire Joey Dorsey, Nick Johnson, Kostas Papanikolaou, Pablo Prigioni, Cash Considerations and First Round Pick From Houston. NBA , July 20, 2015, accessed May 28, 2017 (Media Info Denver Nuggets). 
8. ↑ Nuggets Waive Johnson, Pecherov and Sweetney. NBA , October 24, 2015, accessed May 28, 2017 (Media Info Denver Nuggets). 
9. ↑ Orlando Magic Waive Nick Johnson, Ramon Galloway. NBA , October 24, 2015, accessed May 28, 2017 (Orlando Magic media info). 
10. ↑ Bayern basketball players sign US guard Nick Johnson. (No longer available online.) FC Bayern Munich (basketball) , October 29, 2016, formerly in the original ; accessed on May 28, 2017 (media information).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
11. ↑ Florian Schmidt-Sommerfeld : EuroCup: Super Johnson again! Bavaria beats Malaga. ran.de , December 1, 2016, accessed May 28, 2017 . 
12. ^ Dpa : Bavaria and Bamberg in the cup final. kicker.de , February 18, 2017, accessed on May 28, 2017 . 
13. ↑ Fabian Wenninger: For the fifth time: Bamberg takes the pot! (No longer available online.) Telekom Basketball , February 19, 2017, formerly in the original ; accessed on May 28, 2017 (match report).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.