The pain Spurs forward Keldon Johnson experienced from losing to New York\u00a0in the NBA Finals and from struggling throughout most of the postseason didn’t stop him\u00a0from exuding his trademark positive vibes after the 94-90 loss in Game 5.<\/p>\n
“I’m proud of my guys. I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of our coaching staff. I’m proud of (coach) Mitch (Johnson),” an emotional Johnson told reporters in the locker room at the Frost Bank Center.<\/p>\n
“I’m proud to be a Spur,” the current longest-tenured Spur at seven seasons added.<\/p>\n
The player dubbed the team’s “heart and soul” by his coach and teammates averaged just 4.4 points per game against the Knicks, the lowest Finals scoring average by a reigning Sixth Man of the Year since the league began handing out the award in 1983, according to @UnderdogNBA.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia’s Aaron\u00a0McKie and Boston’s Bill\u00a0Walton averaged 8.0 points per game in 2001 and 1986, respectively, after winning the award.<\/p>\n
Johnson averaged 13.2 points on 51.9% shooting from the field, 5.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists on his way\u00a0to winning the John Havlicek Trophy, but he could only muster 7.7 points on 40.7% shooting, 3.3 rebounds and 0.9 assists over 23 playoff games in his first postseason.<\/p>\n
Things got even tough for Johnson in the Finals, when he averaged only 4.4 points on 34.8% shooting, 3.0 assists rebounds and 0.6 assists. In 16 minutes in Game 5, he matched his series high with seven points and had a series-best five rebounds.<\/p>\n
But there was a bright side to the disappointing run for one of the most enthusiastic players in franchise history: He learned a lot about performing in the postseason.<\/p>\n
“When you get in the playoffs, every game is different,” he said. “Every possession matters. You can’t look forward through things. You got to be locked in every possession, every detail, and take that in. Every game is different. Every game may need something different. And that’s what I feel like my biggest takeaway is from playoffs.”<\/p>\n
As for the team as a whole, Johnson said,\u00a0“We just have to execute better and learn from our mistakes. It’s basketball. It happens, things happen and you got to grow from it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pain Spurs forward Keldon Johnson experienced from losing to New York\u00a0in the NBA Finals and from struggling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-736738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}