![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/260311-keldon-johnson-inline-2-lr-1fb683.jpg\")
Johnson before a game against the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena on Dec. 19. Joe Boatman \/ NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\nJohnson grew up in South Hill, Virginia, a rural area with a population of about 5,000, near the North Carolina border. His father drove 18-wheelers, which meant early mornings and long days. As a young boy, Keldon would sometimes ride with him. His father taught him to fish and hunt, too, a rite of passage in that part of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go to Virginia and see the sign that says \u2018country\u2019 and then you take a right to go deeper in the country \u2014 that\u2019s where he\u2019s from,\u201d Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.<\/p>\n
But Keldon grew to be 6-feet-5, 200-plus pounds and one of the country\u2019s top basketball prospects for his age. He played at Oak Hill Academy, the famed Virginia prep school that produced Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant, and then a year at the University of Kentucky, where his freshmen class included future pros Tyler Herro and Immanuel Quickley.<\/p>\n
The Spurs drafted Johnson in the first round in 2019, when the organization was going through a seismic shift. The Tim Duncan-Tony Parker-Manu Ginobili dynasty had ended, and San Antonio had traded Kawhi Leonard, its last Finals MVP, to the Toronto Raptors the year prior. The Spurs selected Johnson with the pick they received in that deal.<\/p>\n
During Johnson\u2019s rookie year, San Antonio had its first losing season in about two decades. The next five years: five more losing campaigns. Johnson started a lot of those games. One year, he led the team in scoring as the Spurs compiled a staggering 60 losses.<\/p>\n
Early in Keldon\u2019s career, his development coach happened to be Mitch Johnson, who was an assistant under Gregg Popovich at the time. Keldon always had a knack for bullying his way to the basket, for hitting an open jump shot.<\/p>\n
\u201c[But] something we talked a lot about was impacting winning and being a defender,\u201d Mitch Johnson said, describing his early conversations with Keldon. \u201cWhen we get to where we want to go, what does this need to look like? For you and for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
They worked together on \u201cjust valuing a lot of the details,\u201d Mitch Johnson said, things like team defense, the type of skills that would make Keldon a well-rounded player.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, all of that losing put the Spurs in position to draft more young talent. In consecutive years, they used top-four picks on Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper \u2014 the first two of whom would win the NBA\u2019s Rookie of the Year award. The Spurs also dealt for veteran guard De\u2019Aaron Fox at last year\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n
Johnson before a game against the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena on Dec. 19. Joe Boatman \/ NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The influx of talent naturally pushed Johnson to the bench, a role shift that he has embraced. He\u2019s not the leading scorer anymore, but his presence is still felt.<\/p>\n
Before the Spurs take the court, Johnson typically plays music from a giant speaker, adorned with a worn-out Spurs logo. Something to get his teammates going. He has been the unofficial team DJ since his rookie year, he said, when veteran guard Patty Mills \u201cput me on the aux and told me to play Mariah Carey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s playlist features lots of rap, but the rotation this season has also included Miley Cyrus\u2019 \u201cParty in the U.S.A.\u201d and Vanessa Carlton\u2019s \u201cA Thousand Miles.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it started off like a joke,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut everybody sung along and had fun with it, so it just kind of been our routine since then.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Johnson checks into games, he plays as if he just had chugged an energy drink. He crashes for rebounds. He bodies people on defense. He brings a level of … urgency.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is the energy,\u201d said Spurs forward Julian Champagnie. \u201cThere\u2019s been times when we\u2019re in games and we\u2019re down and we don\u2019t have no energy or we can\u2019t find it \u2014 and he does. He seems to just pull everyone along with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the season, Johnson is averaging 12.9 points and 5.5 rebounds and shooting 38.2% from 3-point range. Wembanyama calls Johnson \u201cone of the most selfless persons I know,\u201d and Mitch Johnson says Keldon \u201cshould be Sixth Man of the Year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keldon Johnson is a contender for the award. He said it\u2019s nice to be mentioned in those conversations, but \u201cwinning is the most important thing for me. … I come off the bench, bring that spark, be myself. Affect the game in as many ways as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson found he can be himself off the court in San Antonio, too.<\/p>\n
He often goes fishing with friends in South Texas. Once, he went to Rockport, on the Gulf, and ended up catching a pretty big shark. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t, like, gigantic,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut I was, like, sheesh. It took us probably an hour and a half to bring in.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also goes hunting when he can, specifically wild-game hunting with a rifle or a compound bow. He has trailed lots of types of deer: axis, whitetail, fallow and barasingha, colloquially known as a swamp deer. But also bigger game: water buffalo, bison, elk.<\/p>\n
As a true outdoorsman, Johnson eats what he kills. He said he had \u201clike eight or nine deep freezers in my garage, full of wild game,\u201d meats from animals he hunted, that his chef will prepare for him and his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnson grew up in South Hill, Virginia, a rural area with a population of about 5,000, near the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-531250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}