along with May’s two other lottery picks<\/a>, Yaxel Lendeborg and Aday May, led to a 37-3 record and a national title, leaving all four with positive momentum in\u00a0their collective leaps to the NBA.\u00a0The Mavericks will someday have championship expectations again, so it helps to have someone with a winning mentality on the roster despite his status as a rookie.<\/p>\nIt also helps that the person who was hired to be Johnson’s head coach is May, who has the familiarity to bring the best out of him.<\/p>\n
“I know what to expect from him,” Johnson said. “He’s going to hold me accountable. He’s going to hold me to a high standard and push me every day.”<\/p>\n
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Elated by his selection and reunion with May, Johnson infamously coined the nickname “The Michigan Mavs” during his postdraft interview with ESPN. His Wolverine teammates weren’t far behind him.\u00a0Lendeborg went 11th overall to Golden State, while Aday Mara was picked 12th by Oklahoma City. Johnson said the trio tried to guess who’d be taken first off the board and who would be the last, a friendly form of “trolling each other.”<\/p>\n
In the end, it was Johnson who was first among the group to shake the hand of NBA commissioner Adam Silver.<\/p>\n
“What can I say, man? I am Dusty’s favorite,” Johnson joked.<\/p>\n
Johnson was direct throughout most of his 14-minute news conference, but his personality broke out in spurts, most notably before he began to field questions. Three of his new teammates were in attendance for his introductory news conference: Max Christie, AJ Johnson and two-way guard John\u00a0Poulakidas. The support from Christie and Poulakidas was notable because they share Chicago roots with Johnson, who hails from Riverdale, Illinois. Upon being introduced as an alum of Michigan, Johnson playfully pointed and smirked toward Christie, who wore a Michigan State T-shirt to honor his own alma mater.<\/p>\n
For those not familiar with Johnson’s game, he’s a lengthy 6-9 forward who excels at rim running and crashing the glass for offensive rebounds. He’s efficient at the basket and can also guard all five positions, referring to switching on defense as his superpower. He modeled his game after the soon-to-be Miami Heat duo of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo\u00a0and sees himself in the\u00a0NBA as a power forward, which gives the Mavericks a prominent defensive\u00a0frontcourt when paired in lineups alongside Cooper Flagg and Dereck Lively II.<\/p>\n
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Johnson has a previous history with Flagg on the AAU circuit and they also played on the same team in the 2024 Nike Hoop Summit. He’s looking forward to reuniting with the reigning Rookie of the Year and wreaking havoc on the defensive end, like he did alongside Lendeborg.<\/p>\n
“I think it can be very similar to how I was at Michigan,” Johnson said. “Switching everything, touching the ball, forcing a lot of turnovers and getting deflections.”<\/p>\n
As for offense, Johnson said he’d like to expand his shooting range at the next level after shooting 34.3% from beyond the arc last season at Michigan on just 35 attempts. He’d also like to show what he can do with more on-ball reps.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I showed anyone that I know how to put the ball on the floor,” he said. “I didn’t need to at Michigan. I had a very good team.”<\/p>\n
Johnson will be surrounded by very good players at the next level, as well, including Flagg, Kyrie Irving, Lively and Christie. Depending on what happens during to the roster during free agency, he could be called upon to test those ball-handling skills. At the very least, he’ll get a chance to showcase the wide range of his game during the 2026 Las Vegas Summer League, which begins on July 8.<\/p>\n
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Johnson is an NBA player now, and he’ll have every opportunity to prove why with his newfound opportunity in Dallas. Even if it’s not where he expected he’d begin his professional career.<\/p>\n
“I was caught off guard, but I’m truly blessed to be here,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mavericks’ first-round draft pick Morez Johnson Jr. responds to questions from the media during an introductory press conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[732,102,104,103,97216],"class_list":["post-350585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-article","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-nba-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}