Mike Rodriguez needed to find 10 hoopers, and fast.
It was Easter Sunday, 2014. Rodriguez was the boys basketball coach at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart High School outside of Pittsburgh, and one of his pupils had an unexpected new suitor reaching out: University of Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon.
“He just happened to be flying out of town, and we’re close to the airport,” Rodriguez remembers. “And he says, ‘Hey, I want to swing by to see Cam on my way. Is he working out today?’”
Of course, he could swing by, Rodriguez responded.
Nobody was working out that day.
But the fleeting opportunity was too golden to pass up. Senior Cam Johnson was an ace student with a collection of basketball scholarship offers from mid-major Division I programs Marist, Rice and Columbia. But none from a Power Five team. Pitt was the local ACC team. His dad had played there 25 years earlier. It was Johnson’s dream school at the time.
So Rodriguez scrambled to set up an impromptu workout, calling in favors from alumni in addition to current players. Anything to assemble enough people available on the holiday.
As it turned out, enough were eager to help Johnson.
“We got 10 guys in the gym — I don’t know how competitive the 10 guys were — but we threw them in there. … And you know something, they knew what it was all about,” Rodriguez said. “They knew it was about showcasing Cam. That’s how good Cameron was to his teammates.”
With Johnson’s parents also in attendance, Dixon watched the workout and then offered Johnson a scholarship on the spot. It was a watershed moment of recognition on his journey to the NBA, which is taking him to Denver next. The Nuggets made a surprise offseason splash this week when they traded Michael Porter Jr. to the Brooklyn Nets, receiving the 29-year-old Johnson in return.
He’s set to replace Porter in the starting lineup after a career year in Brooklyn, where he compiled 18.8 points per game on 39% outside shooting. But those who’ve coached and trained Johnson would attest that what makes him a natural fit with Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets is his selflessness as a teammate and his cerebral approach to the game.
“The reason he’s in the NBA is because the guy works,” Rodriguez said. “Not because of his size. Not because of his shooting. I mean, that man works.”
“He’s truly a coach’s dream,” said Brad Frederick, who had Johnson for two seasons at North Carolina after he grad-transferred from Pitt. “He’s an awesome guy, player, worker. He’s savvy.”
Yet he’s often been overlooked. For most of high school, it made sense. Johnson was a late bloomer, waiting for a growth spurt and obsessing over his jump shot in the meantime. Rodriguez remembers him spending countless extra hours alone with a shooting machine to master his form. “I’d like to say I developed that shot,” he said. “I can’t tell you that.”
“He always was a great shooter,” said Isiah Neely, who was a grade older than Johnson. “He was an extremely hard worker, but he was laid back. Always smiling. Very articulate in his words, very knowledgeable.”
The hard work was finally rewarded after Johnson’s junior year, when he skyrocketed by several inches. He took off as a prospect, leading to his stealth commitment to Pitt. He graduated there in three years, then got his master’s degree in sports administration from UNC in two.
In basketball, his IQ served him equally well.
“We weren’t really a set-heavy team, so we liked to play fast and run secondary break. We were a small team his senior year, and Cam would play the four-spot for us sometimes,” Frederick said. “A lot of what he got in terms of open shots was just because he was able to kind of create his own looks and because he was able to run the floor so well. We could pitch it ahead to him for shots.
“We knew he was a good student, but the cerebral part was just something we didn’t have any idea of. He was just a guy we were able to play multiple positions. For us, he ended up playing two through four, which is something we didn’t expect when we got him.”
Johnson was widely projected to be drafted at the tail end of the first round in the 2019 NBA draft, but the Suns stunned prognosticators by taking him 11th overall instead, eliciting a wholesome reaction from UNC teammate Coby White. In Phoenix, Johnson emerged as a high-quality role player. He contributed to a team that reached the NBA Finals in 2021. He finished third in Sixth Man of the Year voting in 2022. He progressed into a starting role in 2023 — only to get traded to Brooklyn in a massive deal that netted Kevin Durant for the Suns.
Discarded by a contender, he began to work himself back up until he could land with a new one. The Nuggets finally raised their hand.
Denver should bring renewed exposure to his polished game. He has always been in tune with his own specific needs, his own shortcomings, his own opportunities to improve. In 2020, before he went to play in the bubble, he reached out to Neely, who was training athletes professionally. Johnson had specific goals in mind: “He wanted to work on his footwork. Lateral quickness. Ways that he could improve agility.”
And in most other cases, the newest Nugget seeks to share his thoughtfulness with others, whether that’s in frequent podcast appearances or sideline huddles.
“When we were doing drills in practice and running full-court stuff, he was always trying to teach the younger kids,” Rodriguez recalled. “After my huddle would break (during games), they would be walking out on the court, and he would huddle them up again. ‘We’ve gotta do this. We’ve gotta do that.’ And of course, everyone paid attention. It was Cam Johnson.”
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