Johnson 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.
“If you go to Virginia and see the sign that says ‘country’ and then you take a right to go deeper in the country — that’s where he’s from,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.
But Keldon grew to be 6-feet-5, 200-plus pounds and one of the country’s 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.
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.
During Johnson’s 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.
Early in Keldon’s 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.
“[But] something we talked a lot about was impacting winning and being a defender,” Mitch Johnson said, describing his early conversations with Keldon. “When we get to where we want to go, what does this need to look like? For you and for us.”
They worked together on “just valuing a lot of the details,” Mitch Johnson said, such as team defense, the type of skills that would make Keldon a well-rounded player.
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 — the first two of whom would win the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award. The Spurs also dealt for veteran guard De’Aaron Fox at last year’s trade deadline.
The influx of talent naturally pushed Johnson to the bench, a role shift that he has embraced. He’s not the leading scorer anymore, but his presence is still felt.
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 “put me on the aux and told me to play Mariah Carey.”
Johnson’s playlist features lots of rap, but the rotation this season has also included Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” and Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles.”
“I feel like it started off like a joke,” Johnson said. “But everybody sung along and had fun with it, so it just kind of been our routine since then.”
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.
“He is the energy,” said Spurs forward Julian Champagnie. “There’s been times when we’re in games and we’re down and we don’t have no energy or we can’t find it — and he does. He seems to just pull everyone along with him.”
On the season, Johnson is averaging 12.9 points and 5.5 rebounds and shooting 38.2% from 3-point range. Wembanyama calls Johnson “one of the most selfless persons I know,” and Mitch Johnson says Keldon “should be Sixth Man of the Year.”
Keldon Johnson is a contender for the award. He said it’s nice to be mentioned in those conversations, but “winning 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.”
Johnson found he can be himself off the court in San Antonio, too.
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. “It wasn’t gigantic,” Johnson said. “But I was like sheesh. It took us probably an hour and a half to bring in.”
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.
As a true outdoorsman, Johnson eats what he kills. He said he had “eight or nine deep freezers in my garage, full of wild game,” meats from animals he hunted, that his chef will prepare for him and his family.