James Johnson is not a savior. He’s not a star. In some matchups, he might not even be a player you want on the floor.
But James Johnson has a very particular set of skills, skills he’s only figured out how best to use recently in his career. Skills that, when engaged and focused, can make him a nightmare for people like Paul Pierce.
It’s those skills – mainly, the ability to capably guard multiple positions on the floor, on the perimeter or on the block, with some passing and transition offense sprinkled in – that made him a target of the Raptors this offseason. General manager Masai Ujiri saw the Raptors’ lack of a defensively capable combo-forward as a weakness that needed to be filled from outside the organization, and he brought the mercurial Johnson back on a two-year, $5-million contract, this despite Johnson essentially getting booted from the team at the end of the 2011-12 season.
The gamble made sense, even if I wasn’t a huge fan of it at the time. My concern was that Johnson appears a volatile and combustible element, and adding him to a team that succeeded largely on the basis of an inexplicable chemistry seemed too risky. That hasn’t necessarily manifested itself, and Johnson has been mostly good when he’s played.
But something has obviously come up with Johnson and Casey again this season, as the red-haired, neck-tattooed Johnson has seen his minutes fluctuate wildly over the course of six months.
Some of this had to do with injuries and, I suspect, some of the late season decline had to do with Casey wanting to get Terrence Ross going as best he could ahead of the playoffs. Reserve player minutes also just happen to swing based on the flow of the season, how others are playing, how the reserve himself is playing, and so on. It was frustrating to watch a generally productive player play so little at times, but this kind of pattern is at least understandable over an 82-game season.
And as Casey said following Game 1, Johnson is somewhat of a matchup player.
There are some situations in which Johnson is far more valuable than others, and much as he’s been a net positive overall – the team was 5.8 points per-100 possessions better with him on the floor in the regular season – he does take some things off the table. He shot 21.6 percent from outside this season and is a 25.8-percent 3-point shooter for his career, making him tough to play at small forward alongside DeMar DeRozan and two non-Patrick Patterson bigs. He’s a quality rebounder for a wing, but not a particularly adept one for a power forward. He can also be frustrating on both ends, as he tends to gamble and occasionally plays outside of himself.
At the same time, he brings a lot to the table, particularly against a team who may have their own weapon playing a combo-forward role. Johnson is quick, long, athletic, strong, and versatile defensively, allowing him to guard multiple positions, switch between assignments with ease, disrupt passing and driving lanes while recovering afterward, and generally be a positive on defense (the Raptors had a 101.9 defensive rating with him on the court, better than anyone on the team save for Tyler Hansbrough).
Offensively, he’s a quality scorer and passer in transition, he can handle the ball and distribute well enough to put the ball in his hands (and, theoretically, operate some funky wing-guard pick-and-rolls), and he was the league’s very best finisher on drives this season.
Again, he’s not a star. He’s a quality role player with some flaws in his game and some specific skills, skills that were exactly what the Raptors believed they needed for another potential playoff series against a team with a Pierce, a Joe Johnson, or a LeBron James. Flawed though he may be, his Game 1 usage is mind-boggling:
Again, Johnson was brought in specifically for opponents like Pierce. In Game 1 of a playoff series against Pierce, one in which Pierce was hot offensively and several Raptors struggled to guard him, Johnson sat on the bench.
Not that Pierce, Joe Johnson, and James are identical players, but they fit the bill of hybrid forwards, the type of which the Raptors struggled against last year, and against whom Johnson is most valuable. A quick look at how they performed against the Raptors highlights Johnson’s value against this player type.
Other than whatever the heck happened to the Raptors’ defense during the Johnson-Johnson matchup, this is strong evidence in James Johnson’s favor. Joe Johnson shot much worse, he and Pierce both scored less frequently, and the team’s defense was far superior against both the Wizards and Cavs with James Johnson on the floor.
Of the 85 lineups the Raptors used for more than 10 minutes this season, 33 contained Johnson, including six of the 11 best defensive groups and 13 of the best 25. That’s against all opponents, and I’d guess that with richer data (and far more time to explore), we’d see Johnson’s groupings rise to the top against players like Pierce.
And again, the look at this data is only to confirm what was plainly obvious when Johnson was signed: He was brought in for matchups like this.
Johnson isn’t the only option on Pierce, of course. Patterson has shown himself to be a capable defender and is, for the most part, quick enough to stay with him on the perimeter. Hansbrough tries his damndest but is an exploitable check for Pierce. You don’t want to remove Amir Johnson as a rim-protector. DeRozan has been steady and has improved in the post. Ross can be disruptive and played better than expected on Saturday. Even Landry Fields would probably do a decent job on him, in the event he were to once again exist.
But if the Raptors’ best options on Pierce are listed out, James Johnson ranks number one (and for the purposes of team defense, it’s worth noting that he probably ranks number two for John Wall).
Defense wasn’t the core issue in a 93-86 overtime loss, but the Wizards worked their system better than the score or offensive rating would indicate, and they’re eventually going to knock down those shots. The quality of looks needs to be altered. And the reasons not to start Johnson – spacing and rebounding – are difficult to lean on when the team just shot 6-of-29 from outside and surrendered a third of their defensive rebounding opportunities.
You can also negate the spacing threat by playing him with Patterson and inverting their roles on offense, though that’s a risky pair for rebounding unless Valanciunas is with them. That trio was a plus-3.4 points per-100 possessions in 191 minutes on the season despite the 73.4-percent defensive rebounding rate, better than the plus-0.5 and 72-percent marks for the Johnson-Patterson-Johnson trio. In any case, playing James Johnson is workable, and it’s something Casey did plenty at times this year, to generally positive results.
This isn’t to say Johnson needs to start, or even play heavy minutes. Casey is going to want to push the offensive pace – with shooting threats – when Randy Wittman taps three or more reserves at a time, and Johnson probably isn’t going to be a part of those groups for Casey. But he should be the first wing off the bench in this series, and should see time checking Pierce at both the three and the four, because he’s their best option to do so, and it’s why he was signed in the first place.
A playoff series will see both teams go through plenty of adjustments. This one is the most plainly obvious for Tuesday.
