John Johnson died the other day at 68 years of age in San Jose, Calif. Johnson played on an the outstanding Iowa basketball team that had a 14-0 Big Ten record and went 20-5 overall in 1969-70. Here's the story I wrote in 1993 about Johnson for the Des Moines Sunday Register Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.
Written by Ron Maly
John Johnson
The voice came crackling across the telephone line from Black Butte Ranch, Ore.
It was Ralph Miller. Now 74, he quickly demonstrated that his memory is
just as sharp now as it was when he coached basketball at Iowa from 1965
to 1970.
"John Johnson is about to be named to the Iowa Sports Hall of
Fame," Miller was told. "Got any good stories about him?"
Miller said, "The funniest one I can recall happened when John first began practicing with our 1968-69 team."
The scene was Iowa Fieldhouse, where the Hawkeyes then played their
games. Johnson, a 6-foot 7-inch forward from Milwaukee, Wis., had come
to Iowa from Northwest Junior College in Powell, Wyo.
"I watched practice a while, and said, 'John, your outside shot is just too flat.' "
Johnson was stunned.
"Aw, come on, coach. I've been shooting that way all my life, and doing pretty well," he told Miller.
"Correct," the coach responded. "But your shot is still flat, and one of these days you'll figure it out."
In Johnson's first game as a Hawkeye, he scored 21 points against Cal
Poly. In his second, he collected 12 against
Northern Michigan.
Then came game No. 3. Wisconsin-Milwaukee was the opponent in Iowa City.
"Johnson broke the school scoring record with 46 points," Miller said.
"With a few minutes left in the game, and before he set the record, he
was fouled.
"The public address announcer [told everyone in the arena] he needed one more point to
break the record. I'll bet he went to the free throw line four or five
times, but couldn't make the free throw that would have given him the
record.
"Then he finally made another field goal and set the record. The next
morning he came to me and said, 'Coach, I need some help with my
shooting. I've never missed that many free throws in my life.' "
John Howard Getty Johnson -- the man commonly known as J.J. -- made many
more field goals and free throws, and grabbed 509 rebounds in his short
two-year Iowa career.
He wiped out his own Iowa game scoring record with 49 points against Northwestern in 1970, a mark that still stands.
After all these years, he ranks 16th on Iowa's all-time scoring list
with 1,172 points in 49 games -- a 23.9 average. His 699 points and 27.9
average in the 1969-70 season are Hawkeye records.
So today, after his brilliance at Iowa and after a 12-year National
Basketball Association career that ended with the Seattle SuperSonics in
1982, Johnson becomes the 134th member of The Des Moines Sunday
Register's Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.
"Johnson was the best player I've seen play at Iowa -- or maybe anywhere
else," said Glenn Vidnovic of Iowa City, a forward alongside Johnson on
the 1969-70 Hawkeye team that won the Big Ten title with a 14-0 record
and went 20-5 overall.
"Rick Mount of Purdue was named the most valuable player in the Big Ten
in 1970, but that was a joke. Johnson should have gotten it. He
definitely was a super player."
Another Hawkeye starter that season was guard Chad Calabria, who also recalls Johnson's unorthodox shooting style.
"Yes, he'd shoot those line-drive shots," Calabria commented. "But he
was a great all-around player. He played defense, he was a great leaper,
he rebounded and he was a great passer. For a guy who stood 6-7, he
moved the ball very well."
Calabria, who lives in Beaver Falls, Pa., said Johnson had a great desire to win.
"We didn't do too well as a team in John's junior year after he
transferred from junior college," Calabria said. "It was like a learning
process. But, as seniors, we meshed as a team."
Iowa had only a 12-12 record when Johnson and Calabria were juniors. But
Johnson averaged 19.7 points, 10.7 rebounds, and was named the
Hawkeyes' most valuable player.
Then came 1969-70 when, after a not-so-great non-conference season, Iowa
was unstoppable against Big Ten competition. The Hawkeyes lost three of
their first five games, and closed the non-conference schedule with
only a 4-4 record.
But they lost just once more the rest of the season -- a 104-103
thriller against Jacksonville in the first game of the NCAA Mideast
Regional. The NCAA still held third-place games in those years, and Iowa
closed the season with a 121-106 romp past Notre Dame for the Mideast
consolation prize.
Johnson and Calabria each scored 31 points against Notre Dame. Johnson
finished second in Big Ten scoring with a 14-game average of 31.8.
Iowa averaged 102.9 points in conference games to become the highest-scoring team in Big Ten history. The record still stands.
In his 49 games as a Hawkeye, Johnson averaged 10.4 rebounds. Just as
when he was a junior, he was Iowa's most valuable player as a senior.
"John was very versatile," Calabria said. "He could play guard as well
as forward. Many of the guys on the team were interchangeable."
Johnson and Vidnovic started at forward, Calabria and Fred Brown were
the guards and Dick Jensen and Ben McGilmer shared the starting center
job.
"It was a very unselfish team," Calabria said. "Everyone got the ball to the other players."
Brown also went on to an illustrious NBA career and became a member of The Register's Hall of Fame in 1990.
Johnson now lives in the Seattle, Wash., area, where he was a teacher
and coach in the Bellevue, Wash., school system. He now leads a very
private life and declined to be interviewed for this story.
However, Dick Schultz was another who
joined Miller, Vidnovic and Calabria in showering praise on Johnson.
Schultz, who was an assistant coach at Iowa when Johnson played, is now the outgoing executive director of the NCAA.
"John was a pleasure to work with, and he was a first-class guy,"
Schultz said. "When he was still in junior college in Wyoming, I think
it came down to Johnson choosing between Iowa and Utah State, and we
were very happy to get him.
"So many times when you recruit a junior-college player, all you get is
one real productive year out of him. But John fit right in as a junior.
"As a senior, he was terrific. Had we been a team that went with just
one individual, I felt Johnson could have given Mount a battle for the
Big Ten scoring title. But John -- like the others on that team -- was
unselfish."
Miller called the 1969-70 team the best passing team in the nation. He
added that he hasn't seen a better one in college basketball since.
Johnson was a first-team all-America choice of the Helms Foundation and
Basketball News in 1970. Later, in the NBA draft, he was the seventh
player chosen in the first round by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In his first two professional seasons, he was chosen for the NBA
All-Star Game. Johnson stayed with Cleveland for three seasons, later
went to Portland and Houston, and spent his last four seasons with
Seattle.
In 1979, Johnson picked up an NBA championship ring with the Sonics.
