The Evolution of Iso Joe, From Hated to Beloved

In Game 4 against the Los Angeles Clippers in Utah last night, Joe Johnson—an NBA legend who has scored more than 20,000 points—lit up the fourth quarter with 13 points, including 11 in a row at one point, and helped deliver the game to the Jazz. It was weird and beautiful and exhilarating, which is strange because, as a rule, those aren't adjectives the world has always associated with Joe Johnson

For most of Joe's career, his excellence has been something of a weird joke. He would score a lot, employing a dull methodical isolation method with frequent but not inevitable success on any defender he squared off against. His Hawks teams would do okay—45-50ish wins—and make the second round every few years. He almost always made the All-Star team in a shallow East and, of course, he made a shit-ton of money. Just one heap after another, which he primarily used to purchase colossal military grade SUVs.

In an age when analytics and ball movement were becoming more important, Joe was grudgingly respected and mocked in equal measure. "Iso Joe" became the moniker; "Iso" a reference to his method, totally out of step with modern trends, and "Joe" an allusion to his extraordinarily dull existence on and off the court. It's his real name, sure, but it is also the sort of name you might slap on a default human being you built in a factory, one with no personality or human qualities to speak of.

But last night, Joe was transcendent. With the Jazz down 2-1 in the series and treading muck without star forward Gordon Hayward, Joe went to work: A hook in the lane, a lazy dribble around a screen for a three pointer, multiple honest-to-God post-ups in the lane against Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, a defensive forward who has several inches on the Armadillo Cowboy. Reggie Miller, unliked by most but, I think, weirdly perfect for this moment, cried "ISO JOE" from the heavens, and insults of days past transmuted into an honorific on the spot.

The Clippers, exasperated and floundering—a half decade of history repeating itself against, of all people, Joe Fucking Johnson—took Mbah a Moute off Joe and tried doubling him with Crawford and Reddick, sealing off his penetration. He responded the way any normal superstar would: he passed out of the double, watched the ball whip around the perimeter, spotted up behind the corner, passed to Joe Ingles on the closeout, who sunk his weird, elbow-y three point shot. Joe would notch another assist out of a double team and a handsome shuttle to Ingles off single coverage before all was said and done, single handedly delivering a late-game 105-98 victory to the Jazz. (His second such delivery of the playoffs.)

Utah on fire on @NBAonTNT! pic.twitter.com/KJZYwIqPNZ
— NBA (@NBA) April 24, 2017

It was amazing and strange and beautiful, which is weird, because, like, five or so years ago, it would have just been frustrating and dumb. Joe's career happened in the shadow of the NBA's turnover from an isolation Kobe-league into a communal, ball-movement based Warriors league. In this context, Joe was a kind of overrated throwback type, making a shit ton of money to score on contested jump shots while everyone else was getting with The Program and doing away with contests altogether. His shit was barbarian, test-of-wills nonsense that didn't track with the new, optimized and streamlined future, and he made too much money to boot.

But now that the future is here, and all anyone wants to do is get on the break or whip the ball around the perimeter, hunting for a good shot, over and over and over and over, Isolation Joseph is the perfect antidote to the slick hyperactivity of modernity. Deliberate, calculating, and overpowering, he is skilled and beautiful in ways you never noticed before. The post up in the lane, a no-no among modern dribble-drive guards—just ask Phil Jackson about it, he'll talk your ear off until you're dead—really is very powerful and subtle. Wielded by a player of Joe's skill, it's completely lethal. The slow march of time somehow makes heroes of everyone, yesterday's staid and dull Iso Joe turned into the ISO JOE whose game comes from a place out of time, a relic of unimaginable hidden power that levels the present, and this first round series.