DerMarr Johnson Is Alive And Well (And Dominating)

In October 1997, an article in The New Yorker described adults referring to DerMarr Johnson as "Magic Johnson with a jump shot" and "the next Penny Hardaway." Johnson was 17 at the time, and a junior at Newport Prep in Maryland. The venerable magazine typically did not write about young athletes like him, but Johnson was the kind of talent for which magazines make exceptions—a consensus can't-miss prospect as a 6-foot-9 shooting guard, and someone who nearly everyone in basketball circles thought would skip college and enter the NBA. He was that good.

Now 36, Johnson is trying to get into professional coaching or in a front office position. He is also still playing, albeit in a role he never could have imagined as a teenager. At Philadelphia University last weekend, Johnson competed for "City of Gods," one of 64 teams entered in The Basketball Tournament, a winner-takes-all-event featuring former college stars who are now playing professionally overseas. The championship-winning team receives $2 million, while everyone else leaves with nothing.

With the stakes high and a few of his teammates missing, Johnson helped carry his shorthanded squad to two victories and advance to this weekend's Sweet 16 in Philadelphia. Johnson, the sixth pick in the 2000 NBA draft, had 29 points on Saturday and 27 on Sunday. A serious car accident in 2002 derailed his NBA career, but during the tournament's first two rounds, he showed glimpses of the player that scouts and coaches once compared with all-time greats. "I always tell people, 'DJ was Kevin Durant before Kevin Durant,'" former Georgetown and NBA forward Michael Sweetney told VICE Sports.

No one who saw Johnson play in his high school years would've laughed at Sweetney's evaluation. Back then, kids his height were almost always forced to play power forward or center. Playing on the perimeter came naturally for Johnson, though, and he was so good that no coach ever dared move him. Johnson started working on his dribbling at an early age because he noticed players in his neighborhood in Prince George's County, Maryland were revered if they could cross-over defenders.

"It was hard to even get on the court for the most part," Johnson told VICE Sports. "But if I did get on a court, I was this skinny, small kid. I couldn't play in the post. The only thing I could do was dribble the ball around and shoot jump shots. I wasn't gonna go down low with these strong, grown men."

As Johnson grew, he started attracting more attention and caught the eye of Curtis Malone, who ran the D.C. Assault AAU program. Johnson had flunked his classes as a freshman at a local high school and hadn't played on the basketball team. With Malone's help, Johnson transferred to Malone's alma mater, Parkdale High School, and repeated his freshman year. He started to take school and basketball more seriously, traveled the country with D.C. Assault and became the nation's top recruit. When Johnson transferred to Newport Prep, he moved in with Malone, who lived closer to the school. As a sophomore, Malone had Johnson work out with Washington Wizards assistant coach Mike Brown, who would later coach the Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers.

110 at least in the gym but doesn't stop getting ready for — Team City Of Gods (@TeamCityOfGods)July 6, 2016

Around the same time, Malone became friendly with Sonny Vaccaro, a sneaker company executive who was instrumental in Michael Jordan signing with Nike, Kobe Bryant signing with adidas, and numerous other deals.

"Sonny was like, 'Your job is to make sure this kid makes it,'" Johnson said. "There was a lot of guys with talent that didn't make it. [Malone] wasn't gonna let that be me."

There was no social media or YouTube in those days, but everyone in the sport knew Johnson, or at least knew of him. By his junior year, Malone thought it would be best if Johnson moved away from Maryland. He called Max Good, the coach at Maine Central Institute, a private school that has been a launching pad for numerous top recruits. At Malone's urging, Good headed to a tournament to watch Johnson and get to know him better. Good claims it was the only time he left campus to see a player compete before allowing him to join his team. He wanted to make sure the rumors about Johnson's big ego and poor work ethic were not valid.

During a break between games, Johnson walked to the bleachers and sat behind Good and then-Georgetown coach John Thompson.

"I turned around and I said, 'What the hell are you doing? All these open seats and you got your bony ass knees up my back?'," Good said. "He laughed. He got a big kick out of it because most people walked on eggshells around him, which is crazy. Adults walking on eggshells around 17-year-olds or 18-year-olds. But I think he really appreciated somebody talking that way to him because it was so novel. Everybody was kissing his behind."

At MCI, Johnson played with future NBA veteran Caron Butler and excelled against competitive New England prep school programs. He was a first-team USA Today All-American, made the prestigious McDonald's All-American game and had no problem adjusting to his new home.

"If he had a sense of entitlement early, he didn't at MCI," Good said. "He was very accessible to the others and got along very well. He wasn't a problem, I'm telling you. Not at all. I coached a little through fear. I used to tell him, 'You'll be home in time to go trick or treatin' if you mess this up. It's in your best interest not to mess this up.'"

Despite Johnson's accolades, most of the top college coaches didn't waste their time recruiting him. Any program in the nation would have been glad to have him, but the belief was that Johnson was a lock to enter the 1999 NBA draft. Johnson thought he was, too, until he met with Vaccaro shortly before the May deadline to declare for the draft. Vaccaro decided Johnson would be better off enrolling at the University of Cincinnati, where he would play for coach Bob Huggins and concentrate on adding muscle to his wiry frame.

"Sonny Vaccaro was just like, 'You're not gonna go where you deserve to go. [NBA executives] feel like they want to see you get stronger and if you go to Cincinnati, they know you're gonna be stronger once you leave there and you'll be in a better position,'" Johnson said. "At that point, I was just listening to them guys."

At Cincinnati, Johnson played alongside fellow freshman point guard Kenny Satterfield and senior forward Kenyon Martin, the national player of the year. The Bearcats were 28-2 and ranked number one in the polls until Martin broke his right leg early in a Conference USA tournament loss to Saint Louis. With Martin out, Cincinnati lost in the second round of the 2000 NCAA tournament. Johnson, who finished third on the team with 12.6 points per game, declared for the NBA draft soon after the season ended.

The Atlanta Hawks selected Johnson with the sixth selection in the first round and brought him along slowly. He averaged 16.8 minutes per game as a rookie and 24.0 minutes per game the next season. Johnson figured to see more opportunity in his third season, but that all changed on Friday, Sept. 13, 2002 when he lost control of the Mercedes he was driving and crashed into a tree.

Johnson said he broke four vertebrae in his neck and was nearly paralyzed; a Halo brace on his head held his neck and spine in place while he recovered. He attacked the rehabilitation program and recovered sufficiently to re-join the Hawks. Though he was eager to play again, and healthy enough to do so, he didn't appear in any games during that 2002-03 season. "They were scared," Johnson says now. "The team wasn't taking any chances with me out there. I was healthy. I felt great. I was cleared to play, but nobody really wanted to touch me at that point. It was an uphill battle."

The Hawks did not pick up Johnson's option following the season, leaving him as a free agent. After the Phoenix Suns cut him in training camp, he signed on in the American Basketball Association until the New York Knicks took a shot on him in February 2004. He finished the season with the Knicks and then spent the next three with the Denver Nuggets, where his playing time decreased each year. He hasn't appeared in the NBA since playing a total of 28 minutes in five regular season games with the San Antonio Spurs during the 2007-08 season. He did earn training camp invites from the Washington Wizards in 2008 and Minnesota Timberwolves in 2010, but neither stint lasted too long.

"I got a little upset with the NBA because I played good in a few training camps and still was let go," Johnson said. "I was like, 'Man, I'm just gonna stop playing.' I turned down a lot of money overseas sitting at home, waiting for a call from the NBA. A few years ago, I was just kind of like, 'Man, I'm done even trying to play in the NBA.'"

This was when Johnson's world traveling began. For the last several years, Johnson has competed for professional teams in China, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Colombia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. When he's back home in Bowie, Maryland, he runs in pickup games with local guys who played in college and the NBA. Last year, a few of his friends told him about The Basketball Tournament, an event that then offered the winning team $1 million. Joe Connelly, a former Washington Wizards assistant, convinced Johnson to join "City of Gods," a team Connelly coached whose roster included Sweetney, former Maryland forward and Spurs draft pick James Gist, and the former George Washington star and NBA forward Pops Mensah-Bonsu. The squad advanced to the semifinals before losing to "Overseas Elite," the eventual champion.

Johnson, who injured his ankle the day before last year's semifinal game, is back with "City of Gods" this summer and has been its top player. The team, which only had seven players for much of the tournament, won their Sweet 16 matchup last Thursday against "FOE," which featured former Kansas guard Tyshawn Taylor and former Villanova guard Maalik Wayns; Johnson's efficient 13 point, five rebound effort was integral in his team's win, but also his least eye-popping statline of the tournament. With the team's roster now filled out to ten players, Johnson hasn't had to log the sort of heavy minutes he did early in the tournament, but he helped key City of Gods' wins last weekend. Johnson and his team will get a rematch with Overseas Elite in the TBT semifinals at Fordham University in the Bronx, on Saturday July 30. So far, Johnson has averaged 19.3 points and 5.8 rebounds, shot 54 percent from the floor and a scalding 48 percent on three-pointers.

"For the life of me, I don't understand why if an NBA team won't give him a look, why top-level Europeans don't consider him," Connelly said. "He's a very, very mild-mannered guy, very astute, fundamentally sound. He just has a good knowledge of the game. And at 6-9, he can shoot it, can post smaller guys in the post, can catch it off the elbow and create for others. I still think, especially in reference to some of these guys that you see that are still playing in the NBA at a high level, he still should be someone that's worldwide considered an elite player."

Johnson is also preparing for his long-term future. For the past year or so, he has begun speaking with friends such as Cleveland Cavaliers coach Ty Lue about opportunities beyond playing. He also has picked the brain of Connelly, whose brother, Tim, is the Denver Nuggets general manager and whose brother, Pat, is the Phoenix Suns assistant general manager.

Last month, Johnson participated in a program for aspiring coaches run by the National Basketball Players Association, the union for NBA players. He attended an NBPA leadership development program last week in Las Vegas, as well, to learn more about front office roles and what it takes to succeed in management. When a sufficiently good opportunity arises, Johnson intends to take it. Until then, there's always work somewhere in the world for a player with his skills. "If I can get a job somewhere, I'll stop playing," Johnson says. "If not, I'll continue to play."

Things have changed for Johnson since he first drew national attention 20 years ago. Malone, his friend and former AAU coach, was sentenced to 100 months in prison in May 2014 after pleading guilty to distributing cocaine and heroin. The two still communicate on a regular basis. Johnson is also in contact with Huggins (his college coach) and Good (his high school coach), although he hasn't spoken with Vaccaro in several years.

Those men were instrumental in marketing and developing Johnson as a teenager. Today, as a grown man, he's as competitive as ever. If "City of Gods" wins The Basketball Tournament, Johnson will earn $125,714, representing his share of the $2 million prize. It might not be an NBA payday, but it would validate Johnson as someone whose best days aren't too far behind him just yet.

"I still play against young NBA guys and I kill 'em," Johnson said. "I look at guys on TV, guys getting paid all this money, that I'm better than even now. That part's tough. But I'm still playing. I'm healthy. I could've not been walking at this point. I'm blessed either way."

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