[When Vinnie Johnson came of the Detroit Piston bench, it was like waiting for a cluster of firecrackers to go off. He would pop, pop, pop, and usually score, score, score. Special player, and a special memory from Detroit’s Bad Boy era. But rather than me wax on, let’s turn over the floor to Dave Dye of the Detroit News. In his article, published in the April 1986 issue of Basketball News, Dye tells it like it was when the seven-year-pro Johnson . . .“The Microwave”. . . heated up in the 1980s NBA. His lead paragraph says it all.]
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At times on the basketball court, it is Vinnie Johnson’s world and everyone else is only a participant. He can make nine talented athletes disappear at once—including the all-star trio of Larry Bird, Julius Erving, and Isiah Thomas.
And no matter what anyone does to compensate, once he gets started, only Johnson’s own actions determine when the show ends. “He’s an offense by himself,” Thomas said. “When he gets going like that, we just give him the ball and start watching like everybody else in the place. It’s demoralizing for the other team. There’s nothing they can do.”
Said Pistons teammate Joe Dumars: “I sit back and become a fan just like the rest. He’s unreal. He becomes unconscious. You start wondering what he could possibly do next.”
Indeed, when Johnson gets on a roll, he becomes the occasion, an enrapturing baseline-to-baseline solo. All eyes are focused on the stocky, 6-foot-2 guard from the playgrounds of Brooklyn, as suddenly no one seems to care whether Isiah’s smile glows or not. Just let Vinnie keep shooting. Please.
“It’s fascinating for everybody in the whole building,” said Pistons coach Chuck Daly. “He’s unstoppable. But it can act as a double-edge sword for us, too. Everybody stands around and admires Vinnie. It’s tough not to respond that way. It sort of takes everybody out of the offense. But when he’s hot, you still got to ride him. We’ve been doing that more this season.”
Johnson, underpublicized throughout most of his career, began to establish himself as a force during last season’s playoffs. In Game 4 against Boston, V.J. electrified a Joe Louis Arena crowd, scoring 22 of the Pistons’ fourth-quarter points in a come-from-behind victory.
Afterward, unfamiliar with popularity, Johnson, who had scored a career-high 34, needed to be coaxed into doing a national television interview by a Pistons official. “Oh, let Isiah do it,” said Johnson, truly unaware of his accomplishments.
The next game, V.J. scored 30 points, including 16 in the second quarter, prompting referee Jake O’Donnell to walk over to the scorer’s bench at halftime and inquire, “Did he miss yet?”
Those two events have changed the course of Johnson’s career. Once afraid he might shoot too much, Johnson gained immeasurable confidence from those clutch performances. It has continued to be very evident all this season.
“I don’t mean this in a bad way, but he’s become more selfish,” Thomas said. “Before, he was afraid to shoot after he made three in a row. Now he’s looking for four, five, and six in a row. That’s what we want. If he’s shooting like that, and I have the ball, I’m looking for Vinnie.”
Johnson began the year as the starter opposite Thomas, but lost the job when he suffered a cut requiring eight stitches on his right middle finger, sidelining him three games in the second week of the season. When he returned, Johnson struggled for five games, shooting at a .326 percentage.
He came to life in Philadelphia, scoring 18 points in the second quarter en route to a slump-breaking 25-point performance. Two games later, he struck the Celtics for 14 in the second period and a career-high 35-point effort, which resulted in a new nickname. “If that guy in Chicago [football player William Perry] is called Refrigerator, then Vinnie is Microwave,” said Celtic Danny Ainge. “He really heated it up in a hurry.”
Boston’s Robert Parish said: “V.J. is unreal. I thought I was in the playoffs again. Nobody really can contain him.”
Johnson has done so well since returning to his sixth-man role, Daly has refrained from returning him to the starting lineup. “We need that instant offense off the bench,” Daly said. “I think he gets more opportunities to score with the second unit than he did as a starter.”
When V.J. scores, he does it from defying positions, his body often off-center and wiggling in an attempt to confuse the defender. It matters not that his head drops to the floor or the shot is released from his hip pocket. They fall, sometimes incredibly.
All of this “shake-and-bake” basketball is how he picked it up back in Brooklyn, where he would ride his bicycle from game to game, leaving in the morning and not returning until dark. Basketball was all he knew, a perfect way to avoid the dangers of the street that ended up taking down many of his friends, some who were considered better players than he was.
“We went around and played all the best competition in the city,” Johnson said. “There would be guys running through the park carrying guns every day. We just kept playing our games, and they were all battles.
“There was no such thing as an uncontested layup. You’d get tossed to the cement. You had to learn how to take the shot and get fouled because you’d never get away with calling fouls all the time on the playground. They’d never let you do that. You just had to learn how to take your hits.
“And you also learned how to somehow get the shot, because if you passed it, you might not see it again. It taught you the way to score, even if you weren’t open. I think that really has helped me. I always had to work hard because the talent was so good there. That’s carried over.”
Out of high school, Johnson attended McLennon Junior College in Waco, Texas, for two seasons. His grades weren’t good enough for a four-year school, plus there were many who questioned his potential. “They all said I was too small for the big guard and not quick enough to play the point,” Johnson said. “I’ve just used that as more motivation along the way.”
Before his junior season, Johnson transferred to Baylor, a Southwest Conference school. But soon thereafter, his mother Angelina, died of a heart attack. “That messed me up,” Johnson said. “That’s the one thing I really regret now as a player. I knew I was getting close to where I’d be making some good money, and I promised her a new home and some trips.
“When I was growing up, we always had food and a place to sleep, but she never got to do anything else. Every time she had some extra money, she’d buy one of us a coat or give me the money to play in another basketball tournament. She really was supportive of my playing ball.”
After her death, Johnson said he seriously contemplated quitting school and staying home to help his four brothers and three sisters—five of whom are younger. His family finally made him change his mind. “I realized what my mother really wanted was for me to play basketball,” Johnson said. “I had to go back and make sure all she had done for me wasn’t just a waste.”
In his senior years, he led the league in scoring (25.2 ppg) and became the seventh pick overall when Seattle chose him in the 1979 draft. One problem: The Sonics were defending world champions and already had three established guards: Gus Williams, Dennis Johnson, and Fred Brown. Thus, V.J. played just 38 games his rookie year. “I feel like that put my career behind,” Johnson said. “I felt was ready to play, but they wanted to bring me along slowly.”
He started 63 games next season when Williams missed the whole year in a contract holdout. But at the beginning of the 1981-82 season, Johnson was back to a limited role. He requested a trade, and two weeks later was dealt to the Pistons for Greg Kelser.
His first experiences in Detroit weren’t much better. Johnson and then-coach Scotty Robertson didn’t get along. Robertson, who openly talked of trading him at one time, often criticized Johnson for being overweight.
But on a Sunday afternoon last May, everything came together for Johnson. “It’s amazing how many people still remember that game,” said V.J., who is probably in the best shape of his NBA career. “I’ve had a lot more people approach me since then, some of them saying it was the greatest game they’ve ever seen. It opened a lot of eyes, I guess.
“I haven’t gotten much publicity in the past, but that’s fine. We’ve got a lot of stars here, guys like Isiah. But it seems like my time is going to come. The picture is starting to come into better focus now. I feel like I’m at the top of my game. I don’t think anybody can stop me right now. I’m just in that kind of rhythm. I’ve never felt like this in a season in my whole pro career.”
At age 29, he is only getting better.
From Way Downtown 