BALTIMORE BULLET GUS JOHNSON--HONEYCOMB
Gus Johnson (December 13, 1938 – April 29, 1987) was a 6 ft 6 in, 235-pound forward–center who spent nine seasons with the Baltimore Bullets, and his final season was split between the Phoenix Suns and the Indiana Pacers of the ABA.
One of the first forwards to frequently play above the rim, Johnson combined an unusual blend of strength, jumping ability, and speed; he was one of the first dunk shot artists in the NBA. His nickname "Honeycomb" was given to him by his college coach. He had a gold star drilled into one of his front teeth and shattered three backboards during his career.
As a member of the Baltimore Bullets, Johnson was voted to the All-Rookie Team for 1963–64. He played in five NBA All-Star Games, was named to four All-NBA Second Teams, and was twice named to the All-NBA Defense First Team. His No. 25 jersey was retired by the Baltimore Bullets franchise. With the Pacers, he was a member of the 1973 ABA championship team.
Johnson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.
Johnson got a somewhat late start as an NBA player, as he turned age 25 in December of his rookie season. He was selected tenth overall in the 1963 NBA draft, taken in the second round by the Chicago Zephyrs, who were in the process of moving to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Bullets for the 1963–64 season. Johnson was an immediate starter and averaged 17.3 points and 13.6 rebounds per game. Johnson finished as the runner-up for the Rookie of the Year honors to Jerry Lucas of the Cincinnati Royals; Lucas went on to a hall of fame career with the Royals and New York Knicks. Lucas and Johnson had faced off against each other during high school in Ohio, and when the NBA All-Rookie Team was selected, Lucas, Johnson, and his former high school teammate Nate Thurmond were the top three stars of the team.
During their college years, Johnson and Thurmond had been overshadowed by Lucas, who drew recognition from the press as a star with the national champion Ohio State and the U.S. Olympic basketball team (1964). However, being considered just second-best in comparison with Lucas during college was a powerful motivating factor for Johnson when they both moved on to the NBA.
Johnson was both an outstanding inside scorer and an exciting open-court player for the Bullets, from the start. During his early years with the Bullets, an expansion team, regularly finished in last place not only in the Eastern Division, but in the entire NBA. However, with good first and second-round draft choices every year, the Bullets gradually grew to be a better team, adding these players – who all made the NBA All-Rookie Team: Johnson, Rod Thorn, Wali Jones, Jack Marin, Earl Monroe, and finally, the keystone of a championship team,Wes Unseld, who became both the Rookie-of-the-Year and the NBA Most Valuable Player for 1968–69. Gus Johnson was also a key player for the Bullets, who won the NBA Eastern Division for their very first time in 1969.
Johnson was among the most effective two-way players of his time. His scoring moves around the basket were comparable to those of his peers Elgin Baylor and Connie Hawkins. Yet, however effective as Johnson was a post-up player, with his medium-range jump shot, and on the fast break, he was even more effective as a very sticky defender and a rugged rebounder throughout his time in the NBA. Indeed, he was one of the select few players who was quick enough to be paired against backcourt great Oscar Robertson, yet strong enough to hold his own against the taller forwards of the NBA in the front line.
Despite some nagging problems with his knees, Johnson was a member of the NBA All-Star Team five times. During his NBA career, Johnson averaged 17.1 points and 12.7 rebounds per game. He also scored 25 points in 25 minutes in the 1965 NBA All-Star Game.
Gus Johnson had his best years with the Bullets in 1968–71, including the watershed basketball year of 1968–69. While the Bullets improved, Johnson received more recognition from the press and the spectators for his outstanding play at forward. He was voted onto the All-NBA second-team during this time span. During the 1968–69 season, the Bullets achieved their best regular-season record, but were quickly swept out of the playoffs by the Knicks, largely because Johnson was sidelined during the playoff series with an injury.
After fading to third place in the Eastern Division in 1969–70, Johnson and the Bullets upset the regular-season champion New York Knicks four games to three in the 1971 playoffs, and advanced to the NBA Finals. But injuries had decimated the team, and the Bullets were swept in four straight by the Milwaukee Bucks, led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robertson, and Bobby Dandridge.
Injuries kept Johnson on the bench for most of 1971–72, his last with the team. The next season, the Bullets traded for Elvin Hayes and drafted Kevin Porter, making Johnson expendable. Johnson was traded to the Phoenix Suns following the season in April, but played in only 21 games before being released on December 1, 1972. The Indiana Pacers, then of the ABA, picked him up and he became a steadying veteran influence on the team, which went on to win the 1973 ABA championship.
Injuries limited Johnson's pro basketball career to 10 seasons, and this no doubt prevented post-career honors such as inclusion on the NBA 50 Greatest Players Ever list, and a delayed induction into the Hall of Fame. His induction in 2010 came 37 years after his final game and 23 years following his death from inoperable brain cancer.
Earl Monroe had said of Gus Johnson – "Gus was ahead of his time, flying through the air for slam dunks, breaking backboards and throwing full-court passes behind his back. He was spectacular, but he also did the nitty gritty jobs, defense and rebounding. With all the guys in the Hall of Game, Gus deserves to be there already."
"I first saw Gus on television...I had never seen a player dominate a game so. Gus was the Dr. J of his time and anyone that ever had the privilege to see him play will never forget what a great basketball player Gus Johson was," said Bullets owner Abe Pollin
THE NAIL--While Johnson was at Idaho in 1962–63, he earned a reputation as a leaper of the highest order. On one evening at the "Corner Club", a tavern on north Main Street in Moscow, Johnson was challenged by its owner, Herm Goetz (1925–93), to demonstrate his outstanding jumping ability to the assembled patrons. The "Corner Club" was a modest establishment with minimal furnishings, converted to a bar in 1948 from a small white stucco chapel with hardwood floors and substantial beams on its ceiling. From a standing start near the front bar, Johnson leapt to touch a spot on a beam 11 ft 6 in (3.51 m) above the floor level. The spot on the beam was marked with a ceremonial nail by Goetz, who next proclaimed that anyone who could duplicate that leap could drink for free, something that he knew was highly improbable. A 40-inch (1 m) diameter circle was painted on the floor below that beam, and any potential duplicator of the leap had to have both feet on the floor, within this circle, to ensure a standing start. Twenty-three years elapsed, with a considerable number attempts to touch Johnson's Nail, including some by the 6 ft 11 in (2.11 m) UCLA All-American Bill Walton during the summer of 1984. But not even Walton, then a pro at age 31, could touch that high up ("...too much pizza and beer tonight.."). (Source--Wikipedia)
REMEMBERING HONEYCOMB
The Matchup
VIA: [“A Classic Rivalry,” by Elliot Kalb – NBA.com]
“The Classic Confrontation. Man against man. Will against will. Body against body … Gus was brittle, sometimes erratic, sometimes showboat but always a player the Knicks had to stop to win. He was only 6-foot-5, but played taller … Gus was to be bothered by bad knees through his entire career, but that only made his performances against Dave DeBusschere all the more magnificent. People came to see the Knicks play the Bullets, and left talking about the mini-war between DeBusschere and Johnson. When Johnson and DeBusschere got together under the boards, it was like rubbing two huge trees together and setting a fire … DeBusschere’s pride was hurt (in the 1970 playoff series) when Johnson erupted for 15 points in the third quarter and 31 for the sixth game.
“They battled (in the seventh game) and DeBusschere hit 12 baskets and scored 28 points. … Gus came to the Garden for the first game of the 1969 opening series but he couldn’t play. He was a cripple with fluid on his left knee, which needed injections, and a damaged right knee that needed surgery … He was 32 and suffering. A few days earlier, he had helped Baltimore qualify to play the Knicks by scoring 19 points, grabbing 17 rebounds, and getting eight assists against the 76ers. … In three playoff series (versus New York), Johnson wound up with a 9-10 won and lost record against DeBusschere, by discounting Game 1 of the 1970 series he missed.”
Albert, too, said the DeBusschere-Johnson battles were ‘like a heavyweight championship fight.’
DeBusschere made the Hall of Fame in 1983, 20 years before his death at the age of 63. But Johnson never made the Hall. He died in the spring of 1987 at the age of 51. ‘I felt as though Gus was one of the best defensive players ever to play the game,’ Earl Monroe said. ‘He not only played strong forward — but he played the centers, the small forwards, and he played the guards, as well. As a teammate, he and Wes used to bet who would get the most rebounds. He was competitive even with his teammates. And strong — I remember he shattered a backboard in Milwaukee, and we had to wait 90 minutes to get a new backboard to finish the game.'”
The Dream; The Skills
VIA: [“Gus Johnson: First in Flight,” – JockBio.com]
“Gus’s dream was to join the Harlem Globetrotters. At the time, they were the highest-paying outfit a black player could find. The NBA was still struggling—and still unwelcoming to African-American players. To hone his skills, Gus would practice no-look and behind-the-back passes for hours, hitting spots he’d chalked out on a wall. He was accurate from 25 feet away. On his first basketball card, Gus asked that he be pictured throwing one of his patented passes.
Much of the order in Gus’s life came from sports. He was the star linebacker for Akron Central-Hower High School until he fractured his knee cap. The guys called him ‘Bloody Gus.’
Gus had honed other skills as well. He was an accomplished pool hustler, and a familiar face to most of the bartenders in Akron. He never got into any serious trouble, but he relished living on the edge. … Gus earned All-Ohio honors for his work on the basketball court. Each the spring after basketball season was over, he competed for the track team. He ran the 440, participated in the high jump, and was the team’s star shot-putter. It was this combination of strength, speed and hops that made him a game-changing player on the hardwood. …
Gus worked for Cuyahoga County and played on an AAU team until 1961. As he put it, ‘I didn’t like work, and work didn’t like me.’ He returned to the poolrooms, thinking he might eke out a living as a shark.”
Tribute to Gus "Honeycomb" Johnson
With Game “So Sweet”
VIA: [“A Touch And A Tooth of Gold,” by Mark Kram – Sports Illustrated (1964)]
“Gus Johnson comes across like a high note on a clarinet screaming in an empty hall. He has a gold star perfectly carved in the center of one long front tooth, wears $85 shoes, Continental suits and a tiny hat that sits cocked on the back of his large head. He is at once, in appearance and manner, the kingfish at a fish fry and a little boy on his knees—scared and wild-eyed—watching dice roll in an alley back home in Akron. At the wheel of his new and purple Bonneville convertible, sartorially precise, his gold star glittering against the sunlight and the car radio moaning ‘This is my heart, this is my baby,’ he seems far removed from what he so easily might have been—a member in good standing of the subterranean world of sporadic, aimless labor and even more aimless delinquency.
With the help of Samson, the people of Moscow, Idaho and a talent goaded by a monumental pride and ego, Johnson has become a professional basketball player for the Baltimore Bullets. But to say that he is just a player is to say that Charlie Parker was just a saxophone player. Johnson—6 feet 6 inches and meaner than hell, as the lyrics go in one of the many songs he sings of himself—is one of the most electric and multitalented young players ever to appear in the National Basketball Association. Johnson agrees with this description, and he has company. Cincinnati Coach Jack McMahon calls him the best second-draft choice he has ever seen, St. Louis Owner Ben Kerner just shakes his head at the prospect of Johnson becoming better and opposing players are lavish in their praise of him. ‘He has Elgin Baylor’s equipment, only he jumps better,’ says Wayne Embry of the Royals. Says San Francisco’s Nate Thurmond: ‘Johnson is the best all-round forward in the league. Bar none. A couple of more inches in height and he would be unstoppable.'”
Elevating the Game
VIA: [“Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball,” book by Nelson George (1992)]
“Until [Earl] Monroe’s arrival, the Bullets had suffered through a brief, yet awful history. …Yet within two years the Bullets were NBA terrors. Their top pick was 1968 Wes Unseld, who at 6’7”, 245 pounds played the middle like a shorter, wider [Bill] Russell. In fact, as a fast-break outlet passer Unseld had few peers. At his side was Gus Johnson, a 6’6”, 234-pound tower of strength. Today Johnson is best known for shattering backboards with resounding slam dunks. But Johnson was more than Darryl Dawkins’s godfather. As Monroe Testifies, ‘Gus Johnson created the new power forward position, where the guy comes in and jams way over guys. He placed his hands on your hip and moved you around the court. When the guards got out of hand he knocked down guards, forwards, and he played the centers, too.'”
The Team Player; The Departure
VIA: [“A Lesson in Mortality,” by Frank Deford – Sports Illustrated (1987)]
“Like a lot of us who arrived late in the Depression, Johnson played a good transition game with life. On the one hand, he was a throwback. He never took care of himself and, as a result, was often injured. He also didn’t have agents to prevent him from spending all his money on the pursuit of good-looking women. But more than anyone else he was the prototype for the basketball player who strides the courts today. He jumped to the stars and, with a sweeping, tomahawk dunk, periodically obliterated backboards.
Yet, as flamboyant as he was, the simple community values of the team were never beneath him. ‘Gus is still the best defensive forward I ever saw play this game,’ says Chicago Bulls general manager Jerry Krause, who, as a scout and rookie p.r. man, sometimes roomed with Johnson that first season in Baltimore.’ …
But let’s not be superior—the excesses of the good life didn’t do him in. Stupid old brain cancer decked Johnson.
The odds in life—fate—are dished out in lightning strikes and automobile accidents. The fragility of life can be ironic. It seems impossible that a body so magic, so potent, so unconquerable could have been cut down by something merely fickle within it. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m going to be O.K.,’ Johnson reassured friends in the weeks before he died. ‘I’ve made my peace.'”