From Moon Township, PA to Brooklyn: Cam Johnson’s NBA Journey | Brooklyn Nets

The story of Cam Johnson’s rise from under-the-radar prospect to NBA starter and how he strives to inspire the next generation.

From Moon Township to Brooklyn presented by Qatar Airways

[Applause] fast ball or strike it’s only one of one of the two what do you think should I go for it you got to throw the or just don’t embarrass myself ladies and gentlemen here with an aary pitch would you please welcome one of our own he’s a graduate of Lady of

Sacred Heart in coropolis he’s a current member of the Brooklyn Nets let’s welcome home K Johnson Johnson my whole thing my whole career has just been build Johnson a big1 day continue to grow start at solid and add more and more into the game cam never doubted his Future No Matter What You Keep keep pushing through driving right going to the rim and a slam with the right

Hand every day is a wonderful opportunity to continue to get better play hard and make the city [Applause] Proud Pittsburgh I’m from the suburbs Moon Township Pennsylvania where the airport is um it’s a bluecollar city hardworking City good people and people care about one another Pittsburgh is a sports city and unfortunately basketball doesn’t come first here football is King in Western PA had some great players here you know

Steelers players from pit it’s a football town for sure at the top hockey is Big Two Stanley Cups in my years in Pittsburgh and then baseball if the Pirates win we you know we love them you didn’t even mention basketball so basketball basketball fits in towards

The bottom of that it just is not as you know there’s no professional basketball team we don’t have the strongest representation in the NBA so there there’s not like a strong NBA culture but I think the basketball culture in Pittsburgh is growing my parents both played basketball mom played every sport

Imaginable she loved every sport and so we all came out with the ball in our hands nobody ever had to put one in mine I kind of just came up just always wanting to play I Remember When Cameron was born I told a really good friend of mine

You know I think this is the one I I just felt it and then when he was first able to set up I got him a basketball hoop he literally picked the ball up and ducked it through the hoop I was like all right I think we have something

Here cam always just was a a simple kid a competitor just the one thing you knew he was going to be a successful I got him in a little league when he was four years old playing against seven eighty olds he’s leading scor in the league at four and he would

Like he was serious like he was had this look on his face and one kid came up to cam and said man you’re really good you might make it to the NBA cam got in the car really really mad and then I said bud what’s wrong he

Says Dad some kid came up to me and said I might make it the NBA what does he mean M make it the NBA I’m going to be in the NBA okay was a student of the game he was one of my most skilled players I

Used to tell him he’s the best player in the gym he was like a coach on the floor at 8 Gil and I go back to the 80s I was at pit and then two years into me being there Gil got recruited Stokes there Porter hangs and Dam wow what a play by Dell Porter but he had to complain about great pass gilber Johnson Gil was from

South Carolina and he used to explain some of the challenges that he had growing up and I was thinking I thought I had it bad ha but I guess you know it depends on where you’re at my mother was a single mother she raised six children

When I left the house I had to be dressed a certain way I couldn’t have stripes and plaid I cannot have an earring I canot have a tattoo know made me realize that hey you got to go get it nobody’s giving you anything I pet my experience was great

Great a lot of great friends I mean my teammates are my brother still the rail was always the blue guy and we’ve been Brothers since day one since I got here Matthews that’s with for the I could say I’m from Pittsburgh dap is Pittsburgh when people hear derell

Porter or we all call him dap when they hear that name that’s Pittsburgh basketball dap is one of the players that made it lived in Pittsburgh gives back to the city coached in the city like DPP is Pittsburgh basketball through and through after we played and had children

Gil wanted to get into the eight and under second grade National Championship a tournament and I’m like we don’t have one second grade team here how how do we get in like well you got to win this uh qualifier to get in I was like but we

Don’t have a team he said well I guess we’re in let’s just right that we won see derell and I the only thing I knew the only way that I knew how to coach was the way I was coached in college we put on a show we coached those kids like they

Were in college when they were 8 n years old and they responded there was a game we won and I believe the score was probably like 32 to 10 and the the parent section my mom and some of the other moms said they had the funniest

Visual because here was a team that just won 30 to 10 and you know they’re 8 years old and and my dad and derell they were going after us you got to do this you got to do that you got to be better with this you got to be better with that

Like they were hard on us they pushed us they they they saw big things in us and they pushed us for them and before you know it we beat everybody we beat Kentucky we beat Indiana we beat Maryland we beat Memphis and then we walked out of there with the national

Championship I don’t know if it was derell or if it was Gil Johnson that called me it was kind of this cool story here you know that’s something that doesn’t happen very often Pittsburgh team’s doing well in the National stage and then it was young kids who were the

Sons of former pit players and so I remember writing a story about them and and you know I didn’t really interview the kids I interviewed more their dads who were the coaches but remember you know kind of putting that in my mind is like hey keep an eye on these kids

Because if they’re doing this well at this age they’re going to be on the high school scene here in five or six [Applause] [Applause] Years let’s see what you got Puff Alex and Dad hi dadp I know my dad he always said this is his quote it was to whom much is given much as expected and that was kind of what we lived by so he said you have been given a talent uh by God and you have been given

Resources by us by them my parents and so he is going to expect a lot to get in shape to work on that explosion would start down there and Sprint up the hill and time them we would time them then we would do steps you know stairs you know quick

Feet so they were we did a lot of work here you know you kind of forget what what all we did but every day they put in a lot of work I have three brothers Aaron puff and brilin the one thing about us is we are not age spaced appropriately for

Competition the older one always had the advantage so we always had an interesting time mixing up teams we’d have three on three games it’s not necessarily a court it’s just the driveway with the hoop but the one thing you could always count on was dad was going to try to cheat

Somehow he was going to try to cheat somehow he wasn’t going out losing those were really really really tough games but we never played to a number we never had like well stop at 20 no no we play till I felt like my team was going to win and then sometime I wasn’t

Successful 10 one puff we love to compete as a family and there’s no such thing as a calm fun relaxing game of anything everything that we do gets to like Cutthroat competition and you know it’s just how we are it’s the cheat code you know the the

Younger brother gets to play against the older brother he always got the opportunity to play up so he doesn’t have to go to the gym he can go in his backyard and compete I started playing up when I was really really young rarely ever play

With my age group but there came a point where everybody else was maturing going through puberty developing and I just remain this little pipsqueak right that really chall challenged me because you know I wasn’t able to get in the lane and score quite as much definitely was

Not able to come away with as many rebounds as I probably would have liked to um so what did I do I decided I’m going to shoot a lot of Threes And so I started working on shooting shooting shooting shooting cam could shoot and I’m talking about shoot the lights out at the time he always played up but you you can never get Cam out the way way because he had a skill set that other kidss didn’t have it taught me how

To overcome physical deficiencies and height and strength and speed and figure out how to contribute no matter what team you’re on no matter what environment you’re in and in that I I kind of developed a a mentality where I figured I could play with [Applause] anybody cam was making plays but wasn’t

Strong enough to finish them he was making the correct play but couldn’t finish it at one point in high school his grade we had uh four or five definite division one players and then he wasn’t considered one of those guys knew I was a good player I just took a

Little bit longer to mature so 9th 10th 11th grade I wasn’t necessarily huge on my radar like recruitment I’d get letters from small D1 small d1s not really any phone calls but I get a lot of letters he was a 6263 point guard and so you know we’d heard about him but you

Know it was kind of like oh well we’ll see you know we’ll see what this kid does you know as a sophomore junior and then all of a sudden he was the talk of of Western Pennsylvania because he had this growth spurt and grew like 6

In and then 11th grade comes and I’m getting phone calls from like d3s and d2s and stuff and they’re calling me and I remember like it was a feeling of when accomplishment because okay I’m being recognized you know it don’t matter who it is but I kind of just took that

Momentum and kind of continued to build on it build on it so by the middle of my junior year I got my first division one offer and I remember at that point you know you’re you’re starting to feel pretty good you’re like okay like I can

Do this this is who I am this is what I want to do false steam ahead so that’s kind of how pit entered the fold from what I understand Jamie Dixon had caught wind that other people were interested and so I I think jimie was on

His way on a recruiting trip and stopped on his way to the airport to see like an open gym and he says I know you’re hearing stories that we don’t have a scholarships but I’m prepared to offer him a scholarship he said but I want to

See him I want to see him live for myself he said I want to see him tomorrow I said coach tomorrow is Easter Sunday right Gil calls me hey Jamie Dixon’s coming and pass that Gil is like basically I want to show him prove to him that my son is

Good enough so Easter Sunday I got a bunch of my boys and a bunch of people that I knew to show up to our high school while the pck coaches watched and Coach Dixon is a basketball support and Jamie looked and Jamie said kill I see it he kept shaking his head

He said I see it cam is the type of player and the type of person that’s going to put more pressure on himself than anyone else and I think he knew going to pit was going to be super difficult because of the expectation that was put on him and

Because he was not quote unquote a top recruit I think it was even more pressure obviously my dad played there derell played there and I had tons of ties to the program so it felt for familiar but when I signed a pit it was like a there was a Vibe where there were

A couple people out there that was like oh he’ll be a good practice player for five four or five years he might be able to play come you know four years from now play a little bit cam might be a you know ready by his junior senior

Year a lot of doubts everybody thought that he was uh to help the team’s GPA as he on academic scholarship I think the vibe was I was not the caliber I was a couple conferences levels down I think it was a little bit of a surprise was

Kind of like wow they’re taking a flyer like cam was a late bloomer and he was a guy who got late attention and so I don’t think people really knew his reputation when Ben howand came to pit one of the things he did was realize if

He wants to win in the Big East he has to be able to beat Connecticut so he started recruiting New York players and they played hard and they played tough pit players for a very long time were just straight bunch of just dudes tough they were going to beat you up it was

Going to be a physical game they’re going to put their hands on you and you’d have to deal with that for 40 minutes those early pit days it was very hard it pushed me and made me work for it coach Dixon was tough on all of our

Guys especially when they first came in because we wanted to establish our culture and exactly what it it is that we were trying to put forth on the floor man I learned so much in terms of just competing and and just how tough how tough it could be cuz every day I

Sat in my locker before those practices just trying to PP myself up you know you can you can compete today you can compete today and that’s just what I tried to do Pit was was loud they were physical and they were going to back up everything that they said they were

Going to do where Cam wasn’t going to tell you what he was going to do he was just going to do it Cameron Johnson having a huge first NBA camon johnon Cameron Johnson a big 31 a day with I’m saying he wasn’t a pit type of player like cam could literally play

Anywhere in America and he showed that it’s 10 turnover for the orange and Johnson puts it away everybody wants to be able to say I told you so and he’s an easy target you know what I mean good kid good family good grades clean cut

Nah he’s not gonna make it no not him he’s not he he’s not going to be able to compete with these other guys if you’re not paying attention that’s what you would think because he’s not screaming in your face he’s not going to beat on his chest but if you’re paying attention

He’s the same guy that’s going to step in there and take a charge he’s the same guy that’s going to go in there compete for every rebound same God that’s going to dive on the floor you know so they might say not tough enough but he’s going to make every tough basketball

Player to is Cam embody everything that we were trying to teach from um a competitive standpoint he was very smart he was a cerebral Player one thing I give the pit coaches so much credit for from day one is they never ever ever took it easy on me and they’d say we’re on your case because we believe in you we think you can be an NBA [Applause] player it was really really special to

Wear that pit uniform for a couple years I do think that pit kind of shaped him into the young man he is and the University of Pittsburgh I think is a big pivotal part of his career as much as we we’ve talked about there’s always been doubters his faith

In himself has never wavered he was a guy who was always willing to work on his weaknesses and always willing to try to take his game to another level and I think that his transferring to North Carolina was you know recognition of That there’s another level I can take this game to I seen College I knew what college was I seen College I had three years but I [Applause] graduated I wanted to play with the the right team and the right environment and I found that in North Carolina the competition in practice

Every day the competition in the summer against NBA players I think cam quickly realized that he could play on the same level as anybody I think pck kind of got him that grit and grind that he has now that he has the work that he got to see at Carolina

Like this is from the fruits of your labor what he did I P allowed Carolina to recruit to lead up to the draft teams have seen Cameron play for four years in eight games if they don’t know who he is by now they’re not going to I mean this is who he

Is and I said buddy don’t be surprised if you’re a lottery pick cuz he didn’t think so because he wasn’t called up to be in the room so Gil was like dab you coming out to the house I’m like yeah but I work kids out and I said I’m going

To be at the gym until 9:00 what if he get drafted before that I said if he get drafted before that that’s going to be the best day of your life a week before the draft I I wrote a couple stories and then you know they just kind of said oh yeah you

Know you should come out on draft night they have big big open living room and everybody was crowded around the television you can kind of feel the nervous energy like as as the first round was going on we didn’t know he was going to be a

Lottery pick for one we there was a lot of talk he was going to be a first-rounder but I believe it was kind of like 20 to 31 was the projection and then they said you know hey everybody be quiet let’s hear you know hear the

Announcement on TV with the 11th pick in the 20 2019 NBA draft the Minnesota Timberwolf select Cameron Johnson from the University of North Carolina I never made it then that was the best thing that could ever happen me not making it Cameron Johnson just went

11th how do you react to that news he went what 11th 11th yep wow bro I just knew like his longev um his skill set is rare anybody who who gets paid six and seven figures to evaluate talent is going to see that Talent so you put all those things

Together and not only do you keep your job when you pick this kid you get a promotion it feels like a premonition is coming true and I was so happy for him that he was rewarded even though he was looked at as an older player when he was

Drafted if y’all know C you don’t know how hard cam work and you know it’s a lot of people that doubt him but wow I’m just bro it’s such a that’s crazy bro just to see cam like the the kind of Underdog Story that he was and to see

How humble and how gracious he was in that moment you know it was there was no I told you I was going to do this there was no I prove you wrong it was more just a matter of like okay this is what we work so hard for and all the hard

Work is paid off it was real cool to do it surrounded by family in the same living room that I’ve watched 15 draft nights before in that moment you truly realize that so many people have looked out for me along the way have elevated my game

On the court off the court whatever it may be just made me a better person um so it’s just like you’re overwhelmed with gratitude just thankful thankful that you could be blessed enough to be in that position but yeah it was a really cool night [Applause]

When they brought in Monty and when cam got drafted the year before they had 19 wins they end up going up to 38 and they went undefeated in the bubble and I knew they had something special [Applause] There I think they had the best record in the league over those 3 years but it was because it was a college type atmosphere they actually had each other’s back they cared about each other when he got drafted we literally did everything together and it’s it’s crazy

Cuz we work out together we on a court together we’ll LIF we do all these things so like if you just look out on the court or something if I’m on the court he’s on the court and we’re going through the same drills we’re doing all the same

Workouts I think the base of it is understanding how much of a privilege it is to be in the NBA and then secondary to that is understanding what all goes into it there’s a community that cares about you and that watches what you do and it’s

Our job to perform on the court and to kind of make that City Home in a [Applause] way in a block Buster trade with the Nets the Phoenix Suns are acquiring Kevin Durant Phoenix sending male Bridges cam Johnson and four first round picks to Brooklyn we’re all into being you know a part of this organization and a part of this city and you know take the same things that you know we were known for around Phoenix and bring them here black team bringing a level of Joy to the game and elevating the culture

That they obviously have had here here for a long time I never want to limit any of our players you see them from a fire and you think goly it’s a heck of a player is he really that good then you get guys like Cam and M and you go they’re actually

Better they’re better than we thought Cam’s been a late bloomer probably his whole life he was a late bloomer in high school he goes to pit he’s a late bloomer at pit he ends up getting drafted high and he comes into a role in Phoenix where he doesn’t have to show

That he could do all these these things right away once he got traded to Brooklyn it was going to be an opportunity to see him play Johnson bottomless a three Johson has you just know if he’s open and he has that ball just put your hands up put the three

Symbol up cuz it’s going in and it’s development with the ball put on the floor it’s going to surprise you you can see he’s multi-dimensional he’s a player not a a position or a specialist he didn’t accept saying this is all I am I’m a shooter he kept saying you know

What I know I can do a little bit more I got to keep working on my skills I got to keep adding one little thing cim is going to embrace taking on you know some new roles and some new challenges I love that he’s adding more pieces to his game

I love seeing him you know dunk on people and have the finishes at The Rim that he does I love to see him play with some Swagger you know talk a little bit of trash here and there every level that I’ve been on I’ve improved over time

High school college and even so far in the NBA all those aspects have improved over the shoulder to Clon two head slam for Clon there’s a lot of doubters and there’s still a lot of doubters and I’ll tell you I I think I know why because he

Doesn’t beat his chest he doesn’t say look at me but in the inside he has a fire I still have steps to go I still have a lot of steps to go and I I feel like I’m chipping away at it every day just being a really well-rounded solid player

Johnson major cam slam Johnson stops hits every day is a wonderful opportunity to continue to get better and put my best forward and play hard and make the city [Applause] proud cam Johnson has resigned with the Nets and has agreed to be part of what Brookland is going to do going

Forward it’s a blessing to be in situation with the team that that cares about me cares about my teammates and cares about building something important we wanted to make sure we keep Cam and trying to recruit him the whole time he was here and sh this is what Brooklyn’s all

About bro I’m so happy for you be OD happy for you it’s a strange feeling when you accept the contract sign the contract yeah it’s like everything you work for you know what I mean like that getting drafted getting your first contract crazy feeling getting that second one is like everybody understands

That getting to that second contract is a huge part of the NBA mhm um but it was a strange feeling cuz it was like okay this is great like I’m not going to change the way I live yeah I’m not going to go buy something crazy I’m

Not going to start acting different like that’s and so I had to really think about it for a little bit like it’s a huge blessing bro if you asked them like look cam you had the opportunity to be the greatest player that ever played basketball but

You can never give a dime or any time to the community he would definitely turn it Down yeah he called he called me and told me he’s such a good person when he goes back to his roots and do the stuff that he likes he can fit in anywhere remember it’s all making a difference all the little things that sometimes when you make it big some of those guys

Don’t do it he does it he’s always given himself always always always sometime I have to pull him away no I did a few bikes I did a couple one MERS the same way he he doesn’t believe the naysayers is the same way he just won’t get caught

Up in the hype like cam is just a normal person he’s going to speak to you he he’s going to engage with you when you ask him a question he’s going to answer the question when he asks you a question he’s he’s waiting for an

Answer when I’m at home I I try to make myself available I try to take pictures and talk to people because I want people to understand kids to understand that growing up in Pitts you you can accomplish anything you can go anywhere you can be anything you can you know do

Anything you set your mind to I’m seeing more ownership and now that he has a new start now this is on my shoulders this is what I Wanted this route to the NBA it’s just something that I’m never going to take for granted and I think that shows itself in his heart to give back and to be a part of Pittsburgh we know that the city loves him and he loves the city not just think

Cam is such a well-rounded and grounded young man that the sky the limit for what he can add to Pittsburgh off the floor Moon Moon sound and I’m cam nice to meet you manjoy the game he has Pittsburgh Pride it was really gratifying to show hey a

Local kid came back and I’m in the NBA and you know what you can make it or you can make it it might not be the NBA but it could be getting your MBA whatever your uh your calling is he loves and he represents his City more than any kid that I Know I think it is on me to help whoever is coming up next because maybe not everybody has the parents and the opport that I had and sometimes all these kids need is opportunity what’s up ly if there is a legacy to be had I want

It to be giving other kids a chance giving other kids an opportunity and just helping to [Applause] Grow