Pau Gasol holds the ball at the elbow, waiting for the play to develop. On the other side of the floor, Doug McDermott curls off a Derrick Rose screen and into the paint. Gasol hits McDermott on the move, but shot is off. The ball rolls off the rim, and there’s Joe Johnson corralling the rebound, turning and burning down the floor, stopping only to…
Wait.
Joe Johnson?
If you’re at all familiar with the exploits of Johnson, you’re probably aware that he and his teams had something of a reputation for playing a slower, more methodical brand of basketball. And, with not one of those Atlanta or Brooklyn teams over ten and a half seasons ever finishing above the league average in pace, you can’t exactly say the reputation was underserved. Johnson’s teams have averaged 92.16 possessions per game since joining the Hawks in 2005-06.
Against Chicago on Tuesday, the HEAT played at an estimated pace of 103 possessions. That’s a number Johnson’s teams reached in less than five percent of over 800 games.
But for the man they, and we, called Iso-Joe – as in isolation plays – perhaps that reputation failed to look at the full context of his career. Maybe that nickname doesn’t inform the future and is best left in the past.
After all, he was part of starting the pace-and-space revolution in his one season with the Steve Nash-led Phoenix Suns. And now, reputation be damned, Johnson is joining a Miami HEAT team in the middle of its own speed renaissance.
“It just kind of what it is,” Johnson said of his reputation. “I’ve played in every system you can think of, but the last time I’ve played in an up-tempo system like this is probably back in my Phoenix days. In Atlanta we ran a little bit, but in Brooklyn we were pretty much a slowdown, grind game.
“It’s just two different offensive paces. In Brooklyn we walked it up a bunch and played off our bigs. Here, once you get the rebound you push it.”
As in the aforementioned play, which finishes with Johnson deftly transitioning into a pick-and-roll as he protects the ball with his body until he has just the right angle. All well before the halfway mark of the shot clock.
Erik Spoelstra’s recent ultra-emphasis on Goran Dragic-led pace in the wake of Chris Bosh’s absence has been well-documented. The HEAT have gone from a walk-it-up, halfcourt styled offense to a team Spoelstra is regularly urging to go quicker and quicker, telling them, “You be you. Make them run with you.”
Before the All-Star break, the team was averaging about 94.67 possessions per game, second-to-last in the league. In the seven games since then, they’re up to 101.06. It’s a short sample, though backed up by a positive trend in the weeks leading up to All-Star, but if that six-possession gain holds through the rest of the season it would be the most dramatic in-season pace increase any team has had in the last decade.
And even if the team slows down a bit to, say, a four-possession increase, they would still be in rare company – largely among other teams that traded or suffered an injury to a starting big man.
If Johnson had somehow joined the team in December, he would have been fitting in with the chariot race from Ben-Hur. Now he’s in a Fast and Furious sequel. The ones with The Rock, for that matter.
To his credit, the recent change informed his decisions to sign with Miami.
“I did my research and my homework,” Johnson said. “Just talking to [Dwyane] Wade and those guys, they were telling me the type of tempo they wanted to run. That was the attraction for me.
“I think it fits me,” he added. “Getting out into the open court, just making plays and playing off instincts. I loved it [in Phoenix], and now in my 15th season I still love it. I hope we can keep the pace up, I just have to get in better shape.”
Johnson doesn’t even have to lead breaks to be effective in this system, either. He can start them.
But all he really has to do is run the floor. Even though not every opportunity ends in success…
Simply getting down the floor quickly offers opportunities that would otherwise be absent…
Notice who is running the floor on that last possession? That’s Dragic leading a 30-year-old Luol Deng, 33-year-old Amar’e Stoudemire, 34-year-old Johnson and 34-year-old Wade in the open floor. They may not be the Kamehameha Kids from Oakland, but right now they’re committing to speed all the same.
Along with Johnson, Wade is also shaking the idea that he’s no longer fit to play the running man.
“All reputations are a product of the teams,” Wade said. “You can only play as well as your team can play or as fast and your team can go. It all goes with what your team is, with what personnel you have on the floor.
“The notion that we’re running so fast that I may not be able to keep up is crazy. You do what you have to do with the team you have.”
Since Johnson and Wade each admittedly have their own particular rhythm with the ball in their hands – few are as adept as that pair at maneuvering their way into the paint for runners and floaters -- speed can only help them be more effective. If Johnson needs a couple extra seconds in the halfcourt to take a player into the post or work a pick-and-roll into an open shot, the two extra seconds Dragic is trying to buy everyone can only help.
No he’s not going to score 20-plus points every night as he did against Chicago, but he also doesn’t need to. Against both New York and Chicago, he’s hit open threes. He’s backed into the post and found Wade on the cut. Twice against Chicago he used an up-fake on a spot-up to get himself a shot in the paint. Some shots will fall and some will miss, but Johnson makes plays you can count on him making every night.
“He helps your spacing quite a bit, and guys that are veteran savvy, high IQ players, they know how to make it work,” Spoelstra said. “When you put a bunch of those kind of guys on the floor together, they tend to make the game look a little bit easier than it actually is.”
Sure, even when they’re running, Miami’s current starting group might not be the fastest group around. Playing above a league-average pace may prove to be unsustainable, especially if Spoelstra sticks with an eight-man rotation. There’s a reason so few teams have dramatically increased pace in the middle of a season.
However the numbers bear out, the emphasis is all that matters. Experienced as Johnson and Wade may be, neither is currently at the height of his efficiency powers. Speed, or looked at another way the efficient use of the shot clock, can only be beneficial.
Nitro-Joe may not actually come to fruition, but it’ll be fascinating to watch Johnson try and turn back the clock on both his game and his reputation.