Rumors

Well, I have to ask you, Avery, because having been the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, if this potential trade was presented to you during your tenure, what would have been your two cents? Avery Johnson: Oh, absolutely not. No way, no way, no way. No. Luka is 25 years old. And sure, there have been some situations defensively where he can improve—obviously, the communication onslaught with the referees. But this type of talent doesn’t come around that many times in a lifetime. Anthony Davis is, what, 31? You know, Kyrie’s 32. Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, Luka Doncic, Jayson Tatum, Michael Jordan—players like that just don’t come around that many times in a lifetime. So I probably would have vetoed this trade. But again, I’m not sitting in that chair anymore.

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"I just think there's a lot of jealously and hate towards this situation that's really unnecessary" ?? Avery Johnson talks about the debut of Bronny James last night #LakeShow

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Avery Johnson: "You know, we can really peel back all of the numbers. You can even go with the eye test, but everybody else is a distant second behind Michael Jordan. Just a distant second. And there’s no disrespect on it, so please do not send me any hate mail. It’s my opinion, right? Michael, just for all the different reasons. But when you win six championships, you’re the MVP of all six, you never get to a Game 7, and all of the defensive —first team All-Defense, first team All-NBA, MVPs, regular season MVPs—I think there was another stat that you know, he didn’t have as many, it was a revolving door of free agents that he played with, and he did it with one team. And he had to go through the Detroit Pistons, the Boston Celtics, the Lakers, the Phoenix Suns, and Clyde Drexler with that Portland team that could have easily won championships, and Karl Malone and Stockton with Utah. The rules were different—there was a lot more restricted freedom of movement and physicality. So yeah, it’s Michael. The clutch shots, two-way player—it’s just Michael. What they did with the Dream Team, yeah, it’s just Michael."

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Stephen Curry moved up from No. 44 to No. 43 in the assists all-time list after passing Avery Johnson

HoopsHype

Dalton Johnson: Steve Kerr caught up last night with Gregg Popovich, Sean Elliott, Avery Johnson, R.C. Buford and others in San Antonio for dinner and a glass of wine. Kerr says when he first coached against Pop he felt like he had imposter syndrome but is used to it now

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The son of former NBA player and coach Avery Johnson, he has launched his own company, Elevate Global, a “full service and entertainment” vehicle representing athletes, brands and entertainers. “Just expanding into other lanes, other businesses and other athletes,” Johnson Jr. said. “Hiring people into the company so I use what I’ve learned from (Booker and Murray) and operate on a global level and using that and leveraging other clients and other players.”

Arizona Republic

They’ve been really tight ever since. Avery Johnson remembers when his son and Booker were younger. “I remember when Devin Booker was in high school and he was sleeping on the floor in Avery’s room and Avery was sleeping in the bed,” Johnson said. “I remember like, wow, you know, why aren’t you in the guest room? They just wanted to be together and train together.”

Arizona Republic

Jeff McDonald: In the past few weeks, Pop has compared Jakob Poeltl to both Tim Duncan and David Robinson and compared Tre Jones to both Avery Johnson and Manu Ginobili. Poeltl: "If that's true, we're going for the championship."

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“I just think Pop is a great testimony to always knowing what the trends are,” said Avery Johnson, Popovich’s point guard on the Spurs’ first championship team, in 1999, who came to San Antonio at the coach’s behest from Golden State. “Early on, it was trending towards discipline, defense, accountability,” Johnson added. “It wasn’t as much give and take. It’s basically, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do it and do it well. It starts with practice habits, defense. And it starts with coaching the star players harder than they want to be coached. Then it trended more towards being a little bit more creative offensively; I’m going to be a little bit more flexible with rules, being more flexible in terms of culture, the way I communicate. Maybe the way I communicate in 1999 is not going to be exactly how I communicate in 2001 and 2011 and 2020. Just being able to evolve but still have the same core values.”

The Athletic

Go back past the first championship, to those first years in San Antonio. NBA lore claims the Spurs only had a handful of plays — five? seven? — that Popovich simply drilled into players’ heads and bodies, over and over, through mind-numbing repetition, until they could execute them in their sleep. “People love to exaggerate,” Johnson said. “I don’t know if it was five plays. It’s kind of the same way, the way Pop explains it about the national team this past summer. The plays that they had was that the ball needed to find Kevin Durant. And then everything else is going to be magical. Our plays were, the ball needs to find Tim Duncan. And the rest of us play off of that. … I do remember one play – it’s called ‘four down,’ and that’s the play we ran every time we needed a bucket or when we got in trouble. The ball got to Tim. We mastered ‘four down.'”

The Athletic

Harrison Wind: Jason Terry's biggest coaching influence is Avery Johnson, Terry's coach when he got to Dallas in 2004. "There will be a couple time in the locker room where guys will hear that Avery Johnson accent come out...A lot of him you will see in me."

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Now, the league has announced full broadcast details. This year, their games will air on CBS, Paramount+, Triller, and FiteTV. And there are two particularly interesting new names involved, with John Salley as sideline reporter (a role formerly held by Michael Rapaport, which led to some awkward interactions) and Lisa Leslie as an analyst (when she’s not coaching the defending champion Triplets). They’ll join returning analysts Jim Jackson and Avery Johnson as well as play-by-play voices Brian Custer, Ed Cohen, and Carter Blackburn. Here’s more on Salley and Leslie from the league’s release:

Awful Announcing

In October 1997, the San Antonio Spurs convened for training camp. At the end of their first practice, head coach Gregg Popovich split his players into two teams for a scrimmage. One group was anchored by David Robinson, the Spurs’ All-Star center who had missed most of the previous season due to injuries. The other was led by Tim Duncan, a rookie whom the Spurs had drafted no. 1 overall that June. This would be the first time Duncan and Robinson would face off. It would also be one of the last.

The Ringer

“We really couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Avery Johnson, the Spurs’ starting point guard at the time, said in a phone interview. “Tim dominated David, who I thought was a pretty good defender.” Johnson chuckled. “It got to the point where Pop had David spend the rest of training camp on Tim’s team.”

The Ringer