"There's a steal by Bird, pass to DJ......."
Per wikipedia -- On February 22, 2007, Johnson suffered a heart attack while playing a pick-up game during a practice and collapsed. He was later pronounced dead. Celtics executive director of basketball operations Danny Ainge confirmed Johnson's passing.
HM note -- a very, very good player and a key cog on championship teams in Seattle and Boston. Was brought in by Boston to defend Magic Johnson. One could certainly argue that he deserves Hall of Fame consideration given his teams' success and stats nearly identical to those of HOFer Joe Dumars: http://www.basketball-reference.com/labs/comp.cgi?I=johnsde01%3ADennis+Johnson&y1=&C=dumarjo01%3AJoe+Dumars&y2=&s=r&t=g&submit=Compare.
Perhaps the best tribute to Dennis Johnson is this: in the 1978 Finals, Game 7, he went 0 for 14, basically single-handedly costing his team the NBA championship as they lost by 6 at home to the Bullets. We have all seen what a collapse on a huge stage can do to a player's career (Nick Anderson, Calvin Schiraldi, the Arizona reliever Kim, John Starks). Guys who fail at such key moments rarely get redemption and generally get far worse. Not DJ. His Sonics won the title the next year and he was all-NBA second team in 1980 and all-NBA first team in 1981. And then he went on to win two more titles with the Celtics.
RIP DJ..........
No comments:
Post a Comment