Published: December 21, 2009
When the NBA season started many people who cover the Toronto Raptors – myself included – felt that Amir Johnson would spend the majority of the season picking splinters out of his butt. How the heck could a 6′9″ power forward who only weighs 210 pounds steal minutes from Andrea Bargnani, Chris Bosh, Rasho Nesterovic or Reggie Evans? It just didn’t seem possible.
However, as the season has progressed Johnson has become Jay Triano’s first big man off the bench. He first got my attention after being stitched up twice during the preseason and in both games he begged to returned to the game to log some more minutes. Then when Reggie Evans went down with a sprained left foot Johnson seized the opportunity and has become the teams first big man off the bench.
Despite averaging a pedestrian 5.3 points and 5.1 rebounds in 17.2 minutes he’s been a huge hustle and energy guy for Triano off the bench. Not only that, but he’s started to find a comfort zone over the past month and it’s starting to show up in the stat sheet. On Friday he scored a team-high 18 points and yesterday afternoon he snagged a game-high 12 rebounds.
After the game on Sunday I chatted with Johnson about his strong play this weekend and he joked: “I’m trying to get a double-double but I can’t seem to get it. I get 18 points but then I only get seven rebounds. Or I’ll get 12 rebounds but I only get six points so I’m just trying to give my team a lift and do all the hustle stuff.”
All joking aside, it’s clear Johnson has become a huge player for Toronto this season. After giving Toronto a huge lift over the past few weeks I decided I needed to write something for Slam his strong start to the season. Make sure you check Twitter for the link once my article is posted.
