Joe Johnson is slogging through a career-worst year with the woeful Brooklyn Nets, made notable only by the fact that he doesn’t want to leave. But even though he’s on pace to score less and shoot worse than he has since he was 20 years old, he’s still a veteran with the skills to get buckets. On Monday night, he did so by ruining Jusuf Nurkic’s life.
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Style points are cool and all, but Joe Cool isn’t known for those — he’s known for canning the big shot, and he came through in a big way against the Denver Nuggets with a one-legged bank shot to win at the buzzer.
Johnson only had 12 points in the game, as he’s sunk down the list of preferred scoring options in Brooklyn. Joe even admitted that he wasn’t even supposed to take the shot:
“The play wasn’t designed for me because we were only down two,” Johnson said. “It was designed to try to get Brook (Lopez) the ball in the paint and get a layup or easy deuce and go into overtime.
“Obviously when I came up to the top of the key, I was wide open. Markel saw me and I knew I had one-point-something (on the clock), so I had enough to at least take a dribble. I was able to take a dribble and I don’t even know how it went in.”
Joe’s never been one to toot his own horn, so we’ll do it for him: He’s still out here at 34 years old putting in work for a team going nowhere without a word of complaint, so he’s earned his due for those times he puts up a classic highlight.
(AP)
