PHOENIX — Cam Johnson is better than most of us. The Phoenix Suns winger doesn’t have Twitter.
That, however, does not stop him from hearing his name in trade rumors. He had exactly that to say about his CJ23 Invitational 3-on-3 Tournament at Ability 360 in Phoenix.
Johnson, in fact, was at his alma mater working with the The University of North Carolina basketball team and his brother Puff earlier this month. when he was first informed about something like that.
“I’m like, ‘Come on man, don’t even say my name, just let me chill with my little brother for a second,’” he said Saturday.
Trade rumors can have several different origins. The ones Johnson is hearing this summer obviously relate directly to Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant, who reportedly requested a trade the morning of free agency.
It’s been reported that Phoenix is Durant’s top preferred destination, which then begins to unravel how the Suns could acquire him, and that’s when Johnson’s name enters the mix.
Johnson reiterated several times Saturday that he understands the league is a business. When the Suns released guard Tyler Johnson, a great teammate and someone who reached out to a handful of guys on the team, in Cam Johnson’s rookie year, it was an eye-opening moment.
“I’m like, my friends can go like this,” Johnson said with a sigh, citing another example of how he would start to bond with a player on a 10-day contract and then suddenly leave.
The 26-year-old Johnson said the Suns will do what’s best for them and he understands that part of this whole equation.
When it comes to himself, Johnson is using a longer offseason than he was used to in a new way. Johnson has played most of his NBA basketball in pandemic-affected seasons, where the schedule was packed with much shorter offseasons.
With this amount of time now, aka the league’s usual offseason schedule, Johnson has been expanding his work out and using the extra time to do more weightlifting and really focus on certain parts of his game. For example, Johnson was performing a ball-handling drill and spent an entire hour on footwork for a specific move.
“I’ve been enjoying that part of the offseason,” Johnson said. “Lift things, things I can’t do as much in season.”
When Johnson was asked about how he was approaching a more spaced-out schedule, he alluded to talk from the outside that the Suns needed more on the ball beyond Devin Booker and Chris Paul. This, of course, came up when the Suns’ participation in the Durant draft was discussed, as well as what went wrong at the end of the season.
“I hear everything, guys. I’m not going to act like I don’t hear everything,” Johnson said. “[I’m working] on being someone you can trust in the late game. Someone who can be trusted as (an) additional player of the ball-dominant type. I really tried to make my mark as my career progressed.
“Trust me. I was a ball-dominant player for the first 18 or 19 years of my life and then I thought, ‘I’m better at other things.’ And now it’s like, ‘OK, go back to what you were doing when you were in high school. It’s like working on that stuff. The thing is, every hooper knows this, if you don’t do something for a while, you’re going to start losing it. When you start doing it again, it’s like, ‘Oh, I already have this ‘”.
So is it frustrating to hear praise for being great in your role and then criticism for needing to do more?
“I don’t think I’ll get frustrated,” Johnson said. “As much as I am a basketball player and understand the game very well. If someone says something, I can get out of myself and see it from his point of view and say, ‘Okay, I understand what you’re saying.’
But I know what I’m capable of. I don’t think everyone knows what I’m capable of. There are only a few people who do it, and I’m just going to work to be the best player I can be. And wherever I put myself, at the end of the day, I’ll know that I did everything I could to get there.”
Johnson’s uncertain future in Phoenix goes beyond a possible Durant trade this summer.
He is eligible for a contract extension, the same period last year that teammate Mikal Bridges got one and teammate Deandre Ayton did not.
Johnson offered his thoughts on where those talks are, one that still has an October deadline far away.
“In a good spot,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of things on the business side of things. What I learned is that the business side will do what is best for the business side and the personal side will do what is best for the personal side and the team will do what is best for them and the player will do what is best for them. So, I’m always very aware of that, but at the same time I love being here. So if we can do something, I would love to.”
To what Johnson says about his excellent and rare ability to see other perspectives, even when he’s absolutely the expert on the subject, he admitted to seeing how things like trade rumors make the league more interesting.
“The NBA is an entertaining league. And right now, it’s been an entertaining offseason. So grab your popcorn, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Johnson said with a smile. “It could be nothing. It could be many things.
