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The man turned 35 last week, and the NBA miles on his odometer can be seen on his face, on his body, on his career stat sheet, on his bank statements.

He's one of the NBA's top 50 all-time scorers. He's one of the league's all-time 3-point shooters. He's a seven-time All-Star. He's played more than 40,000 total minutes. His pro career has spanned 15 seasons and counting, and he's averaged 17 points and four assists per game.

Over a five-year period, he scored 20-plus points per game, the pinnacle coming a decade ago, when he averaged 25. He was formerly known as "Iso Joe," because certain coaches asked him, probably out of desperation, to dominate the ball.

He's hit a whole lot of game-winning shots, many of them from distance. He's led the Hawks to the playoffs, which had fallen short of them for nine straight seasons. He's been paid nearly $200 million for his services, at one recent point being the second-highest-paid player in the NBA, trailing only Kobe Bryant. He also once famously collected a personal basketball shoe collection of more than 1,000 Jordans, all of them kept in a secure room at his home.

Joe Johnson's had a beautiful career.

The question is, will it continue to be beautiful?

When the Jazz agreed with the free-agent guard/forward to a two-year, $22 million deal late Friday, they added what is for them a rare piece to their team — a player headed in the opposite direction of most of their core.

Johnson's not growing. He's not developing.

He's descending. He's declining. He's not what he once was.

And it's OK. Such characterizations are relative to the heights he's already seen.

Early on, Johnson followed the map Dennis Lindsey wants traveled for his younger players — getting increasingly better through his initial seasons, turning a 7.5-point scoring average into a 9.8-point average into a 16.8-point average into that lofty 25-point average, which ranked ninth in the league that season. Even in subsequent years, Johnson has had bursts of huge games, including one last season, when he scored 27 points and totaled 11 assists.

So, there are remnants of those heights still evident: 12 points per game last year, hitting 44 percent of his shots, better than 38 percent from the arc, collecting nearly four rebounds and four assists, and still playing 34 minutes. After being released by Brooklyn, where he took heat for the amount he was paid, Johnson joined the Heat for a 24-game run, starting all of those games, making 52 percent of his attempts and scoring 13.4. In the playoffs with Miami, he got 12 points per game, though his 3-point shooting percentage fell to 28 percent.

What to make of Johnson now joining the Jazz?

It's not spectacular, but it is a strong move, meant to help rudder a yet-unproven group of young players toward and into the postseason. Johnson has played in 101 playoff games. Between him and recently acquired George Hill, the combo has competed in 176 playoff games. That's a lot of "postseasoning" for a team that otherwise didn't have much.

Versatility is also a virtue here. In a league that increasingly is doing away with hard-edged position assignments, the 6-foot-7, 240-pound Johnson can play shooting guard, which he did for much of his career, small forward and even power forward. That's precisely the kind of flexibility Quin Snyder wants in his team, especially at the offensive end, where the Jazz struggled at times to find production from varying spots.

Having the Joe Johnson of 10 years ago would have been great for the Jazz.

Having the Joe Johnson of the present bolsters their bench, adds firepower, particularly from the perimeter, gives them a set of eyes that has seen so much more than what many Jazz players have seen. His role will be much different now, because Snyder needs Johnson to fit into the team's flow, not stand apart from it, just doing his thing with the ball.

Johnson gets that, already having done it in Miami. His spot-up shooting, managed correctly, will give the Jazz one of the weapons they've had too little of in the past.

And, in an inflationary market for player salaries, in which a guy like Timofey Mozgov will be paid $65 million over four years, the Jazz are getting all of the above for $22 million over two. Two seasons ago, the Nets were paying Johnson in excess of $24 million for one season.

He may not be what he once was, but Johnson most certainly makes the Jazz better today than they were yesterday.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.