(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell (45) scoops up a shot during the the Utah Jazz versus the New Orleans Pelicans NBA basketball game at the Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City Wednesday January 3, 2018.
Going into Wednesday’s game against New Orleans, Joe Johnson had shot 5 for 17 in his previous three outings. At 36 years old, he had been looking his age.
But he wasn’t sweating his slump. Not by a long shot.
“It don’t matter to me, man. You can only shoot it, and you hit or miss,” he said after Tuesday’s practice. “I don’t put added pressure on anything whether I’ve been making shots or not.”
Johnson’s even-keeled approach had a payoff in Utah’s 108-98 loss to the Pelicans. While the team had trouble mustering offense at times, the 17-year veteran authored his best game of the season, finishing 9-for-12 shooting with 20 points and 7 rebounds.
The man with a moniker for his isolation play hit his first six shots of the game — a combination of floaters and jumpers that made rookie Donovan Mitchell compare his performance to his All-Star days in Atlanta. But for those looking to the more recent past, he looked like the clutch performer for the Jazz in last year’s playoff run.
“We’ve seen it before, right?” coach Quin Snyder said. “He’s been hurt. It takes some time to get your rhythm back when you basically break your wrist on your shooting hand. It was good to see him find some rhythm in his game offensively.”
That injury — described as “wrist tendon instability” a month ago — may have hampered Johnson more than previously understood. Even after he returned in December, Johnson has looked rough while shooting a career-low effective field goal percentage (.410 entering the game).
But against the Pelicans, he showed a glimpse of why Snyder has continued to play him in each game while switching out Thabo Sefolosha and Jonas Jerebko around him. With more than 20,000 points in his career, Johnson is still capable of igniting and making shots few others on the Jazz can sink. He has versatility as a scorer as well: While seven of his field goals came in the paint, he made two threes — one from the corner and one from the top of the arc.
Like perhaps no other Jazzman, Johnson has also built an unflappable confidence over the course of his career. This last little dry spell? No biggie.
“It’s been a process [recovering from injury], but I’ve been doing what I need to do on a daily basis, and obviously it’s getting better,” he said. “In 17 seasons, I’ve been through plenty of slumps. That doesn’t bother me. You just gotta shoot your way out of them.”
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