NO NBA NEPOTISM: JOHNSON HAS TO EARN CAREER ON HIS OWN
Published: July 22, 1989, 12:00 a.m. MDT
By Deseret News, Lee Benson, Sports Editor
For this week's rookie/free agent camp sessions, the Jazz have had their biggest fans out. Bigger than John Sudbury. At both Westminster College and East High School, the scene of Friday night's intrasquad scrimmage, they have positioned these huge, 40-inch electrical fans in the corners of the gyms, each one fighting a mostly losing battle against July's decidedly non-basketball temperatures. Still, all the perspiration going on is somehow appropriate. Rookie camp is when you're supposed to sweat, and keep on sweating.
It is the most unstable time in a basketball player's life. It is when the odds suddenly get ridiculous. It is when you're fighting to beat out a dozen other longshots to get a job so you won't have to get a job. And it doesn't matter what school just retired your number, or how many Mid-American Conference records you just set, or, for that matter, who your brother is.
That's what Eric Johnson is discovering in a hurry as the Jazz's team of hopefuls now breaks camp and moves on to the Southern California Summer League.
You'd think a guy who looks exactly like Vinnie Johnson, who is almost exactly the same height and weight as Vinnie Johnson, and who could wear Vinnie Johnson's Detroit Pistons 1989 NBA championship ring anytime he wanted to, would get a little more respect.
But Eric Johnson is being pushed and kicked and gouged, and scrutinized, just like anybody else.
In this business, it's not who you know.
It's what you can do.
Like every other player in the Jazz's current and temporary employ, Eric Johnson, a.k.a. Vinnie Johnson's younger brother, is bound and determined to do all he can in the next couple of weeks to make himself look unexpendable.
True, he didn't get drafted. But in these days of the two-round draft, the free-agent fraternity is a big club. As Eric says, "Only 50 some-odd college players were taken in the draft. There's a lot more than that with pro potential."
Like, well, ahem . . .
He likes to think he'd have gone in the third or fourth round, if the draft were still 10 rounds. And it's common knowledge that a lot of third and fourth rounders have stayed to play for pay - like, for example, the Jazz's Bobby Hansen, who took part in this week's scrimmages on a voluntary basis, looming like a beacon in front of the free agents' eyes. If he made it, why not them?
Eric Johnson is fresh from a distinguished Big Eight career at Nebraska, where he played point guard. He'd like nothing better than to back up John Stockton this year.
He's a full 10 years younger than Vinnie. He followed in his brother's footsteps by playing basketball at Franklin Roosevelt High in Brooklyn, where he scored 31 points per game as a senior - well above, as he'll tell you, Vinnie's 24-point average.
He followed his brother's path, too, to Baylor University, where Vinnie starred. But after two seasons at Baylor, the Bears changed coaches and Eric transferred to Nebraska.
On draft day in 1979, Vinnie didn't have to wait long to be taken. He went seventh overall to the Seattle Supersonics. In 1982 he was traded to Detroit, where he's been a key instant offense reserve for the Pistons ever since.
Before Eric came to the Jazz camp, he talked with Vinnie about his rookie camp game plan.
"He told me to believe in myself, to have confidence, and never give up," says Eric. "He said to believe in my game; to not try to change everything to try to please everyone. He said I could make it. That meant a lot."
Despite the 10-year differential, Vinnie and Eric are not only close brothers, they look alike.
"I get mistaken for him a lot," says Eric. "I was in Detroit last year, in a restaurant, and this one person swore I was Vinnie Johnson. He wouldn't take no for an answer. I just kept saying, `I'm not Vinnie Johnson, but I am his brother.' It's fine with me. I like looking like Vinnie Johnson; I like being Vinnie Johnson's brother."
Not that it's getting him anywhere in his current situation, of course, which is to say the Jazz coaches haven't yet mistaken Eric for Vinnie. They're cutting him no extra slack. And Eric knows it.
"All I've gotta do is go to California and be perfect," he says. That and sweat it out in the meantime.
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