{"id":75494,"date":"2025-07-19T13:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T13:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/75494\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T13:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T13:46:08","slug":"kind-of-basketball-i-want-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/75494\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Kind of basketball I want to play’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Cam Johnson<\/a> went out for breakfast recently, his meal was accompanied by a taste of how Nuggets fans feel about him.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, he wasn\u2019t even in Denver. He was in Arizona, where he spends his offseasons, \u201cjust casually chilling\u201d at a restaurant near his house. It was a couple of days after the Brooklyn Nets had traded him to the Nuggets for Michael Porter Jr.<\/a> and a 2031 first-round pick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis whole table, I\u2019m talking 10 old people, were shaking. Like beside themselves,\u201d Johnson recalled on Friday, when he was formally introduced at Ball Arena. \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019ve been Nuggets fans for so long. We live in Arizona. We\u2019re huge Nuggets fans.\u2019 The ladies almost crying and stuff. I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, this is awesome.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson has a lot to figure out still. He and Porter have discussed the possibility of swapping homes, but he doesn\u2019t quite know where he\u2019ll live in the Denver area yet. The good news is that an offseason trade leaves him time to get settled in his third NBA city, where he\u2019ll start for a title-contending team alongside three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tough style to play against,\u201d Johnson said solemnly, reflecting on his encounters as a Net and Phoenix Sun.<\/p>\n

Now he gets to learn what it\u2019s like from the other side: \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of basketball I want to play, where everybody\u2019s in tune with each other and able to play off each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson was the centerpiece of Denver\u2019s offseason moves under new front office leadership. Trading Porter for him was a roster shake-up in its own right, but the exchange of salaries also made room for the Nuggets to add another critical role player<\/a>. Meanwhile, they weren\u2019t sacrificing much from a size and shooting standpoint. Porter is 6-foot-10, Johnson 6-8. Porter was a 39.5% outside shooter last season, Johnson 39% sharp (at slightly higher volume).<\/p>\n

The North Carolina grad is a 39.2% career 3-point shooter fresh off his best statistical season in Brooklyn, where he averaged 18.8 points on a lottery team devoid of elite scoring options.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets are on a completely different timeline. Denver is a completely different vibe. The lifestyle is slower. The landscape and basketball expectations are steeper. Johnson \u201crelishes\u201d that, in his own words.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal at the beginning, at the end of the day and everything in-between is to win a championship, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m here to do,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what my teammates, I\u2019m 100% sure, are here to do. So that\u2019s the ultimate goal. Obviously, things happen over the course of the season. You never really know. If everybody only defines successful seasons by the championship, then there would really be a small amount of guys at the end of the season defining their season as successful. So it\u2019s a wide range of things \u2014 and I think it starts with how well we can gel, and how the system works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s new teammates are a good fit for his personality on paper. He\u2019s a known basketball nerd, an X\u2019s and O\u2019s enthusiast with a clear-eyed appreciation for Aaron Gordon\u2019s role in the dunker spot as much as Jokic\u2019s flashy passing. When Johnson was growing up in Pittsburgh, he would draw up sets on \u201ca little notebook\u201d in his bedroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always loved the game,\u201d he said. \u201cI always loved the mental side of the game. And I\u2019ve always prided myself on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuggets coach David Adelman conceptualized Johnson as a focal point of off-ball actions when speaking with The Denver Post last week. Johnson agrees that his catch-and-shoot opportunities are likely to experience \u201ca little bit of an uptick\u201d after he was asked to play on the ball more in Brooklyn. Still, having dabbled in that type of role was another appeal to Denver. The roster had a shortage of shot-creating talent last season, adding to the burden of Jokic and Jamal Murray.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s player development specialist with the Nets was Connor Griffin, who used to work for the Nuggets. His head coach, Jordi Fernandez, used to be an assistant under Michael Malone in Denver. \u201cThey said it\u2019s a perfect situation for me, and they know my game,\u201d Johnson said Friday.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s already well-acquainted with the basketball situation he\u2019s walking into. What he\u2019s eager to familiarize himself with next is the local community. Breakfast in Arizona was a good start.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot for me to learn about the city and a lot for me to learn about the fans of the Nuggets,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cSo far, the reception has been incredible. I\u2019m in random places where I wouldn\u2019t expect to find any Nuggets fans, and it\u2019s like, \u2018Whoa, go Nuggets! We\u2019re excited!\u2019 And it\u2019s been all over the place, no matter where I\u2019ve been over the past couple of weeks. So that\u2019s really encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally Published: July 18, 2025 at 5:05 PM MDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Cam Johnson went out for breakfast recently, his meal was accompanied by a taste of how Nuggets…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":75495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[17654,5643,32524,1339,7194,4439,37810,8605,3134,4440,3373,52487,1370,52488,25480,17660,1260,3369,7198,62,17663,130,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-75494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-aaron-gordon","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-ball-arena","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-cam-johnson","13":"tag-colorado","14":"tag-david-adelman","15":"tag-denver","16":"tag-denver-nuggets","17":"tag-front-range","18":"tag-jamal-murray","19":"tag-jordi-fernandez","20":"tag-latest-headlines","21":"tag-michael-malone","22":"tag-michael-porter","23":"tag-more-nuggets-news","24":"tag-nba","25":"tag-nikola-jokic","26":"tag-nuggets","27":"tag-sports","28":"tag-the-denver-post","29":"tag-trade","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-unitedstates","32":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114880209535552422","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}