Earlier this month, I joined other basketball fans at the iconic Gramercy Theater in New York City to watch Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson host Larry Johnson for a live taping of their All The Smoke podcast.
Knicks fans were eager to listen to LJ, who became a team hero with the famous “4-point play” and LJ arm salute during his five seasons with the team.
But what we got was more than we all expected.
Many forget just how good Johnson was coming out of UNLV. He was a national champion, tournament MVP, John Wooden Award winner and unanimous first-team All-American during his tenure with the Running Rebels.
He’s also, according to the university site, “The only UNLV player ever chosen No. 1 overall in a professional league draft.”
Johnson was the number one overall pick by the Charlotte Hornets in the 1991 NBA Draft and won Rookie of the Year that season. He was a 2x All-Star with the Hornets, averaging 19.6 ppg and 9.2 rpg during his five seasons with the team. Back problems plagued him during the rest of his career but he still played for ten years in the NBA.
Fans loved LJ in both Charlotte and NY. That love was evident in the Gramercy Theater as fans joked with the former power forward as he told us stories about his career, many of which no one knew about previously.
Everyone knew about Grandmama during Johnson’s time with Converse. But no one knew that the Grandmama character was actually a backup campaign to an original campaign that was supposed to star fellow brand athletes Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
And it was set in motion because legendary sports marketer Sonny Vaccaro told him that Nike didn’t believe in him, but Converse did.
It’s rare that you can say that Nike whiffed on an athlete; this is one of those rare times.
“LJ, Nike don’t think you’re going to be a good player,” Johnson recalled Vaccaro saying.
So he signed with Converse in the biggest sneaker contract at the time, until Michael Jordan and Nike set it off the following year.
The first commercial was supposed to have LJ under a sheet on a gurney surrounded by two doctors, played by Converse athletes Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. They were trying to create the perfect basketball player, and Bird wanted to name him Larry while Magic wanted to name him Johnson, hence Larry Johnson would have been “born.”
Unfortunately, one of the Hall of Famers balked, the commercial was shelved and Grandmama was born.
Johnson followed that story up with one about the infamous fight between him and the Miami Heat’s Alonzo Mourning when Knicks’ head coach Jeff Van Gundy got caught in the middle.
Turns out, LJ actually caught Jeff with a left meant for Zo and dropped the poor coach to the ground where he grabbed Mourning’s leg and held on for dear life. Johnson didn’t even know he clipped his coach until the next day when Van Gundy showed up with a black eye and told him.
LJ shared many other moments and stories that night, and you can watch them above or on the All The Smoke YouTube channel. But for all of us old enough to have watched LJ at UNLV and in the NBA, it was a great trip down memory lane to a special time in NBA and New York basketball history.
So if All The Smoke comes to your city, make sure you go because you’ll learn things you never knew about while laughing and reminiscing the entire time.
And make sure you check out all of the show’s episodes on YouTube.
