Indiana Pacers forward James Johnson looked back on when Udonis Haslem stood up for Dwyane Wade after Johnson scraped the star guard’s eye.
“I don’t know if you remember this, but I’m guardin’ D-Wade and we’re in Toronto — I’m playin’ with the [Toronto] Raptors at the time,” Johnson began. “And I’m guardin’ D-Wade, and he’s playin’ with the ball up top, and he hit me in the forehead with that joint and then try to sweep by when he did that. I kind of like foul — scraped his eyes, and I saw you. You got up, and you was like, ‘Nah, we ain’t playin’ that.’ You took that role on, like, ‘Nah J, now you gotta see me. Forget D-Wade.'”
Johnson had two separate stints with the Raptors earlier on in his NBA career, but he began his time in the league with the Chicago Bulls, who drafted him with the No. 16 overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft.
Interestingly, after the incident in question, Johnson would go on to carve out a stint playing with the Heat. He spent three-plus seasons in Miami from the 2016-17 season all the way up until partway through the 2019-20 campaign.
Across 222 total regular-season games — the most games Johnson played with any single NBA team — he averaged 10.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 0.8 steals and 0.8 blocks per game.
Johnson served as truly a jack of all trades during his Heat tenure, as he provided consistent scoring and rebounding while also being a solid secondary playmaker in spurts.
The 2016-17 season was Johnson’s best season in a Heat uniform and perhaps the most productive of his pro career. He averaged 12.8 points on 47.9 percent shooting from the field while also contributing 4.9 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.0 steal and 1.1 blocks per game in 76 appearances in the regular season.
Johnson finished fifth in the league’s Sixth Man of the Year voting and sixth in the Most Improved Player voting for his play off the Miami bench that season.
The 37-year-old’s NBA career is still going strong. Last season, he was a member of an Indiana Pacers team that made an unexpected run to the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals. He wasn’t exactly a consistent member of Rick Carlisle’s rotation — Johnson played in only one game with the team in the 2024 NBA Playoffs — but he served as a valuable presence in the squad’s locker room.
The Pacers also gave the Boston Celtics — the 2024 NBA champions — a real run for their money in the Eastern Conference Finals as well, despite the fact that they got swept.
With the exception of Game 2, every contest was decided by five points or fewer, and Indiana had a real shot at winning several of the games in question.
