I’m going to be honest with you here: you will not be overwhelmed by what you see in this mixtape. Stanley Johnson might actually be the best all-around basketball player in the Class of 2014 -- I think he’ll have a shot at Pac-12 Player of the Year as a freshman -- but he doesn’t have the overwhelming explosiveness that makes a youtube video go viral.
I’m going to share a story about Stanley Johnson that more-or-less encapsulates what he is as a player.
It was during the Nike Global Challenge last summer. Johnson was on the USA’s West team and they were playing the Pan-African team that featured, among other American high school players, N.C. State-bound Abdul Malik Abu. The USA team was struggling on both ends, so Johnson -- who stands 6-foot-7, 240 pounds -- took over point guard duties, getting that group to look like they knew what they were doing offensively. They were also getting pounded in the paint, so Johnson switched over to guard Malik Abu, a 6-foot-9 powerhouse and top 50 recruit.
That about sums up who he is as a player, and that’s not the kind of thing that you pick up in a mixtape.