Larry Bird called Dennis Johnson “the best I’ve ever played with.”
What a great compliment to a great, championship player, and what a quote to have as an epitath. It would be like if you or I could quote Mother Theresa saying that we were one of the nicest people she ever met. I'd want that on my tombstone.
And it was true. Everywhere he went, teams won games and championships.
One of the things I heard among the post-mortems was ESPN's Michael Wilbon saying that he wanted to do a retrospective on DJ's career and his producers tried to dissuade him by saying that the current generation doesn't know who Dennis Johnson is as a player.
Wilbon was angered and said, correctly so IMO, that he wanted to do the piece anyway because THEY NEED TO KNOW WHO HE IS. And Wilbon is right.
This guy would not appear on many highlight reels, but his 14 blocks (from a guard) in a Finals MVP performance, his stifling defense and clutch shooting and rebounding was the glue that allowed his team's other stars to shine. And if his star shone a little less brighter, so be it, his TEAMS WON.
What a concept.
We hear a lot about shutdown corners in football, this guy was a shutdown guard.
I heard a lot of people find it difficult to come up with a modern day comparable player and I'm not sure I can either. DJ was one of a kind. A WINNER.
R.I.P. DJ.
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