Turn on any nationally broadcast Spurs game, and amongst all the discussion of stars and youth, there will almost always also be the talking point of the Spurs’ longest tenured player, Keldon Johnson. At 26 years old, Johnson has held a variety of roles for this team, each with varying success.
He entered the league in the tumultuous 2020 season, which was cut short by the pandemic, only playing 16 games. He escalated to a starting role in his next three seasons. At that time, it wasn’t clear what direction the team was headed, but Johnson showed potential. In 2022, it looked as though he might have found his niche as a shooter, converting 39.8 percent of his shots from long range on five attempts a game, and averaging 49.5 percent from the corners. Ultimately, a long-range specialist would not be his destiny, as his percentages didn’t maintain, averaging 33 percent from deep over the next three seasons.
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However, he did score more in 2023, jumping from 17 to 22 points per game. He wasn’t shooting as well, but he was getting buckets, albeit for a poor team. But shortly thereafter, his scoring would start to dip, averaging 15.7 and then 12.7 points in his next two years.
Halfway through his fifth season, Johnson soon found himself no longer in the starting lineup, and by his sixth season, was averaging his fewest points per game since his rookie season and his fewest minutes per game since his sophomore season.
Keep in mind, this is all within the relatively short window of time the Spurs structured their rebuild. Johnson seemingly overnight was one of the few players still on the team from when he started. Familiar faces like Derrick White and Dejounte Murray were traded away as part of the rebuild. The team bounced around from middling to bottoming out, and now finds itself resurging, all in a brief period.
Fast forward to this year, Johnson’s second full year coming off the bench. His usage is down from 19.7 to 17.8 (per cleaningtheglass.com); he’s averaging about the same points per game (13.2) and about the same minutes per game (22.9), but somehow everything is different.
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Johnson’s efficiency has skyrocketed. His effective field goal percentage vaulted from 54.1 to 65.2. His points per shot attempt exploded from 1.15 to 1.34 (per cleaningtheglass.com). This is the product of his strict shot diet. Johnson only takes 2.8 three-point attempts per game, but he is making them at a 41.8 percent clip. Nearly half of his shots are coming at the rim, where he is shooting 70.8 percent. The handful of shots that are coming from the mid-range, he is converting at 56.4 percent. These are all elite splits.
Somehow, Coach Mitch Johnson has found the perfect formula to squeeze the absolute most out of Keldon Johnson’s minutes. And he is now very much in, if not leading, the Sixth Man of the Year discussion.
The reasoning for this is multifaceted. While Johnson is only 26 years old, this is his 7th year and the start of his prime. He has benefited from watching, learning, and playing professional basketball as he has matured. Having the career he’s had, he has been able to log minutes and reps, make mistakes, and learn from them.
Interestingly, when analyzing Johnson’s success, it not only rests with his development but also with how the team has developed around him. As noted, he has seen this Spurs team hit its lowest lows, and now it’s ascension into contention. As such, his workload has decreased to nearly what it was in his second year. From 2022 to 2024, Johnson maintained a usage ranging from 19.5 percent to 26.4 percent (80th to 91st percentile per cleaningtheglass.com). In 2025, that dropped to 19.7 and now sits at 17.8 (70th and 66th percentiles, respectively).
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His play is being maximized, not because he is doing more, but rather because he is doing less.
In previous years, Johnson had more opportunities. He had more minutes, more shot attempts, and just had the ball more. But that wasn’t the best role for him. He got the shots up because someone had to.
Now, it’s not that every shot he takes is a good shot so much as he only takes good shots. In his previous role, he had to force the issue more. And while he did get more points, that didn’t equate to winning. Now, alongside stars like Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox that can force the issue, he doesn’t need to overextend himself. He is the epitome of a “star in his role” and is exactly what the Spurs need.
Johnson’s tenure with San Antonio has been uncommonly fluctuant. Historically, not many Spurs have seen the ups and downs he has. But both he and the organization stuck with eachother. Leading him to find the role he now plays, which has proven to be increasingly valuable by most every metric.
