The Cowboy | By Keldon Johnson

I remember a couple years ago, I had a hard conversation with Pop. One morning, we were getting ready to play Dallas, and he pulled me to the side and told me that he thought it would be best for the team if I started coming off the bench. I said, “Yeah, of course. Whatever’s best for the team, I’ll do it.” And I truly meant that, too.

But I’m also just human, man. And I was like 24 years old. If I said that I fully bought into this role from the jump, I’d be lying. I had averaged 22 points in the NBA. I’d won a gold medal with Team USA at the Olympics. So I just didn’t understand. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. And ultimately, I didn’t take it well. I sulked. I let the outside noise affect my play. I didn’t present the best version of myself as I was coming off the bench for the rest of that season. And I knew that I was much better than that.

I’ve been reflecting on that part of my journey a lot lately, with the position we’re in right now.

To backtrack a little bit…. When I was drafted in 2019, that was probably one of the most stressful nights of my life. I’d had a great year at Kentucky, and I thought I was going 9 or 10. In my mind, my floor was 15 to Detroit. The crazy thing is, I didn’t even work out for San Antonio. We talked a little bit on FaceTime, but I honestly didn’t think I’d still be on the board at 19 when the Spurs picked. Definitely not at 29, where I ended up going. I don’t know why I slipped so much, but thank God I did, because I landed at a proven organization with vets who could mold me. 

That situation could have gone one of two ways. Thankfully, it went the good way.

Dejounte was young, too, but he knew the ropes better than me, and he made sure that I did everything the right way. I can’t thank him enough to this day for how much he’s helped my career. Same thing with DeMar DeRozan. Those guys really embraced me and took me under their wing as a young guy, and showed me how it was done. I feel like I had such a great group of vets, whether it was LaMarcus Aldridge, Patty Mills, Rudy Gay — all those guys went out their way to make sure I was solid. I feel like they knew how good I could be before I even knew how good I could be. They didn’t let me skip any steps, which was huge for my career early on.

And yeah, fast-forward to summer 2024, and I got to thinking back on my first couple years here in San Antonio, and how I could get that spark back, get back to being me. That’s when I started to see the bigger picture. We had picks. There were all these signs that we were building something that was gonna be special, all these bright green flags.

But there was this one red flag.

Me.

In that moment, I had to take a hard look in the mirror. And man, I just got embarrassed. I hated that feeling — the feeling that I had let my vets down, and especially let my younger teammates down. 

This organization believed in me since day one, when Pop and our GM at the time R.C. Buford took a leap of faith on a player who was sliding in the draft and didn’t even have a workout at their facility. They had a plan, and I was a big piece of that plan. I just needed to get out of my own way. Period. 

I knew that I could either be the person who tries to fight the change, who makes it about them and their ego, and tries to do everything their way (which never really works). Or, I could trust the process. And the Spurs never gave me a reason not to trust it. So I bought into my role, and I put my best foot forward each and every night. Whatever I had to do to be the best version of myself, I did it. And I feel like this season has been a testament to that. 

I’m just really at home here. I think that’s probably obvious, right? The cowboy hat isn’t a gimmick. San Antonio is all me. Being a country boy, that’s just a part of who I am. From Huntington Prep to Oak Hill Academy to Kentucky, I feel like I just carried that country boy vibe with me everywhere I went.

Reginald Thomas II/San Antonio Spurs

Ain’t no way you ever heard of Brodnax, Virginia. Hahah. When I say I come from a small town, I don’t mean like 1,000 people … I’m talking small like, less than 300. Small like, we don’t have a stoplight at all. Not one. Growing up, everybody knew everybody. Nobody was a stranger.

I’ve always been really close with my family. I have two older brothers and a younger sister. My mom is a registered nurse, and my dad is a truck driver. I remember in the summertime I used to go to work with my dad in his big truck, and we’d ride around together. As a kid, you feel so high above the ground in those things. Like you’re riding around in a Transformer or something. Haha. It was dope as hell. I thought my dad was the coolest guy in the world. Those easy summer days with him, riding down country roads with the windows down…… just one of those things in life you can’t put a price tag on, you know what I mean?

That’s always been my vibe. So coming up in the Spurs organization has been a blessing. You really walk into a warm family environment, a brotherly atmosphere. They have a culture built on growing and developing the younger guys. And that’s exactly what I needed when I got here.

Every season, I’ve just tried to be better than the year before. And that’s kind of the story behind our team, too. Like, even when we weren’t winning, we still had a certain standard that we tried to uphold. We were still focused on playing good basketball. So the foundation was always there. But seeing the guys that come through the facility, whether it’s Tim, Manu, Boris Diaw, Tony Parker……… On the one hand, that’s a huge part of what makes this club what it is. That’s the history that you’re stepping into when you wear the silver and black. And it’s an honor and a blessing to play for an organization like this one. But also, you see them and you’re thinking like, Twenty-two years?? You went to the playoffs for two decades straight??? 

I’ll be honest, ending that streak didn’t feel good. That didn’t sit right with me. Something that I love about our group, we don’t sugarcoat that kind of stuff. We don’t talk around our expectations for ourselves, and what our goals are.

And something else I love is that I feel like our team this year has created our own way of doing things and accepted that it’s OK to have our own identity. The best way to honor the Spurs legacy, in my opinion, is to just take the baton and run with it. 

The best way I can describe our group is like a rodeo. Everybody on the team has their own unique vibe and personality, and when it all comes together it’s just wild. And we thrive off that. We thrive off that chaotic energy of yelling and screaming, and laughing and joking 24/7. And on the floor, that turns into something special. 

Reginald Thomas II/San Antonio Spurs

Our young guys come out yelling and turning up, and you got the older guys right behind them, supporting them all the way, whatever and however they want to do things. Coming into the league, you can be nervous at times, and a little awkward. For one, you’re achieving a dream. And you’re also coming into a new situation where you’re one of the youngest guys. So I feel like our main thing from the jump was just: Let our rookies be themselves. Let the young guys be young. And when you have an atmosphere and a culture like that where everyone feels comfortable, it just puts everybody at ease and creates a different level of chemistry. You can be a little weird around here and not feel like you’re being judged in any way.

And maybe I benefit from it the most because the guys will probably tell you that I’m the craziest one. Hahah. The guy you guys see screaming and yelling, I’ll be honest: That’s me 24/7!!! It’s never hard for me to go out and be energetic. That’s been me since I was a young kid. That’s me around my family. I’m just a live wire all the time. So when I go out there and I’m yelling and I’m singing Miley Cyrus, that’s just me being myself. And my teammates have embraced it. When I tell you everybody gets to be themselves, that’s the 100% truth. I get to go out there and be loud, be weird. I get to go to work and be Kel.

Being here has been a journey — one that I’m extremely proud of. I’m telling you, when you can take ego out of it, and genuinely buy into something bigger than yourself, you can be a part of something special. And when a whole team does that?? You never know what could happen. But at the end of the day, the main thing for me is that the organization’s belief in me never wavered at all. That gave me the confidence to keep going. Basically,  to anyone who needs to hear this, development is its own kind of journey. It takes time. And I just stayed at it, stayed at it, stayed at it. 

Same thing with Vic, same thing with Devin, and all our guys. We just kept raising our ceiling as a team. We didn’t point any fingers at anybody. We just continued to work. And nothing happened overnight. We had some rough patches and tough moments where we learned that we can take a punch. But no matter what, we didn’t look for an easy way out. And that’s really it. That’s the big secret: giving everything you got, every single day. Not looking for shortcuts. Every day trying to be better than the one before. You can’t skip those steps. You have to face those hardships and let them bring the team even closer.

And this team is super tight, and so good. 

As a matter of fact, I don’t even mind saying it, because we truly believe it.… We think we’re the best team in the NBA.

Ronald Cortes/Getty Images

Let’s go down the list.

We’ll start with the big fella. He’s the focal point of everything we do, offensively and defensively. I’m not a big analytics guy, so I can’t tell you the exact plus-minus, but I have eyes. There’s not a single night when he’s on the floor that he’s not affecting the game of basketball. He’s the league’s MVP this season — no question. We got Stephon Castle, one of the best two-way players in the league at such a young age, and he’s only getting better, which should scare you. We got De’Aaron Fox, a huge piece of what we have here in San Antonio. He brings that poise, that leadership. He’s that calmness in the storm that a young team like us needs. And I feel like sometimes that’s overlooked. Listen, I could do this all day, we could go down the line. Devin Vassell is one of my best friends. He came in a year after me, so having gone through all the struggles together, watching his success this year has been personally fulfilling. Julian Champagnie has been one of the best shooters in the NBA this year. Harrison Barnes, one of our OGs, has kept us anchored. Our rookies, Dylan and Carter, the sky is the limit for those guys. Calling this group exceptional feels like an understatement.

And none of what we’ve accomplished this season would be possible if we didn’t have the supporting cast that we have around us. That’s our coaches, our video room, our medical staff — they sacrifice so much for us to be in the situation that we’re in today. Without them, it’s hard to go and perform every night at a high level. I don’t want to overlook that. I feel like they’re a huge part of what makes us who we are.

It feels good to look back on everything and be able to say it was all worth it. Every L. Going through the things I did here, and our fans being able to experience all the success we have now, it’s just confirmation that tough times don’t last. We were down for a little bit, but now we’re rockin’ and rollin’, and having a good time. And it means the world to me to be one small piece of it.

I said our group is like a rodeo, right? Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a real one, but it’s not for the weak. You gotta be fearless. You gotta get up on that bull knowing that you might fall off. Matter of fact, you’re almost guaranteed to fall off.

You might get dragged through the mud a little bit. You might bust your a**.

Just gotta have the courage to get back up.

We’re in the ring now. Let’s go.

—Kel