THE LIMESTONE AND wrought iron gate at Keldon Johnson’s ranch opens to a single paved road crawling up a hill that splits into divergent paths near the top. Along a fence line on the right, approximately 20 miniature goats play gleefully on a spacious pasture in harmony with five Highland cows, a chicken, a mini donkey (named El Chapo) two horses (MuMu, white with patches, and Forest, all brown) and a pair of llamas named Bonnie and Clyde, who were recently acquired over Easter weekend.
Further up the hill to the right lies a massive pond with shallow and deep ends that Johnson recently had expanded to accommodate a small boat. A newly constructed wooden dock overlooks the freshly stocked pond full of koi, bass, crappie and catfish.
Near the main house, two dogs lie peacefully on their stomachs basking in the fleeting sun of an overcast day in Boerne, Texas.
Two more smaller homes on the compound house friends and family.
“For me, it’s utopia,” Johnson told ESPN.
Located a little more than 35 miles northwest of downtown San Antonio, Johnson’s “peace” as he calls it, currently carries a nickname (we won’t disclose it here so as not to identify its location) that he plans to change someday, above a gate adorned with the forward’s KJ logo (the J also looks like Johnson’s jersey No. 3).
On the ranch, Johnson’s family and friends, including his older brother, Kaleb, who played college basketball at Georgetown before a short career in the NBA G League, his uncle Rob Ferguson, Marctavious Holmes (nicknamed “Tae”), Jatone Seward (nicknamed “Tone”) and Jake Garrett help the seventh-year veteran navigate day-to-day life at the 22-acre ranch. The property could soon expand if Johnson can purchase an additional 80 acres nearby that he has been eyeing.
There’s fence building and mending, retrieving loose animals that roam off the property. There’s rescuing the goats, which tend to get their heads stuck in the holes in the fencing, and plenty of snake control, an issue that taught Johnson and his friends and family how to properly store all the bags of feed for the animals. Kyle, the eldest of the Johnson brothers, is visiting the ranch on leave from the Air Force, where he’s stationed near Spokane, Washington, serving on a flight crew that refuels jets midair.
Like Keldon in his NBA career, the whole crew is still figuring out everything on the ranch. Also like Keldon, the crew is loud and gregarious, a laugh-a-minute, positive energy manifested.
Sitting on the bed of a custom, flat-black Dodge dually pickup truck, clad in an assortment of Carhartt gear, cowboy boots or Crocs made to look like cowboy boots, Johnson and his crew are discussing the 26-year old’s candidacy for Sixth Man of the Year. Caught in the moment, Johnson lets slip that he might buy them all Rolex watches to celebrate the occasion.
“Write that down,” one of Johnson’s friends says. “That’s on the record.”
Like Johnson, this ranch isn’t yet a finished product. Johnson, the 29th pick of the 2019 NBA draft, is settling into his second season in a role off the bench that he never envisioned, one that has paved the way for overall success for one of the NBA’s hottest teams and his first postseason experience, while yielding individual hardware as the league’s Sixth Man of the Year.
Johnson and the Spurs can advance to the second round with a win in Tuesday’s Game 5 against the Portland Trail Blazers (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
“I was averaging 22 points [as a starter], had some individual success,” Johnson said. “I’ve been [an Olympic] gold medalist. But I realized that if you want to be here, sometimes you’ve got to remove your ego. San Antonio is a place I wanted to be.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world. I get an opportunity to be a part of something special. They saw the bigger picture before I did. But I’m blessed and fortunate to be able to go through it, thrive in it, and have fun with it.”
AFTER HIS THIRD season as a Spurs starter (2022-23), Johnson thought he had finally caught a groove. Former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, then coach of Team USA, thought highly enough of Johnson’s infectious energy to bring him along to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where he played in just three games, averaging 1.3 points and 6.7 minutes.
Johnson oversaw the music and vibes at the Olympics, admitting, “I was the DJ, just hyping the guys up, trying to pull my weight. That experience was probably one of the best. I got to hang out with the guys, really pick their brains. It really helped mold my career.”
Now, it was time for Johnson to star on his own team. He did that in the 2022-23 season, averaging a career-high 22 points in 63 starts. But San Antonio finished with a 22-60 record and missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.
Johnson would start in 26 games the next season, which was French phenom Victor Wembanyama’s rookie campaign. But one morning two days before Christmas, Popovich pulled Johnson aside before a team meeting in Dallas and delivered a stunning message.
“Pop was just saying that he thought it would be best for the team for me to come off the bench,” Johnson said. “I was just like, ‘Whatever. I trust you, Coach. Whatever you feel like is best, I’ll do that full-fledged.’”
Internally, though, Johnson struggled initially.
“In the moment, it was kind of like a shock, like, ‘All right, I’ve got to figure this out,’” he said. “But I just bought into it. You see how the year is going. It’s amazing.”
San Antonio’s 62-20 regular-season record backs that up, as does Johnson’s Sixth Man award. He became the first Spur in franchise history to score at least 1,000 points off the bench in a season. He’s now the second San Antonio player to win the award after Hall of Famer Manu Ginobili.
Johnson has come off the bench in 201 of his past 202 regular-season games, including 159 over the past two seasons.
“I feel like it’s just a testament to the hard work, the dedication that I’ve had to myself, to doing what I love to do,” Johnson told ESPN. “It hasn’t always been easy. But it never deterred me, never steered me away. I just found a way to be the best Keldon Johnson each and every day. Being Sixth Man of the Year is just a testament to that, to my supporting cast, to the Spurs and how much they’ve trusted and believed in me.”
JOHNSON STROLLS INTO arenas most nights on the road carrying a duffel bag or Spider-Man suitcase stuffed full of canisters of pre-workout powders of different brands, flavors and strengths. Johnson usually mixes up a pre-workout drink to give himself an extra jolt of energy on game nights. He sometimes even submits orders to Spurs equipment manager Nico Faz for coffee to sip during games.
It’s not like Johnson really needs the extra energy. He was so excited for Game 1 of the opening round of the Western Conference playoffs that he skipped his pre-workout drink.
Popovich identified that spark immediately during Johnson’s rookie season. Johnson played just 17 games with the Spurs in his first season and started one game. He spent most of that year with San Antonio’s G League affiliate, the Austin Spurs. Still, every time Johnson graced the San Antonio Spurs with his presence, Popovich wanted to see more from the then-19-year-old whom he once took out for his first experience eating oysters.
“At a certain stage, Pop said, ‘Well, he needs to be around the team. He’s got too much positive energy and too good of an infectious personality, and we need that right now,’” said Spurs coach Mitch Johnson, who was a first-year assistant under Popovich during Keldon Johnson’s rookie season. “Next thing you know, he was bringing a boombox bumping Mariah Carey. LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan are like, ‘Who the hell is this kid?’”
A seven-time All-Star who played in San Antonio from 2015 to 2021, Aldridge was impressed with Johnson’s confidence in his own skin as a rookie.
“He was competitive, physical and confident enough to like what he liked even if everyone else didn’t,” Aldridge told ESPN. “He was confident enough to move how he wanted to move, but [he] never offended anyone. It was always done with good energy and good intentions.”
Spurs general manager Brian Wright scoped that out before Johnson ever played a second of college basketball at the University of Kentucky.
“I remember Keldon in the McDonald’s All American practices [in 2018],” Wright told ESPN. “Those practices will sometimes show you who the alpha of the class is. There are marquee competitors and marquee talent, and when you get them all in the gym they mess around a little bit. But there’s a competitive part, and that was the one thing that stood out in the practices and scrimmage. He was an alpha in terms of competing, and he was getting after people. The top prospects in the class, I remember Keldon going at them.”
Then, there’s that side of Johnson brimming with personality.
After San Antonio’s loss to the Trail Blazers in Game 2 of the opening round of the Western Conference playoffs, Johnson quietly dressed at his locker listening to James Arthur’s “Say You Won’t Let Go” on his phone. That’s not uncommon for a man who often carries a massive speaker emblazoned with the Spurs logo on his shoulder in the locker room before games, blasting everything from Young Dolph to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” and Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles.”
Before nearly every game, Johnson places the Bluetooth speaker near the entrance of the locker room, cranks it to the max, and then runs out to the court for his pregame warmup, leaving everyone in the locker room to deal with the deafening music.
“KJ, he’s the same guy every day,” Spurs guard Stephon Castle said. “In practice, whether he’s having a good game, bad game, he’s always uplifting. So, it’s easy for us to return the favor when he’s having his nights because he has a lot of them. When you have that contagious energy, it just feeds the arena, feeds the team. It kind of gets everybody going.”
BACK AT THE ranch, which Johnson purchased in 2022, Ferguson leans against the fence staring out at the pasture as the Spurs forward scatters feed surrounded by the mini goats. El Chapo, the mini donkey, is limping after chasing Bonnie and Clyde all day along with MuMu and Forest, and rain is visible on the horizon.
Keldon once asked Ferguson if he’d “come with me if I make it all the way.” Ferguson didn’t hesitate. Now, he’s the unofficial veterinarian (Johnson later called a real vet) on the ranch tasked with taking a first look at El Chapo. Ferguson also assumes the role of unofficial cook and grill master for the people at the ranch who are interested in eating more soulful meals, as opposed to the healthier fare prepared by Johnson’s chef, which is preferred by his friends. Ferguson tells Kyle Johnson that he’s got jerk chicken and yellow rice ready for dinner.
“My guys, man, my family, my mom [Rochelle Johnson], my dad [Chris Johnson], my best friends, they all make it possible for me to be able to upkeep everything out here at the ranch,” Keldon Johnson said. “They’re a big part of what I do. Without them, this wouldn’t be possible. We’ve got a lot of games on the road, a lot of long days and even days when I’m tired just lying in bed. They’re out here working. They’re here making it all possible. I couldn’t thank them enough for that.”
On New Year’s Eve, Johnson hosted some of his teammates at the ranch. Wembanyama still hasn’t visited, but Johnson knows the Frenchman “would love it.”
“We’ve been doing a lot of work,” he said. “We just got the pond finished. I get to find my peace out here. I get to enjoy the animals. My teammates know that it’s always an open invite for everybody. Some people love it. Some people don’t. But I feel like whoever comes out here, they can find their niche and find their peace out here.”
Johnson’s ranch is much like the culture he has created in the Spurs locker room. It’s a safe space, a place where everybody can congregate, laugh and be themselves.
The jokes are endless, like the time Johnson told Florida State alum Devin Vassell that he’d “have a better chance of smoking a cigarette under water” than the Seminoles football team returning to national prominence.
In the dark hallways at Frost Bank Center, as well as arenas on the road, before most games the Spurs sing or rap to the music blaring from Johnson’s speaker and take part in what’s commonly called the “Dak Dance,” named after Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and based on his warmup routine in which he explodes his hips as if to simulate a pass.
“We allow everybody to be themselves,” Johnson said. “Every team needs role players. Every great team, every team that’s won championships, they have people that know their roles and star in those roles. There’s nothing wrong with that. I have no problem being a role player to Vic, to Steph [Castle], to [De’Aaron] Fox. Showing up every day, bringing the energy, that’s my job. That’s what I enjoy doing. We all allow each other to be ourselves and grow in our own ways. That’s what makes our group close. We bond on and off the court. We enjoy laughing and joking. We enjoy being a judge-free zone.”
Just like everybody roaming the ranch.
