The final two months of last season weren’t easy for Joe Johnson. Playing through plantar fasciitis in his right foot that limited him after the All-Star break, Johnson struggled down the stretch and during the playoffs — including a dreadful performance in Game 7 at home against the Bulls, when he finished with six points on 2-for-14 shooting.
This season, Johnson has had no such issues. Since being voted to his seventh All-Star team and getting over a brief case of tendinitis in his right knee, he has been outstanding, including 31 points on 11-for-19 shooting in a loss to the Magic on Wednesday.
“It’s night and day … knock on wood,” Johnson said of the difference in his health between this year and last after Wednesday’s win, before walking to his locker and knocking on it. “Hopefully it stays that way.
“At this time of the year last year, I couldn’t even practice. Just to be able to get out there and practice and play at 100 percent, it feels great.”
The Nets face the Hawks — the team that traded him to Brooklyn in July 2012 — at home Friday night, a game in which Johnson could see some rest as the Nets prepare for the playoffs with the fifth seed in the East all but wrapped up. Last season he missed five games in late March and early April in order to try to rest his ailing foot.
“It was very frustrating, because I couldn’t even push the basketball up the court and run the fast break,” he said. “I was basically hobbling out there, and gave the guys what I had. It just wasn’t enough.”
Johnson, perhaps more than any player still on the Nets from last season, has benefitted from the increased depth across the roster. Whenever Johnson had to go to the bench last year, the Nets struggled mightily. That led to him being the focal point of the second unit, as well as him averaging nearly 38 minutes per game over the first half, before both his minutes and production dropped because of his foot issues.
But because of the increased depth and offensive production across the roster this season, not only has Nets coach Jason Kidd been able to cut down Johnson’s minutes — his 32.6 minutes per game are his fewest since the 2002-03 season, his third in the league — but whenever Johnson is on the court, he is surrounded by offensive weapons who make it difficult to double-team him.
That wasn’t the case during last year’s playoffs, when the Bulls basically ignored Gerald Wallace and Reggie Evans, leaving Johnson, Deron Wills and Brook Lopez to try and play 3-on-5 against Chicago’s stout defense.
“It makes a big difference,” Johnson said. “A team guarding me 1-on-1, I feel like we’ll always have an advantage.
“It’s not necessarily for me to score the basketball, but my teammates know I’ll make the right play, hit the open guy and we just kind of feed off that. It’ll be a huge difference.”
It has been a huge difference over the past several weeks. Johnson is averaging 17.4 points on 49.2 percent shooting overall and 42.5 percent from 3-point range in the 27 games the Nets have played since the All-Star break.
Though he has been deadly from behind the 3-point arc, the fact the floor is being spaced by having so many weapons around him has enabled him to use his size advantage on the wings to back the usually smaller opposing guards down into the low post and either score on a variety of floaters and hook shots in the lane or, when they do double, kick out to an open shooter.
More than anything, though, Johnson is just happy he’s going into the playoffs feeling good.
“I’m just trying to stay in a good rhythm, keep a level head and just not worrying about the previous play,” he said. “Just continue to play, play hard for 48 minutes or however long I’m playing and however many looks I get, just be there for my guys.”