ARLINGTON, Texas — He is just another 7-foot, 265-pound freshman from the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn who wound up at the University of Kentucky and will be playing in the Final Four Saturday night against Wisconsin.
There have been other phenom big men in the Final Four, from Lew Alcindor to Bill Walton to “Never Nervous” Pervis Ellison to Patrick Ewing to Anthony Davis, among others, and Dakari Johnson certainly does not belong in that conversation.
Come Saturday night at Jerry Jones’ palace, with the whole country watching, he certainly will belong in Wisconsin’s conversation.
“He’s a big body, he tries to bully people, and he does it,” Wisconsin star Frank Kaminsky said.
And with Willie Cauley-Stein (ankle) hobbled at best, disabled at worst, John Calipari will be asking Dakari Johnson to bully Wisconsin’s big men, especially Kaminsky, when he decides to enter the lion’s den.
“He’s grown up to like this big huge monster that just destroys every player that you play against,” Kentucky freshman (what else?) Marcus Lee said. “Just practicing with him in the beginning of the year was a whole lot easier than as the season went on, I was like, ‘Man, I got to guard Dakari in practice?’ He’s learned how to use his physicality in college basketball.”
How physical is he?
“I mean, once you see one of those big hands come to your face, you’ll realize that, but I don’t know how to explain that,” Lee said.
Neither does Johnson, who has been described as a throwback center.
“I’m not really flashy, I just try to get the job done,” he said. “So whatever they want to call it, it’s fine with me.”
He was asked to name someone he thought was a throwback center.
“I watched a lot of tapes on Patrick Ewing,” he said. “I would consider that a throwback center.”
Johnson, who doesn’t turn 19 until September, is the youngest of Kentucky’s heralded freshmen.
“I think we’ve grown up during the year, so I don’t think we’re really freshmen anymore,” he said. “Everybody knows we’re young, but if we go out there and fight, that freshman stuff is out the window.”
We’ll see about that.
“I’m used to stages like this,” Johnson said. “Last year we [Montverde Academy] won a national championship in high school, so it would just be great to win a national championship in college, too.”
The MVP (18 points, eight rebounds) at the National High School Invitational is peaking at the right time. Julius Randle is the Go To Guy, butJohnson equaled a career-high with 15 points and added six rebounds in a season-high 31 minutes in the Sweet 16 victory over Louisville. He scored eight points in 21 minutes against Michigan, and was 11-of-15 from the field around the basket in the two games.
“During practice this whole week, me and Marcus had to guard Derek Willis out on the perimeter, and kind of simulated what Kaminsky would do,” Johnson said. “He plays inside and out. It’s going to take the whole team to kind of limit his opportunities.”
His mother, Makini Campbell, who played at LIU, raised him as a single parent and moved him and his younger brother Kamani to Lexington before middle school and later to Newark.
“New York City, I love it, but at the same time, it could be a little dangerous sometimes,” Johnson said. “When you’re young there, I had to ride buses to school by myself sometimes, so my mom just didn’t feel comfortable.”
He neglected to mention what appeared in the (Louisville) Courier-Journal over a year ago: “He came to forget about the glass bottles that were hurled at him as he walked home from elementary school. He came to forget about the gang members who lingered in his old neighborhoods.”
Johnson, a product of the AAU Gauchos who played with former Kentucky star Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and for Kevin Boyle at St. Patrick (N.J.) High School, has come a long way from the overweight pup who lost 40 pounds and had Boyle, also his coach at Montverde, comparing him to Moses Malone.
“He’s a big goober,” Lee said. “You hear him singing on the bus. … He has no mute button, he’s just always going crazy.”
Pee-down-their-legs crazy sometimes, according to Calipari.
“We’re all so young, we don’t know what to expect, we’ve never been in this situation before,” the Brooklyn kid says. “I don’t know why we come out so nervous, but as the game goes on we’re fine.”