Anatomy of a breakdown: The rise and fall of former NBA star Eddie Johnson
OCALA, Fla. (AP) — Fast Eddie” Johnson used his lightning-quick first step and dead-on jumper to star for 10 years in the NBA. But cocaine stole his talent and his freedom, and the two-time All-Star has spent much of his adult life as a drug-addled thief and prison inmate.
No longer No. 3 for the Atlanta Hawks, he’s now inmate 0009158. As a habitual felon, he faces life in prison if convicted of charges he sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl and a 25-year-old woman in separate incidents.
“I don’t blame anybody for what happened to me but myself. I could make excuses, but there’s no excuse,” Johnson says from behind a jailhouse glass partition. “It’s not the money. People fail to understand, when you’re involved with the drug culture, it’s the hustle that goes along with it.”
This Eddie Johnson is not to be confused with another former NBA player by the same name. That Eddie Johnson starred with Phoenix and now works as a television analyst for the Suns.
The Eddie Johnson who now spends his days in a Florida jail without bond awaiting trial is the son of a laborer and custodian who engineered his own meteoric rise and fall. He grew up around Ocala, a central Florida town about 75 miles northwest of Orlando famous for its thoroughbred horses, in a religious family and a good neighborhood.
“You could leave your doors open. When I did something at somebody’s house, she’d whup me and my mom would whup me,” the 51-year-old Johnson said in the jailhouse interview.
He was a good student and never got into much trouble as a youngster, his high school coach Hugh Lindsley said. Johnson was creating a buzz even as an eighth grader, and started all four years for Lake Weir High. He ran the junior varsity kids ragged the first couple of games as a freshman before Lindsley called him up.
“When he was a sophomore he could dribble between his legs and behind his back, and back then it was pretty much a hot-dog, except Pete Maravich was doing it,” he said. “I said, “You can throw a pass behind your back, but it dang sure better go where it’s supposed to go.’ And it usually did.”
Atlanta made him a 1977 draft pick out of Auburn. Johnson averaged 15 points and five assists a game in nine seasons with the Hawks and one with Cleveland, including a best of 19.1 points per game in 1980-81. He did a 1986 rehab stint for cocaine. After working his way back into the league from the Continental Basketball Association and catching on with the Seattle SuperSonics in 1986-87, the NBA suspended Johnson for failing to follow through with drug counseling.
Johnson is still at his playing weight: 6-foot-2 and about 185 pounds, with a lean, muscular build and quick smile. His faded red-and-white jail jumpsuit hangs loosely, his brow furrowed by age and his mouth prominently missing a front tooth.
He readily acknowledges a long rap sheet and persistent drug problems, but denies ever stealing anything despite frequent accusations. He also vigorously denies doing anything inappropriate with the 8-year-old girl and the woman he’s alleged to have sexually assaulted.
Johnson is accused of entering an apartment where an 8-year-old girl was home without a parent. He allegedly had her young brother lock the front door, took her into a bedroom, assaulted her and said not to tell anyone. That was three days after he allegedly broke into a hotel room and raped a 25-year-old woman.
“The worst thing about this is that because of my charges I’m being treated as a sexual predator,” he says.
In August 1989, he was arrested for breaking into two houses and acknowledged stealing $9,130 worth of goods for crack cocaine money, court records show. Later that year, he admitted unlawfully entering a woman’s home and taking her $250 VCR to sell for $20 on the street.
In 2000, Johnson struck a deputy several times during a drug arrest. He said during booking that he tried to punch the man’s nose, but couldn’t. Later that year, he was chased down after making off with $98.94 in clothing from a Target store.
“Small town guy makes it big, now everybody doesn’t understand what all happened, except it went from the good old days to what it is now,” Lindsley said.
Johnson spent much of the money he made in the NBA, but saved some and still receives deferred payments. He declines to provide details, but wrote in a court affidavit of indigent status that he made $300 weekly.
He has written his own court motions to dismiss or reduce his bond, and persistently tries to represent himself despite having no legal background. Johnson says he is a few dozen credits short of a college degree.
Johnson is proud of his three kids, saying they all have graduated from college.
“I’m not an unintelligent black man. I’m an intelligent black man. I paid my dues for what I’ve done previously,” he says.
Johnson says drugs drove his previous misdeeds, and he’s happy now to have gotten past addiction. But he also said that after the 1986 rehab stint.
“Eddie was a great talent, great competitor, very likable person,” said Memphis Grizzlies coach Mike Fratello, who coached Johnson at Atlanta. “There were some concerns at the back end of his career there with what exactly was going on.”
Fratello said he last tried to contact Johnson a few years back when the former star was in jail. He called with a message, telling the guards he was the inmate’s former coach and passing along his cellphone number.
“I said, ‘Are you sure he’s going to get this message? Would he get a chance to make a phone call ever?”‘ Fratello said. “He said, ‘Yeah.’ I never knew if he got it or didn’t get it, and that’s the last time I’ve kind of been in touch.”
Johnson says he doesn’t keep up with anyone from the league, but he’s still “Fast Eddie” around the Marion County Jail. There, he reads and writes and plays a lot of basketball. Facing habitual felony offender laws that can double sentences, a conviction likely would make prison his permanent home court.
