UNC Basketball: Cam Johnson, Suns set to take on LeBron James, Lakers

Cam Johnson and the Phoenix Suns prepare for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the Western Conference Playoffs.

In his second season of professional basketball, Cameron Johnson is getting his first real taste of the NBA Playoffs. This year’s 51-win season and No. 2 seed in the Western Conference Playoffs come after an outstanding performance in last year’s NBA bubble that saw the team win all eight games, but fall just short of a berth in the unprecedented 2020 NBA Playoffs.

This year, though, Johnson and the Suns find themselves in a better position as the postseason begins; sort of. Their reward for putting together a terrific season and finishing with one of the league’s best records? A date with the reigning NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers in the first round.

LeBron James and the Lakers find themselves in this position thanks to long stints in which he and fellow All-NBA star Anthony Davis were absent from the lineup, sidelined with injuries that nearly cost them an opportunity to defend the previous season’s title. But in exciting fashion against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA’s new “play-in” tournament, James knocked down a game-winning three-pointer in the face of Stephen Curry to give Los Angeles the No. 7 seed.

The Suns are led by All-NBA point guard Chris Paul, offensive aficionado Devin Booker and rising third-year big man Deandre Ayton. The trio have been a big part of turning around a recently downtrodden Phoenix organization that couldn’t even reach postseason play, let alone boast one of the league’s best records and a top-two seed in the playoffs.

As for Johnson, the former Tar Heel sharpshooter has had a fairly typical up-and-down sophomore season in the league. His raw numbers are up a bit from a season ago, as he averaged 9.6 points, 3.3 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game in year two. His accuracy shooting the ball definitely took a bit of a dip, though, as he shot just 42 percent overall this season (43.5 percent in 2020), and 34.9 percent from three-point range; the latter down substantially from the outstanding 39 percent mark he boasted last year.

He has, however, started 11 games for the Suns this season, improved his free throw shooting by four percent, kept his turnovers incredibly low in 24 minutes per game off the Phoenix bench (0.7 per game), and played reliable defense on the perimeter.

Now, he and his running mates will get the toughest test of the past two seasons when they take on the game’s best player over the past decade-and-a-half, along with arguably the league’s most skilled big man, Anthony Davis, and a cast of other players that includes Dennis Schroeder, Montrezl Harrell, Kyle Kuzma, Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.

Johnson and the Suns face off with LeBron James and the Lakers at 3:30 p.m. EST on Sunday afternoon and will be broadcast live on ABC.