Jalen Johnson has spent an inordinate amount of time watching from the sidelines for a player identified as a potential star from an early age. Go back to his prep days when Johnson left his suburban Milwaukee public high school to transfer to national powerhouse IMG Academy in Florida only to leave without ever playing a game. Take his brief college career at Duke, where Johnson was supposed to be the next in a long line of talented five-star forwards to play for Mike Krzyzewski before an early season foot injury contributed to him leaving the team in Feb. after only 13 underwhelming games. His path with the Atlanta Hawks wasn’t much different: Johnson spent most of his rookie year in the G League, struggled to crack head coach Nate McMillan’s rotation in his second year, and then was sidelined by ankle, wrist, and shoulder injuries the next two years after breaking out under Quin Snyder.
Now on the brink of his 24th birthday, Johnson is finally blossoming into the player evaluators once saw as a no-brainer 5-star recruit tearing up the Nike EYBL circuit. His leap this season is more proof that growth isn’t always linear, and that it takes the right mix of opportunity and luck even for the most talented young players to truly take off.
Johnson has become the Hawks’ leading man with Trae Young sidelined with a knee sprain, and it has Atlanta playing its best ball of the young 2025-26 season. The only other player to match Johnson’s current numbers — 23.2 points, 10 rebounds, 7.3 assists per game — is three-time MVP Nikola Jokic. He’s significantly improved his scoring efficiency despite the increase in volume, going from about league-average true shooting the last two seasons to a +5.5 rTS% this season, per NBARAPM. Johnson has always been a killer in transition, but now he’s a better halfcourt player by improving his three-point touch, rapidly raising by his on-ball time and usage rate, and getting to the foul line more than ever.
The Hawks are 11-6 since Young left the lineup and started running the team more through Johnson. He’s on the brink of his first All-Star berth, but there are bigger goals looming. In a wide open Eastern Conference, the Hawks can dream about another deep playoff run this year. With Young about to become a free agent and a potential top pick incoming via the Pelicans, Atlanta knows it has a foundational piece in Johnson with even more avenues to improve the team, whether Young stays or goes.
It’s hard to find three forwards this year who have been better than Johnson. After already garnering consideration for Most Improved Player two years ago, he’s making a second leap that is vaulting him among the NBA’s elite and giving the Hawks a world of possibilities to consider for the future.
Johnson was considered a top-10 pick coming into his freshman year at Duke, but it quickly turned into a nightmare pre-draft season. Johnson hurt his foot in the season opener, tried to gut it out for a few games before getting shut down, and couldn’t rally what turned out to one of the worst teams of Coach’s K last two decades. After coming off the bench for three straight games and seeing his role dwindle, Johnson announced he was leaving school to focus on the NBA Draft on Feb. 15. Most of college basketball’s old guard responded by using him as an example of what was wrong with the sport today.
Here’s a small sampling of opinions at the time from coaches, media, and fans:
This was Johnson’s reputation entering the NBA, a sublimely talented forward who quit on his coaches put himself above the team. Remember: the NIL didn’t exist in 2021, and any hint of player empowerment at the college level triggered massive backlash. Any purported off-court red flags didn’t factor into our evaluation of Johnson, who ranked No. 8 on our final draft board.
The Hawks have been Trae Young’s team since they selected Johnson with the No. 20 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. At the time, Atlanta was coming off a Cinderella run to the Eastern Conference Finals where Young was putting up huge numbers and turning into one of the league’s great showmen. Johnson fit into the Hawks’ long-term plan to surround Young with length and athleticism at the other four positions, and he was a tremendous value where they got him.
Johnson was essentially redshirted his rookie year, playing 21 games in the G League compared to 22 in the NBA, mostly in garbage time. McMillan was determined to give minutes to Cam Reddish and Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot over him as a rookie, and then it was De’Andre Hunter and AJ Griffin playing ahead of him the next year. Finally, Johnson broke out in his third season as Synder took over the Hawks, going from 5 points to 16 points per game in a full-time starting role. Maybe Johnson had an All-Star leap in him the following season last year, but he was shut down after only 36 games with a torn labrum.
What Johnson is doing this season is something else entirely, marking a second big leap in his short career and potentially serving as proof that he deserves to be the new face of the franchise in Atlanta. It’s not just more minutes helping him breakout: Johnson is posting the best per 100 possessions numbers of his career by far, with 31.2 points (up from 24.8), 9.9 assists (up from 6.6), 13.4 rebounds, and 2.2 steals so far this year.
Start with Johnson’s transition scoring. He’s always been at his best in the open floor where his straight-line speed and power combine to make him one of the league’s more fearsome finishers. His 5.5 transition opportunities per game is the fifth-most among qualified players, and his 1.31 points per possession in transition trails only Franz Wagner, Tyrese Maxey, and Giannis Antetokounmpo for players who have played all season. Johnson just runs into so many easy points every game, which sure helps when a team’s elite playmaker at point guard is injured.
If transition is his bread-and-butter, Johnson’s play in the halfcourt is what’s really raised his game this season. Johnson’s “on-ball rate” has gone from 10% to 14% to 20% to 25% this season over the last four years, and he’s turning into one of the better shot creators in the league among forwards. Johnson loves to pass the ball: his 1,202 total passes ranks No. 4 in the league, and he’s tied for fifth in potential assists this year with 14.3 per game for his team.
He’s able to fit the ball through tight windows and lead his targets into open space in the halfcourt, or use the threat of his downhill driving to open up cutting lanes. When he sees an outlet opportunity, he can throw a bomb on time and on the money:
The biggest knock on Johnson entering the league was his outside shooting, and so far this season it looks like he’s making big strides there. Johnson is knocking down 40.3 percent of his threes so far (up from 31 percent last year) on a tick under four attempts per game. His shooting volume has been steady for about three years now and remains an area of growth, but being able to knock down the open shots defenses are giving him is all Atlanta can ask for.
His release has never been the quickest and he only shoots the wide open ones, but it’s still a real improvement for Johnson. He’s also been better than ever at hitting self-created mid-range shots, making 48.5 percent of his looks between 10-16 feet, per basketball-reference.
Johnson’s defense also remains solid even with the increased offensive usage. He can get beat both on the ball by quicker ball handlers, but he’s ability to force takeaways helps the Hawks be at their best in transition. His 1.8 forced turnovers ranks in the 99th percentile for forwards per NBARAPM, and his stop percentage (steals + charges + blocks recovered) is in the 75th percentile for forwards. Where he’s really good is ending possessions as a rebounder, where is 27.3 defensive rebounding percentage per basketball-reference is one of the best among forwards this season. Atlanta’s defense is 1.6 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor.
He has the build to absorb contact at the rim, and the athleticism to wipe away mistakes by his teammates.
The reps Johnson is getting now as the Hawks’ lead creator will only help him as the game slows down in the playoffs. The Hawks should be very open to seeing if Young can take this offense to a new level in his return, because so far much of Atlanta’s success without him has come against bad teams. While Johnson is a great cutter and an improved shooter, he’s never been quite as good off-the-ball as he is on it. That’s an issue Atlanta will have to continue to sort out, but his ability to generate good looks off the bounce as a passer and scorer is still extremely beneficial even in a secondary creation role. If Young leaves the team as a free agent this summer, it will fully be his team.
It’s wild to consider that Johnson will only be making 15 percent of the salary cap in 2030. The five-year, $150 million deal he inked before last season now looks like one of the league’s best bargains for Atlanta, locking in an elite young forward at a below market price to give them plenty of team-building flexibility moving forward.
A few years ago, Johnson didn’t even make the Rising Stars Challenge in his second season. These days, no one questions that he’s one of the league’s rising stars and one of the better building blocks in the East. Johnson’s ascent is proof that a disappointing pre-draft year or a failure to earn minutes early in an NBA career is far from a death sentence. The talent has always been there, and now Jalen Johnson is finally playing like the star he was always meant to be.
