BENNETT'S SIX SHOOTERS: The freak: James Johnson

WILDOMAR, Calif.

There’s no telling what kind of creatures lurk in the mountains just behind James Johnson’s house. Snakes, coyotes and cougars are just some of the wildlife that are said to inhabit this Southern California suburb, about 70 miles northeast of San Diego.

Johnson, the fourth addition to Virginia men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett’s six-member recruiting class, runs these mountains religiously. During night runs, he often carries a hunting knife — just in case he bumps into something unfriendly.

On a recent June evening, Johnson huffed and puffed his way up a brutal incline — one that could have made a good ski slope.

Just when it seemed as the 6-foot-9, 230-pounder didn’t have anything left in his tank, a smile crossed his face. Suddenly, Johnson accelerated and disappeared around a bend.

“He’s not normal,” said Joannah Johnson, James’ older sister. “If you don’t push him to his absolute physical breaking point — to the point of physical exhaustion — then he won’t be happy.”

Johnson, who former Washington State player Dave Vik refers to as a “freak” because of his uncanny athleticism, has done these training runs about four times a week for the last year — ever since his family relocated to the area.

But the runs are just the tip of the iceberg for his workout regimen.

“He would live in the gym if he could,” said Carolyn Johnson, James’ mother. “If he had a cot, he would live there.”

If Johnson isn’t on a basketball court, running a mountain or in a weight room, you can usually find him sprawled on his family’s living room floor doing his best Jane Fonda imitation, circa 1980. Johnson has always been extremely into stretching.

The redhead, who has actually slept on the floor for a good portion of his life — beds are usually too small for him — says being in peak physical condition is something in which he takes the utmost pride.

Recently, Johnson chose the gym over his senior class trip to Six Flags.

“I’m not the best player when it comes to skills,” said a very modest Johnson, ranked as the 41st-best player in the country by Scout.com, “but I’ll work harder than anybody. Always.”

That much was evident as a red-faced Johnson reached the top of the mountain.

“If I had to rank these hills,” said an out-of-breath Johnson, “they’re about an 11.5 on the ‘Damn!’ scale.”

Virginia fans, no doubt, are hoping they can say the same thing about Johnson by the time he leaves Charlottesville.

A rambunctious one

James Parker Johnson — that’s JPJ, if you’re a diehard Virginia fan looking for a good omen — was born on Nov. 4, 1991 in Detroit. Johnson was 25 inches long and weighed 10 pounds and 4 ounces, ranking in the 99th percentile.

Johnson never crawled. One day, he just started walking.

As a toddler, Johnson was always getting into some kind of mischief. According to his mother, he visited the emergency room three times before the age of 5.

“He was always running to do something,” Carolyn Johnson said. “He still is always just on the go.”

When Johnson was 10 months old, he sprinted toward a bathtub, slipped and hit his chin on the tub. In the process, he nearly bit his tongue off.

About a year later, Johnson visited his grandparents in Oklahoma.

“Grandpa said, ‘Don’t mess with my bowling ball,” recalled Carolyn Johnson, smiling.

Well, you know how that one turned out.

Johnson picked the ball up, realized how heavy it was, and proceeded to drop it on his foot, breaking his big toe.

There was a subsequent accident with a treadmill, then a garden hoe.

It got to the point where Johnson had so many bumps and bruises that a social-services type had to pay a visit.

“We were like, ‘We promise it was a bowling ball!’” said Carolyn Johnson, laughing.

But Johnson’s scariest brush with danger came when he was 3. He was traveling in a car with his parents and sister when they were hit by a drunk driver, who fled the scene.

The family’s car flipped over several times.

Miraculously, nobody suffered any life-threatening injuries.

However, until just a couple of years ago, Johnson’s mother was still pulling small pieces of glass out of her scalp.

And Johnson would later be diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, a condition in which a bone (vertebra) in the lower part of the spine slips forward and onto a bone below it. Luckily, it has never affected his athletic career.

“We’re grateful to be alive,” said Ted Johnson, James’ father.

Late bloomer

Ted Johnson’s career in the airline industry took the family all over the place — Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and California.

When James was 7, the family made its way to Lethbridge, a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. Essentially, that’s where Johnson grew up playing basketball.

Johnson vividly recalls the days when his father tried to teach him how to shoot left-handed layups. “We did it for two hours and I couldn’t do one to save my life,” Johnson said. “I would get so mad.”

But Johnson would eventually get the hang of it. In the eighth grade, he threw down his first dunk. By the ninth grade, he was one of the top players in Canada.

However, all along Johnson and his family knew that the road to playing big-time college hoops rolled through the country to the south of them. To that end, Johnson moved to San Diego to live with Shaun Manning, a trainer-mentor type who was known for helping kids reach their basketball potential.

Due to San Diego high school transfer rules, Johnson wasn’t permitted to play his junior year — but living in Southern California gave Johnson much-needed exposure.

Johnson’s parents still question their decision to let their son essentially live on his own, but Johnson calls the year “the biggest of my life.”

“It was really beneficial to me,” he said. “It helped me grow spiritually and as a person.

“I got to test myself, make a lot of my own decisions and see how I did in the real world by myself.”

Johnson says not playing high school basketball was actually an advantage. Instead of having to be part of a team, he could focus on strength and conditioning, as well skill development.

In addition, Johnson had frequent opportunities to play against older and more physical players. “There were just 30- and 40-year olds beating on me every day,” Johnson recalled. “Every time I took an elbow, I was like, ‘I’m getting stronger.’”

On one occasion, Johnson played in a pick-up game at a local community college that included high school phenom Jeremy Tyler (who played professionally in Israel last season).

“I walked in and saw this big 7-foot dude and was like, ‘I’ve got to guard him?’” Johnson said. “I had no idea who it was.”

Johnson says he wound up playing so well against Tyler that the frustrated teen challenged him to a game of one-on-one afterward. “He beat up on me pretty bad,” said Johnson, laughing.

The turning point of Johnson’s college recruitment took place up the road at a camp in Long Beach, Calif. Johnson played well and subsequently earned an invitation to the NBA Top 100 Camp in Charlottesville.

There, he got to see Virginia’s campus first-hand, and also went toe-to-toe with the likes of Ohio State-bound big man Jared Sullinger.

From that point on, Johnson was on everyone’s radar.

Smooth transition

For his senior year, Johnson reunited with his parents when they moved to Wildomar to live with Johnson’s aunt. Johnson, finally eligible to play, transferred to Elsinore High School.

“He just instantly acclimated to the culture of the school,” said Dr. Jonathan Hurst, Elsinore’s principal. “The kids embraced him — and not just because he played basketball.”

Amy Campbell, the school’s assistant principal, got to know Johnson well. “He’s the only one on campus who has more shoes than me,” she said, laughing.

Campbell, who gave Johnson special permission to wear orange basketball sneakers to his graduation, says Johnson’s classmates recognized his genuine nature.

“He goes from group to group and they all appreciate him,” said Campbell, a day before Johnson graduated. “It’s not just like he hangs out with the basketball players. It’s kind of everybody.

“He has a very quirky personality ... he’s a very likable guy.”

During the season, Johnson’s mother was attending one of James’ games when a faculty member approached her with some startling news: In his spare time, James had been working with special education children at the school.

“He had never even told us,” said Carolyn Johnson, her eyes beginning to water. “We had no idea.”

Johnson, who even attended the special ed prom, says he loves working with kids.

“I feel like I’ve been given a lot and have been blessed with a lot,” he said. “When I see kids who aren’t as fortunate as I was, I love doing anything I can just to make their day.

“I’ll walk with them, get lunch with them, do whatever. A lot of people may just walk by them and not notice them, but I want to be the one to help them out.”

On the basketball court, the happy beneficiary of the Johnson’s move to Wildomar was Elsinore coach Pete Rettinger.

“His personality was just great,” said Rettinger, whose team, believe it or not, featured six red-headed players. “All the kids took to him. Everyone blended.”

Johnson’s skills weren’t too shabby, either.

“To see him on the Internet didn’t really do justice,” said Elsinore assistant coach Rick Wolters, when asked about the first time he saw Johnson play. “There were just times during the year where you go, ‘That was unbelievable.’

“What he would do up in the air with the ball...when you think he’s going to just reverse a layup off the board, he dunks it on somebody.”

Behind Johnson, Elsinore made it all the way to the CIF-Southern Section 3AA semifinals — the school’s best finish in eight years — before losing to eventual champion Foothill.

Wolters calls Johnson’s work ethic “second to none.”

“He tends to drive the other kids,” Wolters said. “I think it’s contagious.”

“Sometimes when you get superstar players, they sometimes don’t work as hard,” added assistant coach Steve Sparkman. “But he worked as hard as anybody — in practice, in games, the weight room.”

Johnson’s diligence was so off the charts that Rettinger often found himself reminding Johnson to stop and smell the roses once in a while.

“Our biggest thing was just, ‘James, have fun,’” Rettinger said. “There’s a lot of pressure he puts on himself. But he handled everything very, very well.”

Decision time

After his breakout performances on the summer camp circuit, Johnson’s scholarship offers went from zero to 50.

San Diego State and the University of San Diego were two of the first schools to jump in.

Surprisingly, Virginia Tech was also in early. Ted Johnson said Hokies coach Seth Greenberg had never forgiven himself for not signing Canadian Steve Nash when he had the chance at Long Beach State. The same Canadian contact who had recommended Nash had been in Greenberg’s ear regarding Johnson.

Greenberg had lots of competition for Johnson, though.

Johnson garnered offers from the likes of Stanford, Marquette and UConn. Eventually, Johnson whittled his choices down to Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Cal.

Ted Johnson recalled an in-home visit from Sooners coach Jeff Capel.

“He said that his game reminded him a lot of Blake Griffin’s game — the power and the athleticism,” said Johnson, alluding to the former Oklahoma star, the No. 1 pick in last year’s NBA draft. “The only difference he said was shooting from the outside. Apparently, Blake didn’t have much of an outside game when he first got there.”

As much as Johnson liked Capel and the other coaches, he just didn’t have the same feeing with them as he had with Bennett. From almost the first time they met, Bennett had stood out.

When Johnson would talk to Bennett on the phone, basketball was barely broached. Often times, they discussed their relationship with God.

“He would talk more just about life and what I was looking forward to in life,” Johnson said. “He said, ‘I can’t promise you anything or that you are going to go to the NBA, but I’ll work with you to make you the best you can be.

“That’s all I care about. I don’t care about starting or playing right away. All I care about is getting in the gym and working as hard as I can.”

As fate would have it, Ted Johnson was already very familiar with Bennett. Although he was born in Chicago, Johnson had essentially grown up in Green Bay, Wisc., Bennett’s hometown. Johnson knew all about Bennett’s father, Dick, who had coached at Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Carolyn Johnson took an immediate liking to Bennett, who was one of few coaches who wanted to speak with her. “I just thought that was awesome,” she said.

For James, Virginia also had an added allure: his sister, Joannah, was a student at Liberty University, only a 70-mile drive from Charlottesville. The siblings, just two years apart, have always been close. Carolyn Johnson refers to Joannah as James’ “center.”

As Johnson was sitting in Bennett’s office during an official visit last fall, he knew he had found everything he was looking for in a school.

But before he told Bennett that he wanted to go ahead and commit, he called his father, who just happened to be in church back in California.

When Ted Johnson answered his phone, he was standing by a giant window that overlooked the foothills of the Coastal Mountains and San Diego’s I-15 freeway. In the distance, Johnson could see the exact road that James had run up so many times.

After making sure that James hadn’t rushed into his decision, Johnson smiled.

“I was looking at that road, and I knew that it had special meaning,” Ted Johnson said. “It was like, ‘This is it. All your hard work’s paid off.’”

And then some.