MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — With the recent hiring of DerMarr Johnson as the third assistant coach for West Virginia’s men’s basketball program, the Mountaineers showed they wanted a full staff in place over the remainder of this season.
Johnson, who began his coaching duties in Morgantown last week, has been on the bench for the Mountaineers’ last two games after a unique midseason transition from Cincinnati, where he had served as director of player development since May 2021.
“It’s wild. Still trying to get caught up on a lot,” Johnson said. “I was preparing for a game at Cincinnati, and I get the call and here I am. Now I’m trying to do all this paperwork, trying to catch up with the team, I have an Auburn scout and I’m trying find a place to live. Everything is happening pretty fast.”
Johnson’s longstanding relationship with Bob Huggins led to the two reuniting 23 years after Johnson played his lone season of college basketball for perhaps the best team Huggins ever coached — the 1999-2000 Cincinnati squad.
That Bearcats’ team entered the Conference USA Tournament with a 28-2 record and realistic thoughts of winning a National Championship, before future No. 1 NBA draft pick Kenyon Martin suffered a broken leg. UC eventually bowed out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, concluding its season with 29 wins.
“Huggs told me years before when I was still so much into playing that he wanted me to come here, finish school and be a GA,” Johnson said. “But I was still really playing at that time. A few years later, it made more sense when [former Cincinnati and current UCLA coach Mick Cronin] asked me to do it, because I was winding down. I knew I needed to get on the other side at some point and I thought it was a good opportunity. Recently, when Huggs called me, it was a dream come true. I’ve been rooting for West Virginia for a long time and been trying to get with Huggs for a while now.”
Johnson, a native of Riverdale Md., nearly never played for Huggins. After two seasons of high school basketball at the Newport School in Kensington, Md., Johnson wound up at Maine Central Institute his senior year.
MCI alumni include notable past NBA players Caron Butler, Sam Cassell, Cuttino Mobley and Brad Miller.
Johnson went on to become the Parade Magazine High School Player of the Year in 1999, an honor that previously bestowed upon the likes of Patrick Ewing, Chris Webber and Kobe Bryant, and later won twice by LeBron James.
With players eligible to make the jump directly from high school to the NBA at that time, the 6-foot-9 Johnson, nicknamed “Slim”, gave it strong consideration. Johnson’s skill, length, versatility and athleticism made the taller guard an attractive prospect at the highest level.
“The plan was always to go straight to go to the NBA and I decided to pick a college late,” Johnson recalled. “A lot of the questions around me were was my body physically ready for the NBA and if I play hard. Going to Cincinnati, they had a great weight program and if you play for Huggs, you have no choice but to play hard. So I figured that would answer all those questions that they had about me.”
Though there was plenty of competition for Johnson’s services, the Bearcats had a good thing going at that time, which Huggins believes helped sway Johnson to be a Bearcat.
“Every big name you can think of recruited him and we were fortunate to get him,” Huggins said. “I went up to Maine Central and sat down and talked to him. You would be dumbfounded at the people that went in there before I went in. I got two bags of ice, walked in and said, ‘Put these on your ears, man. These guys have just worn you out. Cool your ears off a little bit. I just need to talk to you for 15, 20 minutes.’
“What I said to him was, ‘Do you want to go win a National Championship? We have the best center in the country. There isn’t any question. He’ll be the No. 1 pick in the draft. You’re not going to play center — Kenyon won’t let you do that. You’re not going to play small forward — Pete Mickeal will never let that happen. You’re not going to play point guard. [Kenny] Satterfield and [Steve] Logan have that locked down and you’re not a point guard to start with. Jermaine Tate is not going to let you play power forward. Jermaine’s pretty good. The place that I have that I think you fit is as an off guard, because you can shoot it and pass it. You give us more size and athleticism than what we even have now. Let’s go win a National Championship.’ That was it. Next thing I know, he calls and says I’m coming coach.”
The move paid off for Johnson, who played one year of college basketball and was chosen by the Atlanta Hawks with the sixth pick in the 2000 NBA draft.
Johnson played seven seasons in the NBA, overcoming a near-fatal car accident in September 2002 that broke four vertebrae in his neck and caused him to be in a halo brace during his recovery.
There was thought that Johnson, who missed the entire 2002-2003 NBA season, would never play again following the serious wreck. However, he returned the following year to play for the New York Knicks and went on to play an additional three seasons for the Denver Nuggets before wrapping up his NBA career with a brief stint on the San Antonio Spurs.
Johnson’s playing career continued internationally through 2016, and then in the Big3 before he began coaching at Cincinnati as a student assistant in 2017.
“He has great experience,” Huggins said. “He’s played at the highest level there is in college basketball and the highest level there is in professional basketball. For anybody to think that he’s this tall, skinny guy who’s soft, stop and think what the guy went through to come back and play in the NBA. Kenyon and I actually went in and saw him. It was the morning of the accident and to walk in there and see that halo on his head, and to come out of that the way he came out of that and still be as productive as what he was as a player is absolutely remarkable.”
Johnson will work closely to develop West Virginia’s guards.
“I was a guard. I can help them all, but that’s where I was a pro,” Johnson said.
Although he doesn’t have a wealth of recruiting experience, Johnson also will be asked to help in that regard.
As a result of his success and fame as a player, Johnson is regarded as a legend in basketball-crazed Prince George’s County, which borders Washington, D.C. He hopes to use his status around his hometown as a recruiting tool to help the Mountaineers land high school talent from an area that hardly lacks it.
“That’s a big reason why coach [Wes] Miller even hired me at Cincinnati. In that area, I have a lot of influence,” Johnson said. “All those guys running those teams used to coach me or play with me and a lot of those guys look up to me. I’m looking forward to being able to at least show my face at tournaments and events now, and I think I’ll have a big impact in that area. I just have to find out what coach wants and try to go get it.”
While that area is less than a four-hour drive from Morgantown, Huggins believes the Mountaineers have done a poor job recruiting around the nation’s capital in his tenure. He’s hopeful Johnson’s impact changes that.
“I’m excited about this and with the fact that he can go into D.C., and everyone knows him,” Huggins said. “I’m not embarrassed to say that we haven’t done a very good job in D.C. [Former WVU head coach Gale Catlett] did a much better job in D.C. than we did. We really didn’t do a good job at all, and you think about the players that have come through here from D.C. We need to get in there and do a better job, and he’s as good a guy as there is to go in there and help us do that.”