Courtside Courtship Comes to a Close : High school basketball: Bob Johnson says goodby after 25 years of coaching at Granada Hills High with a gentleman’s touch.

The particulars, such as which game and when it took place, are lost in the mists of time, if not missed baskets. Doesn’t really matter. It could have been any of a hundred games.

The clock was winding down to nil, and the Granada Hills High boys’ basketball team was involved in another nail-biter. Players fidgeted nervously on the sideline as Coach Bob Johnson ran through the X’s and O’s.

Nothing unusual, then Johnson abruptly shifted gears. His longtime assistant, Louie Cicciari, had seen it before. Players were somewhat taken aback, though.

“Sometimes, in the middle of the huddle, in the middle of a real intense game, he’d say some amazing things,” Cicciari said. “Stuff like, ‘Isn’t this fun!’ Or, ‘Isn’t this great!’ ”

Players later realized Johnson was right. All that stuff about going to battle was pure bunk. The coach was simply reminding them: It’s just a game. Have fun. Keep it in perspective.

“To get down to that last shot and watch it-- arghhh ,” Johnson said. “That’s what it’s all about. It isn’t any fun to win by a lot or lose by a lot.”

The wild ride ends today for Johnson, 58, who after 25 years on the sideline at Granada Hills will coach his last game when the Highlanders play host to Reseda at 4 p.m.

The outcome won’t mean much. Granada Hills (3-17) will not qualify for the playoffs. Make no mistake, however, there is significance beyond the final score.

“I’m saddened to lose such a class act,” said Anne Falotico, the Granada Hills principal. “It’s going to leave a real hole in the program.”

Bring up the subject of Johnson, and the accolades come ringing in. Words such as class and integrity crop up repeatedly. And to think he could have spent a lifetime pondering wheat futures. Instead, he went against the grain.

There was a time when Johnson--the dean of area City Section coaches in terms of continued varsity service at one school--didn’t know whether he even wanted to coach. Growing up in Tujunga, he worked at the family feed and grain store, which was somewhat redundantly titled, “Johnson and Son.”

After dismissing a possible career in marketing--maybe it was too difficult to conceive of flashy TV ads for silage, stable pooper scoopers and feed bags--he graduated from USC with a degree in business. He worked for a year at a local bank and realized the 9-to-5 lifestyle was for suckers in three-piece suits.

“I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do,” he said. “That (job) wasn’t quite it.”

He quit his job, earned a teaching credential in physical education and sought a teaching and coaching position. He received nary a nibble.

One day, as he neared the completion date in the credential program, Johnson bumped into an assistant principal from his alma mater, Verdugo Hills High, while visiting Las Vegas. The administrator had since moved to Patrick Henry Junior High in Granada Hills, and told Johnson, “Call me when you’re through with school and you’re hired.”

“Talk about lucky,” Johnson said.

He was a natch in his new niche. After 7 1/2 years at Patrick Henry, all the while trying to land a job at Granada Hills High, Johnson hit paydirt again. His transfer came though, and he took over the school’s B and C programs in 1968, well before any of his current players were born.

The transfer from Patrick Henry, to a degree, gave him liberty and gave him death. After the past two seasons, this story could be subtitled “Nice Guy Finishes Last.”

Granada Hills has won one of its past 19 Northwest Valley Conference games. After a dismal 1991-92 season in which the Highlanders finished 3-19, the team was demoted to the 3-A Division.

Three years ago, Granada Hills was battling Cleveland for league supremacy. The games were spirited, entertaining and evenly matched. Players spent as much time in mid-air as on hardwood. Nobody enjoyed it more than Johnson.

That season, Granada Hills lost an overtime game to the Cavaliers. Highlander players were inconsolable. Most folks expected Johnson to be more than a little downbeat. Guess again.

“Wasn’t that something?” he said, grinning. “That was really fun to watch. Let’s do that again.”

In the era of chair-chucking, rule-bending, trash-talking coaches, Johnson is the eye of the storm, win or lose.

“I don’t make it my whole life,” he said. “If someone does that, it’s too easy to burn out. You have a bad season or two, and if it’s your whole life, you get quitting mad.

“You have good times, you have bad times, you have times when you can’t get along with the team. You have times this year when you have great kids, you get along with all of them, but you can’t win a game.”

More often than not, there were winning times at the school. Granada Hills won a City 3-A title in 1986-87 and usually contended for a league title. But the team has taken a swan dive during Johnson’s swan song.

That’s the best thing about longevity. Gives a guy better perspective and helps round off the rough edges.

“If this had been my first year, I would have quit,” Johnson said. “If last year had been my first, I would have quit. Good thing it wasn’t.”

It has been equally tumultuous off the floor. Four key players jumped ship for various reasons. One moved out of state, another decided to concentrate on baseball. Two others, Rowan Pearson and Marcel Wilson, transferred amid considerable uproar.

Pearson, a junior, transferred to Campbell Hall. Last week, the California Interscholastic Federation ruled that Pearson had violated state laws regarding dual residency and ordered Campbell Hall--the defending Southern Section Division V-AA champion--to forfeit eight games. As a result, Campbell Hall did not make the playoffs.

Wilson’s case was considerably more low key, but equally frustrating for Johnson. Wilson, a returning letterman who was expected to start this season as a junior, sought and received an opportunity transfer to Chatsworth last summer.

The Wilson family said that the transfer was needed to give Marcel, struggling in his classes at Granada Hills, a fresh academic start. Johnson and the Granada Hills football coaches--Wilson was also expected to start at wide receiver--were dubious. Johnson, a school guidance counselor, volunteered to personally monitor Wilson’s progress, but to no avail.

At the request of Johnson and the football coaches, Wilson was sent to Chatsworth without athletic privileges--a provision that was quickly vetoed.

“We were told that was illegal,” Johnson said, “Of course, that was after we agreed to send him over.”

Consequently, his final season has been an endurance test.

“He’s really not had many bad years,” said Cicciari, Johnson’s assistant from 1981-91. “It’s not the team he thought he was going to have. He’s been playing all year with his subs.”

Sublime, they aren’t. Substandard and submissive? More often than not. Yet Johnson, from whom rarely is heard a discouraging word, takes it in stride.

“He’s still positive,” said senior forward Tyrone Jackman, the team’s best player. “He holds it all in. He doesn’t show his frustration with us.”

Though most folks would have a hard time believing it, there was a time when Johnson’s tonsils were as active as anybody’s. In fact, he once was almost in a class with Darryl Stroh, the school’s lava-lunged football and baseball coach.

“We ran a tight ship,” Stroh said. “We were disciplinarians. We didn’t put up with much. He was real hard-nosed.”

A few years ago, though, Johnson was ordered to crank the volume down a peg. Not by a principal, parent or player, but by his doctor. Johnson was informed that he had high blood pressure, and that his high-impact earobics and animated manner conceivably could cause an untimely end.

“I used to be a lot more tense,” said Johnson, who estimates he has been whistled for eight technical fouls in his career. “I can’t get too upset anymore. . . . It’s been an evolution.”

It’s been Darwinian. Now he’s past tense. For those who have known Johnson for the past few years, it’s hard to believe he was once hard-boiled. Perhaps he simply masks it better than most.

“He has to keep it under control, but he’s still intense,” Cicciari said. “Some people look at his mannerisms on the sideline and see a guy who’s not real motivating. Believe me, that’s not the case.”

Johnson routinely needles Stroh, who has won five City baseball titles and another in football, about which of the two has softened most over the years.

“He says I’ve mellowed more and that I’m the one taking blood-pressure medicine,” Stroh said, chuckling at the thought.

“I think you still get just as tired. I still get just as upset, I just don’t have the strength to go after it as much. It’s probably like that for him too.”

Stroh ought to know. The Stroh and Johnson families have been running mates for years. House mates too.

Somewhere around 1970, the Strohs planned to move from Simi Valley to Granada Hills. Trouble was, escrow hadn’t closed on the new house, and the old one was already sold. So, Stroh’s family of three moved in with the Johnsons for a few weeks.

“We put all our stuff in his garage,” Stroh said.

Turnabout was fair play. When the Sylmar earthquake struck in 1971 and hundreds of Valley homes were evacuated for fear of flooding from a nearby dam, the Johnsons moved in with the Strohs for a few days.

The two coaches have traveled in remarkably similar circles for years. Both started at Patrick Henry and transferred to the high school in 1968.

Johnson assumed control of the varsity in 1979 and has compiled a mark of 159-128 over 14 seasons. Thirty-eight of the losses have come in the past two seasons. His B and C teams were 227-109 over 11 years.

The B’s and C’s, W’s and L’s are largely inconsequential in terms of the big picture. Ask anybody about Johnson’s persona and what follows sounds like a testimonial.

“He’s a gentleman all the way, one of the real good guys,” Taft Coach Jim Woodard said. “I’ll miss him.”

Even Stroh puts aside the bombast when he is asked about Johnson. “Bob is a man of integrity and class. I can’t even possibly begin to say enough nice things about him,” Stroh said.

For the sake of editorial balance, it should be noted that Johnson does have a disquieting tendency to wear green, the school color. Lots of it. He could qualify as the Notre Dame leprechaun. He could pass as ground cover in a rain forest.

There’s also green in his wallet, it seems. Johnson’s retirement isn’t exactly going to make him a burden on the Social Security system. That business degree from USC came in handy after all.

“I made some good investments,” Johnson said, with a twinkle in his eye that is matched only by the gleam of the inch-thick Rolex on his wrist.

When the school year ends in June, Johnson and his wife are heading to their home in posh Palm Desert. In their Mercedes-Benz 380 SL convertible.

“He’s done very well for himself financially,” Stroh said, laughing. “This is where we have very little in common.”

Stroh only recently was reminded of Johnson’s frugal streak. The two were recently tooling around Palm Springs when Johnson’s gas gauge fluttered toward “E.” Johnson pulled into a nearby station and eyed the gas pump. Eyebrows went north, car went south.

“That’s too high,” Johnson said as he drove away.

“He’ll drive five miles to save two cents a gallon,” Stroh said, chuckling. “Then he’ll think nothing about buying that (Rolex). Pretty funny.”

On the other hand, though Johnson would never admit it, Falotico said the coach has spent untold dollars over the years buying basketball shoes for underprivileged players. “He has the game in the right perspective,” Falotico said. “I remember after one game, somebody came up and said, ‘You need to make these guys shoot more free throws.’

“(Johnson) said, ‘Hey, these are high school students, not pros.’ ”

The silver-haired gent’s silver anniversary season hasn’t gone nearly as well as hoped, but there has been no loss of perspective.

“God, after 25 years, the last one has been pretty tough,” Jackman said. “It would have been nice for us to send him out a winner.”

Somewhere down the road, Jackman and his mates will realize they did just that.