Cypress’ Johnson Is First on the List of Winners

Early in his career as a basketball coach, in order to bring some order to his chaotic world of missed jump shots and out-of-bounds bounce passes, Don Johnson became a list freak. To this day, he remains an incorrigible compiler, a chronic chronicler, an inveterate indexer.

Wherever he may roam, Johnson leaves behind a paper trail.

Lists of plays to run in practice.

Lists of points to make in his pregame pep talk.

Lists of things to do before practice.

Lists of things to do after practice.

Lists of his lists. And lists of those lists.

Late in his career as a basketball coach, Johnson has put together a few more items and put them down on paper. The other day, off the top of his head, he ticked them off:

“Landscaping. Gardening. Playing golf. Playing tennis. Walking the dog. Traveling. Playing with the grandkids.”

Things to do in retirement.

“It’s a fairly impressive list,” Johnson says. He shakes his head and smiles. “But I don’t necessarily equate keeping busy with retaining one’s feeling of self-worth.”

After 27 years of overseeing one of the country’s most successful community college basketball programs at Cypress College, Don Johnson is retiring. Or attempting to. He tried this once before, in 1971, when doctors told him to quit for his health, because Johnson “was fairly close to a nervous breakdown,” and retirement barely made it to the state tournament.

“My wife, Colette, and I went to (Cypress’) first game that year,” Johnson recalls, “and at halftime, I looked over to my wife and she was crying. I said, ‘Colette, why are you crying?’ and she said, ‘Those are not our kids anymore.’

“I felt the same way. I had this hollow, empty feeling. We left at halftime and really couldn’t bear to go back very often that year.”

By the start of the next basketball season, Johnson was back as head coach, on his way to a California community college-record 588 victories. Tonight, Johnson goes for No. 589 in Cypress’ 1993-94 regular-season finale against Riverside Community College.

Along the way, a good many clipboards have died for the cause of Charger basketball. As a form of stress management, Johnson tosses them during games, cracks them over his knee and slams them to the floor.

“I’ve gone through countless,” Johnson says, “definitely triple digits by now. I’ve got to average probably two or three clipboards a year.”

After the clipboard, Johnson’s folding chair was traditionally the next to take flight, although, since turning 60, Johnson claims to have mellowed.

“I’m don’t throw the chair now,” he proudly reports. “I throw my coat. Which, I think, is showing some maturity on my part.”

With his flinty facial features, steely eyes and salt-and-pepper mustache, Johnson has long borne a physical resemblance to the actor Dennis Weaver. Dramatically, there is a resemblance as well.

Remember Weaver in “Duel,” when he played a harried traveling salesman driving for his life with a killer 18-wheeler on his heels?

That was the how Johnson weathered hundreds of Cypress games--frantic, eyes darting, tormented by dread, ready to melt down at any minute.

A few weeks ago, Johnson was sharing lunch with his old college coach, John Wooden, who told Johnson that he “always enjoyed planning practice and conducting practice but did not enjoy the games. That says it for me, too.

“I never enjoyed the games that much. There was always that fear of losing, which (Johnson grins) has guided my entire stupid life.

“Fear of failure. Fear of letting people down, because you felt you were representing them in some way on that court.

“But you know what? The boosters here would have remained my good friends even if we hadn’t had as many good seasons. The kids, I think, would have liked me even if we hadn’t had this kind of success. We just get too caught up in winning in our society, I feel.”

Yet the games, by and large, were good to Johnson. With them, he won State championships in 1977 and 1980, the latter requiring a monumental semifinal upset over Bill Mulligan’s top-ranked Saddleback Gauchos, perhaps the greatest JC basketball team to play in Orange County.

That Saddleback team was led by Kevin Magee, a future All-American for Mulligan at UC Irvine. Cypress countered with gangly, awkward Mark Eaton, all 7 feet 4 of him, who went on to amazing wealth with the NBA’s Utah Jazz but could barely jump over a phone book in 1980.

Johnson engineered a memorable victory with a defensive strategy that consisted basically of stationing Eaton in front of the basket and telling him to raise his arms.

“That game, in my mind, was the most electrifying situation,” Johnson says. “(Assistant coach) Jack Long and I remember, as our kids are warming up, how we couldn’t even feel our feet on the ground. Literally, we were on a euphoric high. That stands out as the biggest game we’ve played here.”

Eaton and Swen Nater are Johnson’s legacy--two raw seven-footers, with little or no basketball credentials before Cypress, who spent two years with Johnson and went on to lucrative careers in the NBA. Subsequently, Johnson and Cypress gained a reputation as an elite reclamation center for uncoordinated large fellows who can’t keep from tripping over their shoelaces.

“I know people think that,” Johnson says, “and I kind of wish it weren’t so. I get a lot of satisfaction from the fact Swen and Mark went on and did so well and they are really nice, great human beings. But I wish Cypress didn’t have the reputation of cultivating only the big guys. I think we’ve had a lot of success developing players of all levels and all positions.”

Johnson recites the names, reluctantly at first, because “I know I’ll leave out three dozen really, really good players.”

Rick Quinn, Tyrone Branyan, Ron Davis, Eric Pauley.

Brian Kenney, David Baker, Dave Shutts, John Moore.

Scott McIver, Alan Bruce, Stan Davis, Jud Beardsley, Paul Gilbert.

Twenty-seven years. A lot of names. Johnson could go on, but he’s got a game to coach this night, at Fullerton, and as usual, Johnson is fretting about it.

No way we can win it, Johnson says.

This may be the best Fullerton team I’ve seen in 27 years, Johnson says.

We’ll probably get hammered, Johnson says.

Final score: Cypress 82, Fullerton 79.

Just another in a long list.