Kris Johnson Has Finally Shed His Past and Become a Starter for the Bruins

Kris Johnson has been through thick and thin, mostly because he used to be thick and now he’s thin.

It’s a self-help story, a fitness plan and a super-diet guide all in one, with Johnson’s chubby, sullen BEFORE and chiseled, beaming AFTER pictures both an advertisement and an inspiration to everybody who wants to drop 48 pounds and score 36 points against California someday.

At his portliest, last spring, he weighed almost 270 pounds, stoked by a steady intake of Fatburgers, super-sundaes and all the glop and goo a frustrated teenager could stuff into his burgeoning body.

“One day, I’ll never forget, I was about to take a shower,” the Bruin sophomore wingman said. “I was kind of to the side, and I looked into a mirror and there was cellulite. And I was thinking, ‘I’m an athlete and I have cellulite?’ I was like, ‘Whoa, I’ve got to do something.’ ”

Even as a standout at Crenshaw High, Johnson was hefty for his height, 6 feet 5 on tiptoes.

But after injuring his knee during the summer before his freshman year in Westwood, then suffering a stress fracture in his foot early in the season, Johnson couldn’t crack UCLA’s regular rotation and began tipping the scales at well above his 235-pound high school weight.

Then the Bruins won the national title, and, after a long spree of celebrations, suddenly, Johnson was 265, which was not going to win him any conditioning contests--or playing time.

There was nothing left for him but to begin the mother of all diet and fitness regimens--his mother’s.

Already set to spend a month in the summer with his mother, Sabrina Sheran, in Atlanta, Johnson made the decision that transformed his body--and his game. The resulting quickness and endurance have made him one of UCLA’s most dependable players this season.

After averaging only 4.3 minutes and 1.7 points a game his freshman season, Johnson moved into the starting lineup in this season’s sixth game, against Maryland on Dec. 9, and eight games later, scored a Pacific 10 Conference season-high 36 points against Cal.

“I knew he was overweight and had the [arthroscopic knee] surgery, then had that stress fracture, so I knew he needed some healing,” said Sheran, a nutritionist. “He was very sensitive about the subject of losing weight.

“Then he just came to me and said, ‘Mom, I need help.’ I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ ”

The first thing Sheran did was eliminate the junk. No more Doritos, ice cream and all the other pound-producing stuff.

“Kris was . . . frustrated, and he was taking it out by eating everything,” his mother said. “I don’t tolerate that, not at all. Eating ice cream and pies and cookies? He didn’t get that here.”

Said Kris: “I’d be ridiculous. Eight scoops of ice cream, go have a Fatburger and a milkshake a couple hours later. My eating habits were really uncontrollable.

“And I’d really be hungry. I didn’t think I had a disorder, where I was just obese, where I needed to eat, eat, eat . . . but I was legitimately hungry.”

Sheran made sure Kris got out and exercised with her on the local high school track, at least for an hour a day, five days a week. Soon, her son was working on his own, one or two more times a day, and if he had to snack, it was on carrots and protein milkshakes.

“The main thing with Kris is, we had to reduce the fat, and then we had to burn whatever he had on,” said Sheran, who plans to write a book about her fitness and dieting philosophies.

Almost immediately, the work and the low-fat, high-fiber diet started chipping pounds off Johnson. After 30 days with his mother, he returned to Southern California 30 pounds lighter and trying to drop at least 20 more.

“The lowest I got was, like, 214 this summer, when I was really into it,” Johnson said. “I was just working out unbelievably. My dad [former UCLA and NBA standout Marques Johnson] looked at me, ‘Aww, you’re getting skinny, man.’

“Toby [Bailey] at that time was about 205. And I’m nine pounds more than Toby? Right now, I’m 222. I’ve never felt this good in my life. Just in practice, I’m finishing first and second, third in the [conditioning drills], just not really getting tired. I’ve always wanted to be one of those guys, like Toby and Charles [O’Bannon], that just never got tired.”

Johnson did his transformation in relative secrecy, not telling Coach Jim Harrick, his teammates or even his father. When they saw him, saw his cheekbones for the first time, his bony shoulders, they were stunned.

“He told me [on the phone] he had lost some weight,” assistant coach Lorenzo Romar said. “And other people said, ‘Have you seen Kris Johnson? You won’t believe it when you see him.’

“So I tried to brace myself. I tried to, in my mind, imagine this halfway skinny guy. But when I saw him, it still exceeded anything I had expected.

“He looked like he was sick when I first saw him. But the more I looked at him, he looked good. He looked sleek. Last year, he was a St. Bernard, now he’s a Doberman.”

Said Johnson: “Some people didn’t recognize me. I walked on campus, no one said anything to me, people I knew. And I’d be, ‘Hey, what’s up man?’ And they were, ‘What happened to you? Did you starve yourself?’

“A lot of the guys, they were just proud. It didn’t even have to be said. I could see it in their eyes. Charles just gave me a little hug, like, ‘Good job.’ Those are the things that made me feel the best.”

Last year, the volatile Johnson pouted and grumbled through much of his time as a rarely used role player, wearing a towel on his head during the late season in a semi-statement about his playing time.

And Johnson was a target for crowd taunts, with last year’s trip to Berkeley’s Harmon Gym especially memorable.

“I got into the game--the game was decided, I’m barely playing and they’re chanting, ‘Johnson is fat! Johnson is fat!’ And I was like, ‘What’d I do?’ ” Johnson said.

This season? Although UCLA plays Cal in the Oakland Coliseum Arena and not Harmon, there are no more towels, only a blissful smile when his fall-away jump shot is dropping and he’s beating everybody else to the offensive glass.

“He feels a lot better,” said Bailey, Johnson’s best friend on the team. “He’s a real vain person, and this really just put him over the top. He loves himself. He’s just loving life right now.”

Johnson, averaging 11.6 points a game, is averaging 18.1 points since the Cal game and shooting 64.8% in that span. He has scored most of his baskets on quick slices to the offensive board or layups off transitions, aspects of his game that would have been unimaginable 48 pounds ago.

“He’s where he should be,” his mother said. “He’s playing at that level he should play, in my opinion.”

The trimmer body has given Johnson the agility to play opposite point guard Bailey on the perimeter, a key spot with the guard-thin Bruins, especially when Cameron Dollar was hindered because of a finger injury.

Last season, the UCLA coaches wanted Johnson’s scoring touch in games but had to force him in as a short power forward or a diminutive center, because his feet weren’t quick enough for him to guard anybody smaller.

“They’re always saying he’s too slow . . . or what position is he?” Romar said. “I’m tired of hearing that. What difference does it make? He’s in position to score. That’s all I care about.”

This season, facing many small guards, Johnson has held his own defensively and been at times dominating when he has found his way down low with a short guy.

“Everybody that I’d talk to would say, ‘You’re position is “two” [shooting] guard,’ ” Johnson said. “My dad would tell me, ‘Man, you’ve got to get down to about 220.’ You know, speaking hypothetically, like not really thinking I was going to really do it. It was like, ‘Wow, at 220, you’d be a whole different player.’ I was thinking, ‘Yeah, 50 pounds. Yeah right.’ ”

Said Harrick: “I’ll tell you what I really am surprised at is Kris Johnson’s defense. People have not scored on him. I thought people are going to break him down, like we do, maybe abuse him, and no one has. No one has.”

But, without his mother around to cook for him and remind him of dietary sanity, can he maintain the regimen?

“I just have to have a lot of will power,” Johnson said. “Sometimes, I slip up, but I don’t do it to the point where it’s going to hurt me. It’s real difficult. I call my mom every week, and I’m like, ‘Mom, I feel like I’m kind of slipping up a little bit.’ She’ll talk to me about it and she’ll get me back on track.”

Said Sheran: “I don’t worry about it, because I know he liked the results he got when he was here. He liked the way he felt, the way he looked.”

In an instant challenge to his new body, as soon as Johnson got back to Los Angeles, he was invited to the games Michael Jordan was organizing on the Warner Studios lot, during breaks in filming a movie.

Shaquille O’Neal was there, Grant Hill, Chris Webber. . . . And, according to Johnson, Jordan decided to take Johnson under his wing, choosing him for his team every game.

“Michael, his whole thing was I went to the basket too much,” Johnson said. “He was, ‘You’ve got to shoot that jump shot.’ ”

Then, Johnson breaks into a huge smile.

“After we lost to Kansas [last Dec. 2, when Johnson went three for 10], he called me on the phone. I wasn’t there, but I had a message. He was like, ‘I told you if you worked on that jump shot you could have busted that zone Kansas got into.’

“We were in the airport, I’m checking my messages, and it’s, ‘Hey, it’s your buddy Michael Jordan.’ I was like, ‘Charles, come here! Come here! Listen to this!’

“Everyone you could think of was at those games. Juwan Howard--he and Grant Hill gave me the most confidence this summer, because they were saying, ‘Man, you’re going to start this season.’ And they were right, huh?”

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THE SKINNY

The Kris Johnson low-fat, high-fiber diet and weight loss regimen, as prescribed by his mother, nutritionist Sabrina Sheran:

Morning: Eat fruit for energy, work out for one to two hours.

Breakfast: Fruit, bagel and fat-free jelly.

Lunch: A soyburger or tofu, fruit.

Dinner: Lightly steamed vegetables, a big salad, steamed rice.

Snacks: Carrots and other raw vegetables, fat-free pretzels, low-fat yogurt.

Diet Tips

-The goal is to limit yourself to at most 20 grams of fat intake a day.

-Take vitamin supplements and high-protein milkshakes for energy and to get the metabolism to quicken.

-Make sure to get plenty of rest during the day, and at least eight hours of sleep at night.

-Drink lots of water all day.

Absolute no-nos:

Desserts, red meat, fried foods of any kind.