An unorthodox Easter Sunday in 2014 changed the course of Cam Johnson’s basketball career.

As it is remembered by Jamie Dixon, the University of Pittsburgh coach at the time, Johnson was a senior at nearby Our Lady of the Sacred Heart High School in Coraopolis, Pa. The local prospect had scholarship offers from Ivy League institutions and interest from other elite universities like Stanford, Rice and Boston College.

“That’s how good of a student he was. That’s how bright he was,” Dixon, now the coach at TCU, told The Denver Gazette on Sunday.

“He could’ve gotten into the Ivy Leagues without basketball.”

Dixon said he had known Johnson, the salutatorian of his high school class, since Johnson was a child. Johnson’s father, Gilbert, played for the Panthers from 1988-90. Johnson’s mother, Amy Schuler-Johnson, was also a hooper, scoring more than 1,000 points over her career at Kent State.

Some ill-timed injuries prevented Dixon from seeing the Panthers’ legacy on the court during key stretches of the recruitment process.

“Those two times I didn’t get to see him was probably the best thing that could’ve happened,” Dixon said.

When some time opened around Easter, Dixon had his basketball operations guy, Brian Regan, reach out to his friend, Mike Rodriguez, the coach at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. A workout was set up on short notice. Two women were included to make two teams of four for a full-court game. It wasn’t the ideal scenario for talent evaluation, but Dixon liked what he saw.

“He had grown. He had gotten bigger, and he was shooting it from deep,” Dixon said, adding Johnson had also grown as a ball-handler.

“I talked to him afterwards, and I offered him.”

By the time Dixon was getting into his car, Johnson was chasing him down and committing to play for the Panthers.

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The plan was for Johnson to redshirt in his first collegiate season.

Some around the program didn’t think the local star was cut out to help the Panthers as the program transitioned to the Atlantic Coast Conference. There were questions about his strength and toughness.

“They crushed me locally for taking him,” Dixon said.

Plans and public sentiment changed quickly. Johnson took advantage of the proximity between childhood home and college to start lifting in the Panthers’ weight room. The physical transformation from the spring of his senior year and the summer before his freshman year opened eyes.

“It was ridiculous,” Dixon said. “We couldn’t believe it.”

The conversation amongst the Panthers coaches shifted from redshirting the wing to his chances of playing at the highest level.

“It happened so quick,” Dixon said.

Johnson earned playing time as a true freshman, but a shoulder injury ended his season after eight games. He ended up using a medical redshirt year and played 32 games the following season as a redshirt freshman.

Dixon departed following the 2015-16 season to take the job at his alma mater, TCU.

Johnson stuck around Pittsburgh for one more season, starting all 33 of the Panthers’ games and shooting 41.5% from 3-point range. He transferred to North Carolina with two years of NCAA eligibility remaining. He left Pittsburgh with a communications degree earned with honors in three years and two All-ACC Academic team selections. He enrolled at North Carolina, where he pursued a master’s degree in sports administration while playing for Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams.

Injuries plagued his first two years in Chapel Hill, but he closed his college career by starting all 36 games, averaging a career-best 16.9 points and shooting a blistering 45.7% from 3-point range.

A little more than five years after the fateful Easter of 2014, the Timberwolves drafted Johnson with the 11th pick of the 2019 NBA draft.

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Johnson’s time in Minnesota didn’t last long, but he’s well-accustomed to integrating into a new team.

He spent the first two years of his prep career at Moon Area High School in Pennsylvania. He transferred again in college. A few weeks after being drafted into the NBA, he was traded from Minnesota to Phoenix. He spent parts of four seasons with the Suns and played in the 2021 Finals before being sent to Brooklyn in the trade that sent Kevin Durant to the desert.

A few years later, the Nuggets and Nets swapped small forwards, bringing Johnson back to a contender.

“We have a team that can win games,” Johnson said. “That, in and of itself, is exciting to me.”

A curious mind has helped ease the transition process. Being with his new team for a full preseason, instead of being traded midseason, helps, too.

“This is a team that I’m trying to play catch up and figure it out, get on the same page as everything they’ve been doing for a while now,” Johnson said.

“I’ve got questions all the time. I’m figuring out what people are doing and why they’re doing it, where people are looking and why they’re looking there. It’s a process.”

The third stop of Johnson’s NBA career is a combination of his two previous roles in Phoenix and Brooklyn. Johnson finished third in the Sixth Man of the Year race during his final full season with the Suns in 2021-22 when he averaged 12.5 points and shot 42.5% from deep. Last season, he posted a career-high 18.8 points and 3.4 assists and per game with the Nets.

“This is really new for Cam,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said Friday. “He’s played a different style in Brooklyn. (It was) a very execution-based style in Phoenix. This is kind of somewhere in the middle. It’s kind of a hybrid of those two things. It’s just him getting used to the spacing, the feel.”

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Now, the task is figuring out how to meld minds with Nikola Jokic’s big brain.

The three-time Most Valuable Player is doing what he can to help his new teammate in the process. He shared his message to Johnson after Friday’s practice.

“Don’t try to fit in. Like, you’re a really important part of this offense. Be yourself, and don’t try to think, ‘Oh, should I do this or should I do that?’” Jokic said. “Just play your game and be aggressive in the moment or the role that you are given.”

Jokic’s cross-court, one-handed pass to Johnson in the opposite corner of Denver’s second preseason game was a crash course in Jokic Ball 101. Johnson missed the shot, but it didn’t catch him by surprise.

“I knew it was coming. He looked at me before he went to the back down. So, he caught the ball. I think there’s a moment he’s kind of facing the rim. He looked in my direction, moreso at my defender. When he went to the back down, I knew that there was a high chance that ball was coming my way one way or another,” Johnson said.

“I’m getting used to it. I’ve seen a couple of (those passes) in practice. I should’ve made it. My fault. It felt good.”

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After the Michael Porter Jr. trade was made official last summer, Johnson joined most of his new teammates in Los Angeles for some informal pickup runs at UCLA. That helped expedite the integration process, but there’s still plenty of work left to do.

The Nuggets’ coach said he still needed to install some of the plays designed to get the career 39% 3-point shooter some looks. The added on-ball responsibilities Johnson shouldered in Brooklyn also created more possibilities in Denver.

“Cam can play a lot of different ways. I mean, he is, and we’re just getting him comfortable. Cam is one of those guys that plays for his teammates sometimes, instead of, you know, force feeding himself into the action,” Adelman said. “Today (last Thursday) was a good day for us to see them play live. I thought he’s a lot more aggressive to come to the ball. We got to get into his right hand more. I haven’t put in pet plays for him yet, but we’ll get there, for sure. He’s a really special player, and you can plug and play him in a lot of ways.”

A day later, Johnson was one of the standouts at practice.

“Cam made everything today … damn,” Bruce Brown said Friday. “The blue team (starters) kicked our ass, because Cam was making every shot. … Cam fits in perfect.”

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During his first day on campus, Dixon took Johnson and Ryan Luther, another freshman from the area, to the university’s law school.

The coach thought that might be helpful for their future. More than a decade later, Luther is still playing in Europe, and Johnson’s a key cog to an NBA team with championship aspirations. Figuring out how to maximize his skillet is a work in progress, but Johnson’s smart enough to see what’s to come.

“The exciting thing to me is where I can continue to find more and more of those opportunities in the flow of what we do. It’s not fully there yet. I’m still trying to figure all of that out, but just playing, we’ll get there,” Johnson said.

“Just relying on the basketball IQ I’ve built up over the years, you just got to trust yourself to make the right play and do what you do with confidence and conviction. I think the guys expect that out of me, and I expect that out of them.”