SAN ANTONIO — Deep in the bowels of an NBA arena, the San Antonio Spurs have gathered around a boom box with a bubbling energy. Their emotional leader has his hands in the air, a clear sign that everything is going to be OK.
“It’s a party in the U.S.A.!” Spurs wing Keldon Johnson screams at the top of his lungs as his teammates throw up their hands in unison.
Then the Spurs run out to the floor, win another game, then run back to the locker room in jubilation. The team is full of stars, from Victor Wembanyama to De’Aaron Fox to rookie guard Dylan Harper. But nobody has a bigger presence in the locker room than Johnson. It’s easy to know when he’s there. Just listen for Mariah Carey or Vanessa Carlton.
“You know I’d walk a thousand miles if I could just see you tonight,” you can hear Johnson belting from the showers.
Johnson doesn’t listen to pop anthems all the time. He listens to plenty of rap and country, just like his teammates. But the man who routinely exudes child-like wonder taps into a deeper sense of self when he hears the opening piano riff from Carlton’s early-2000s banger, “A Thousand Miles.” He becomes carefree when Miley Cyrus yells, “Yeah.”
“As soon as you put it on, I know every lyric,” Johnson told The Athletic. “I feel like you go back to your childhood.”
DJ Keldon has a rotating playlist, but the mainstays are “Party in the U.S.A,” “A Thousand Miles” and “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit. There’s no place he’d rather be than San Antonio, so it has to stay in the queue.
“I thought he was messing around, trolling and being funny,” rookie wing Carter Bryant said. “But it turned into a thing. Every game, home and away, don’t matter.”
Johnson delights in playing the role of lovable buffoon in the locker room, but his goofiness has purpose. His teammates often roll their eyes when talking about his antics with a brotherly reverence. Johnson makes it impossible for the locker room to be overly tense on down nights, which have become increasingly rare this season as the Spurs sit at second in the Western Conference.
“He’s always joking around, and he’s never really too, too serious,” teammate Devin Vassell said. “He’s always trying to have a light mood.”
His energy is one of the biggest reasons why this franchise has gone from losing to winning so quickly. Their talent is deep and versatile. But their success has been a product of the energy they bring every night. Johnson and his giant speaker have been at the center of that.
“It’s ultimately team bonding. We’re all singing, and when we get ready for the game, we’re all hyped out,” Johnson said. “It don’t matter how it looks or how people feel about it. It’s what gets us going.”
Now it has become canon for the Spurs. Every night, they are coming out to Keldon’s playlist. If he’s not on the auxiliary cable, they’ve already failed the first step of their game plan.
“It’s one of those things where it’s almost like a tradition now,” Bryant said. “It’s getting to the point where everybody knows the lyrics, so you know it’s go time when you hear those songs.”
The 20-year-old Bryant is younger than “A Thousand Miles” and was just 3 years old when “Party in the U.S.A.” came out, so this has been a learning experience for him. It’s a given that rookies will make mistakes. But there’s one place where he wanted to make sure he didn’t want to screw up.
“I knew ‘A Thousand Miles’ pretty well beforehand,” he says. “But ‘Party in the U.S.A.,’ I listened to a few times on my own to make sure I’m not out there sounding crazy.”
That’s music to Johnson’s ears, who has continuously found joy in his teammates’ growth. Watch how hyped he gets when someone else makes a play. He screams louder for his teammates than he does when he hits his own shots or grabs his own rebounds.
Keldon Johnson flashes a smile during one of the Spurs’ victories over OKC this season. (Scott Wachter / Imagn Images)
A team full of star-level talent needs players whose selflessness is not just a necessity, but a preference. The guy who actually wants his teammates to be better and will go out of his way to make it happen is the guy who sets the culture.
He finds little ways to bring his distinct personality into the locker room, from pondering a llama purchase for his farm to debating who is the strongest player on the team, hoping his teammates will reflect the energy back at him. It’s been working.
“It’s easy to put on rap music and try to get everybody to enjoy it,” Johnson said. “But to switch it up and get the reaction, I feel like it really made us a closer group.”
“Whatever the disposition of the team is, you can have fun and believe in the process of that,” veteran teammate Harrison Barnes added. “The biggest thing is, you don’t want to be a front-runner. If we had that mentality of we want to have fun, then you stick with that, regardless of what’s going on.”
Players are even keeping track of their record with each song, making sure they get a win next time for Miley when they lose to “Party in the U.S.A.” They’re playing for Miley, but they’re really playing for Keldon.
“We got a lot of big personalities, and we got a face of the franchise,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said, “but that guy’s the heart and soul of the team.”
The Spurs started the season hoping to make the playoffs. Now, true contention is realistic. A championship is the ultimate goal for Keldon Johnson. He’s been clear that he wants to bring the trophy back to San Antonio for some time.
But in the meantime, he just hopes he can sing a duet with Carlton someday soon.
“Why not? I feel like that’ll be great,” Keldon Johnson says. “I love her music.”
Wherever Johnson and the Spurs end up this season, they’re going to enjoy the ride. He’s made sure of it. Few players in the league carry themselves with a carefree swagger the way he does. It’s given them the kind of harmony they hear every time they hear that A Thousand Miles piano riff.
“Twenty-four seven, all the time, we have great energy,” Keldon Johnson says. “We (are) always joking around, always laughing. We just enjoy the moment.”