Signing of DJ boosts South Adelaide's championship defence

After just missing out on coaching him in the NBL, Adelaide 36ers Hall of Famer Scott Ninnis dreamed of coaching Daniel Johnson somewhere, somehow and now will get the chance this NBL1 Central season in the South Adelaide Panthers' championship defence.

Going back to when Ninnis was coach of the 36ers with his last season being in 2009/10, he only just missed coaching Johnson who started his all-time great career with the Sixers for 2010/11.

Johnson has since gone on to have a career where he will one day join Ninnis in the 36ers' Hall of Fame and his No. 21 jersey will surely be hung in the rafters at some point.

Ninnis thought he might have missed the chance to coach the man who has scored more points and collected more rebounds than any current NBL player during his 414-game career, but a chance meeting last month led to an unexpected outcome.

When Ninnis was appointed as coach at South Adelaide ahead of the 2022 NBL1 Central season marking his return to the club he began his basketball career with and has such a strong family history at, his dream was to be able to bring Johnson on board.

That couldn’t happen last season with Johnson having already signed to play at the Forestville Eagles and then Ninnis assumed it couldn’t happen in 2023 either with most expecting Johnson to take up a contract to play in Japan this off-season.

However, when Ninnis bumped into Johnson at the 36ers' MVP Awards dinner last month, he asked Johnson the question and it didn’t take much longer for the Adelaide greats to come to terms to bring Johnson into the 2023 NBL1 Central season.

Ninnis had already been on the hunt for a replacement for last season's league MVP Jeremy Smith and had yet to settle on a replacement two/three man which was on his wish list from overseas.

Johnson might not have fit the bill of the type of player he was after, but Ninnis sure couldn’t think of anyone better to add to the South Adelaide squad to attempt to win back-to-back NBL1 Central championships.

"You always want more time every off-season and basically I was spending a lot of time looking for someone to replace Jeremy Smith for the entire off-season," Ninnis said on Hoops Heaven's Basketball Hustle podcast.

"Trying to replace the best player in the league who was the leading scorer and a 6'3 shooting guard hasn’t been easy. 

"I watched a lot of tapes of different guards from all round the world and let's face it everyone looks good on a highlight tape, but then I had a chance conversation at the 36ers MVP dinner. 

"I've now signed Daniel Johnson so I've replaced a 6'3 shooting guard with a 6'11 player and we all know what DJ's like."

When Ninnis was putting together his Panthers team for this season, he wasn’t expecting to add a near seven-foot unstoppable offensive monster at NBL1 level.

But when the chance was there, it was too good an opportunity to refuse to bring in Johnson and the partnership alongside Alex Starling is something that Ninnis is especially excited to now see evolve.

"It's really exciting for us and it does change our style of game completely, but once again I've probably replaced the best offensive player in the league from last year to what I imagine is going to be the best offensive player in the league this year," Ninnis added.

"We still have Alex Starling who was Defensive Player of the Year last season and I think him and DJ is a match made in heaven. You've got two guys who have differing strengths to each other and can really open up the floor for each other. 

"So it's very, very exciting and literally was a chance conversation because all the talk here was that DJ was going to go and play professionally in Japan in the off-season. He did have an offer there, but his wife is going to give birth to their second baby within the next couple of weeks and he said no to that. 

"I think everyone just assumed he was going but I asked the question, he said he wasn’t going and I said we should have a chat. Anytime you have an opportunity to bring somebody of his calibre into the NBL1 sphere is fantastic so it's very exciting times here. It will take u a  bit of time to integrate him into the team but it's a nice problem to have."

Signing Johnson for the upcoming season surpasses any hopes that Ninnis had and now he can't wait to get things underway with the season-opener against the Eastern Mavericks at home on Saturday March 25.

"It's amazing. DJ was one of the first people I spoke to when I got the job or even before I took the job, but he had already signed with Forestville at that stage," Ninnis said. 

"I said to him when I first spoke to him that I've always wanted to coach him and now I get the opportunity to do that and hopefully we can achieve some success along the way, and do something special again."