South Carolina’s Raven Johnson turned memes into motivation. Now, she’s ready for her moment

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CLEVELAND — Raven Johnson was certain she was going to quit basketball. She knew everyone would do what they could to stop her from doing that, but for a time, she just didn’t see a path back. Not from this.

She dreamed about what life would be like as just a student instead of a student-athlete. She has plans to be a lawyer. It’s a tough road. Maybe it’d be better to just focus on school and internships. Maybe she’d be happier. Maybe if she told herself those lies enough, she’d finally be convinced.

From her room back on South Carolina’s campus, quitting didn’t feel like giving up, it felt like the only way she could get over everything that had happened.

The Gamecocks —the No. 1 seed and undefeated — had shockingly lost in last season’s Final Four to Iowa. With a senior class that had lost only eight games total leading up to that national semifinal, Johnson had taken it upon herself to make sure those upperclassmen could end their careers with a win and a national championship. So, when Iowa won and delivered that class its ninth career loss, Johnson felt entirely responsible. She hadn’t done enough to get them the win. She had let everyone down.

“I feel like I lost us that game,” Johnson said. “To this day, I blame myself.”

But if that was the weight she felt on her shoulders, then the video was what brought her to her knees.

You know the video. Caitlin Clark sagging into the paint and waving off Johnson at the 3-point line. With no defender within 10 feet, Johnson doesn’t even glance at the basket. Doesn’t even consider shooting or trying to make an offensive play. The fallout that came from that video — the jokes and memes — hurt.

But the final blow was that Johnson didn’t even recognize herself in that moment.

Who is that player? Not the girl who never lost a game in the state of Georgia as a high schooler. …  Not the confident guard who wanted to play for THE Dawn Staley at South Carolina. … Not the player who wanted to do everything she could to win for her teammates.

Said Johnson: “It doesn’t even seem like me.”

Friends and teammates told her that it would pass, and when they did, she lied and said she was OK. She wasn’t even thinking about it anymore. Former Gamecocks forward Laeticia Amihere showed up with scripture and asked Johnson to go to church with her. On a call with her mentor and business manager Justin Holland, when they were discussing her offseason plans, out of nowhere, Johnson said: “I don’t even care what they’re saying online.” Said Holland: “And we weren’t even talking about the Iowa incident.”

After the title game, Johnson deleted all social media. A few days later, just when she started thinking maybe she had made a turn for the better, she went to the grocery store only to have a shopper make a joke about that moment. She walked away from her groceries in the aisle and just left.

She still struggled to open up about it, though. Amihere called Johnson’s mom, but in conversations, Raven just told her mom, Kia Johnson, the same lines: She was fine. Everything was fine.

But eventually the line was quiet, and Kia started to understand what a low place her daughter was in. She took a unique approach. Kia turned the tables on the situation.

“Honestly, I talked to her about Caitlin,” Kia said. “I said, ‘You don’t think Caitlin is under pressure? When she doesn’t perform, you don’t think she’s dragged just like the rest of you are? She gets it, too. She gets the bullying, too.’”

Kia reminded her daughter about her freshman season, when she tore her ACL just two games into the season and underwent rehab for months. Not only did Johnson need to lose the 30-plus pounds she had gained, she needed to learn how to walk again, how to bend her knee again. From the bench that season, she had a front-row seat to the Gamecocks’ 2022 national title run.

Out of something hard and difficult, didn’t she also remember the good? Didn’t she also see the growth? And didn’t she remember how long the path looked when she was at the start of it? If she could relearn how to walk as a freshman, she could take this first step again now, right?

With the help of Amihere, Johnson got back into the gym. She was invited to Kelsey Plum’s Dawg Class, a gathering of some of the nation’s top guards, a week after the Final Four loss. Then, she received an invitation to Team USA. In each of these settings, she talked with other players who had faced their own injuries and setbacks.

Through it all, she continued to watch the Iowa-South Carolina game tape (she estimates she has watched the full 40 minutes more than 100 times). But instead of seeing her unrecognizable self and feeling shame, she began to feel something different.

“It put a chip on my shoulder,” Johnson said. “It put fuel to my fire and forced me to get into the gym and work on my weakness.”

Raven Johnson: pic.twitter.com/OVO2ZSg1eW

— Tyler DeLuca (@TylerDeLuca) April 6, 2024

Yes, she needed to improve her 3-point shooting. But the shortcoming she hated most was that there was game tape where there was a player in a No. 25 South Carolina uniform with the name Johnson across her back, but that player wasn’t Raven.

She decided to spend her offseason in Columbia, and when Staley brought in Winston Gandy as an assistant, she began to work with him on her shooting form. There were minor tweaks — her stance, a slight shift to her elbow positioning, getting more space for her palm — but she mostly just needed to spend time in the gym and weight room. Five days a week, she turned up to the gym to shoot. Not because of that video, but because she wanted to recognize herself in every video.

“It’s easy to hide behind the success of the team, but you’ve got to be ready for the moment,” Holland told her. “Your moment is coming. Be ready.”

In the preseason after last season’s departure of seniors, Johnson took on a leadership role — even though she was starting her redshirt sophomore season as someone who had just three career starts.

Staley consistently relies on Johnson the most. She’s not necessarily expected to lead in scoring or any other statistical measure (though she does average 8 points, 5 assists and 5 rebounds a game and her 3-point shooting percentage has improved to 37 percent on the year). But she’s the player whose strength and steadiness can be a guide for teammates. Johnson leads the Gamecocks in minutes and reliably has come through with clutch plays when South Carolina needed it.

In the Gamecocks’ Sweet 16 win over Indiana, Johnson hit a crucial 3 in the final minute that put the game out of reach for the Hoosiers. Said Staley: “I knew she wasn’t gonna let us lose.” In Friday’s Final Four, she went 3-of-5 from behind the arc. Sunday, in the national title game, she’ll be back on the floor against Clark and Iowa, again. She has referred to the season as a revenge tour, but it’s really more like a reintroduction tour to who she is as a player — fierce, dominant, a shooter.

“That video is the best thing that ever happened to me,” Johnson said.

At the time, she would’ve never thought such a thing. But she also wouldn’t change any of it.

“Anything that you love and you’re passionate about will make you question it at some point — that is what you need for your breakthrough,” Staley said. “And if you don’t have enough power, strength, your breakthrough will never happen. Raven is going to be a great player because she was able to break through that moment and catapult her into that next level now.”

(Photo of Raven Johnson: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)