Joe Johnson, is it really just a $200 million "poison"?

Look at Joe Johnson now, he seems to have done one thing in the NBA: counting money...

The latest news shows that the Nets are keen to trade Joe Johnson out in the near future due to the determination that Joe Johnson has become a drag on the team. And not only the Nets, in the eyes of most people today, holding only Kobe Bryant's annual salary of $24.89 million, Joe Johnson, "singles Joe", has indeed become a "high salary low energy", "team poison" excellent representatives. Well, even if Joe Johnson really is the epitome of "high salary and low ability", before Joe Johnson, have you ever seen a "high salary low energy" player who has earned more than $10 million for 11 consecutive seasons?

In the 2005-2006 season, Joe Johnson, who ended his rookie contract, switched from the Suns to the Eagles, which was also his starting point for "Mr. Ten Million Dollars". In the Suns' final season, Joe Johnson averaged 17.1 points and 5.1 rebounds per game during the regular season, and in that year's playoffs, his average points per game rose to 18.8 points. In short, such a performance around Nash, Xiaosi and others is enough to give young Joe Johnson a better contract. The Hawks then traded Dior for Joe Johnson and couldn't wait to offer him a five-year contract worth $69.67 million.

In the Hawks' first year, Joe Johnson was the only player on the team to earn more than $10 million — Josh Smith made $1.37 million that year. Although the Hawks only finished 26-56 that year and missed the playoffs, Joe Johnson handed over 20.2 points, 4.1 rebounds and 6.1 assists. For $12 million to get back such a well-rounded player, can you say that Joe Johnson at that time was "high salary and low energy", can you say that he was "team poison"? In the second season, the bench who averaged 25 points per game and entered the All-Star Game for the first time still looked like Joe Johnson was still not "high salary and low energy".

In the three seasons that followed, Joe Johnson's average of points per game remained at the level of 20+, and the Eagles became a "regular" in the playoffs. At this time, Joe Johnson's 5-year contract was about to expire, and all the Hawks could do was, of course, keep the player who gave them hope — and to put it another way, Joe Johnson hadn't missed the All-Star Game since the 2006-2007 season. In the summer of 2010, the Hawks gave Joe Johnson a six-year contract worth $123.6 million. Two consecutive contracts were so spectacular that it brought Joe Johnson's career total salary closer to $200 million — the exact number being $198.65 million.

The year the contract was signed, Joe Johnson was 29, and in the Hawks, the number of "Mr. Million Dollars" had increased to three — in addition to Joe Johnson, there was also Josh Smith and Jamal Crawford. And after that season, Joe Johnson's average of points per game fell from 20+ to 18.2, a slight drop, but enough to alarm the Eagles. At this time, Joe Johnson has begun to associate with "high salary and low energy". After another season, the former "Eagle King" finally landed on the Nets' court. There was once a saying that one of the reasons the Hawks decided to send Joe Johnson was, of course, the maturity of Horford, Teague and others, but another important reason was his "invisibility" in the playoffs.

But that's obviously not the whole truth, whether in the Hawks or the Nets, Joe Johnson in the playoffs can always improve his stats slightly, and as for the team can't go further, it is obviously even more unlikely to blame Joe Johnson alone — of course, if his salary is taken into account, playing the role of "out of the head bird" has become Joe Johnson's unyielding job. So it's clearly inappropriate to classify Joe Johnson's entire career as "poison" — at least to be sure, that he has not fallen as quickly and as visibly as "high-paid, low-energy" players such as Rashad Lewis.