Oklahoma State University Athletics
Changing Track
Mr. Iba Changes Track of Don Johnson
Note: This story originally ran in Vol. 7, No. 2 of POSSE Magazine in December 2013. Johnson passed away at the age of 83 in April 2014.
A chance encounter at a high school track meet led to one of the most storied careers in Oklahoma State basketball history.
Over a half century later, that player's picture is prominently displayed outside the Cowboy basketball locker room in an arena where he once starred for a legendary coach.
Don Johnson was running in a high school relay race in Stillwater when he first caught the eye of Oklahoma A&M head basketball coach Henry P. Iba.
But that was all the hall of fame coach needed to see to give the three-sport star from Chickasha High School a proposition.
"Mr. Iba saw me and wanted to know if I wanted to try out for basketball," Johnson said. "I said, 'I have no idea, I'm up here for track.'
"We didn't have a car so I knew I'd have to find a way home. So I called and told my mother I'd hitchhike home – but I didn't tell Mr. Iba that!"
Johnson's decision paid off, both for him and the Aggies' hoops program.
Iba's second impression of Johnson was apparently just as strong as the first. After seeing him on the hardwood, he offered Johnson a scholarship for room, board, books and tuition, as well as $15 a month, the maximum he could give.
Though admittedly surprised by the offer, there wasn't a moment's hesitation from Johnson.
"I told (Iba), 'I'll be there in September,'" Johnson recalls.
Johnson arrived in Stillwater in the fall of 1949 and admitted the transition to "big city life" wasn't easy for a boy who grew up in Minco, Okla., before moving to Chickasha after his sophomore year of high school.
"I grew up on a farm in a town that had a population of 900, and it was nothing compared to Stillwater," Johnson said. "It was a big adjustment for me."
The transition to big-time college basketball proved to be quite smooth, however.
Freshmen were not allowed to compete per NCAA rules during that era, but in three his seasons in an A&M uniform Johnson blossomed into a star for Iba.
In his first collegiate season, Johnson scored 146 points in 27 games, and a year later, he led the Aggies with a team-best 12.1 points per game average. That year, Johnson was named first-team All-Missouri Valley and led A&M to the 1951 Final Four, where they lost in the national semifinal.
"It was special, but of course Mr. Iba wanted to go farther," Johnson said.
Johnson capped his career by averaging 14 points per game as a senior, leading the team in scoring for a second-straight year, and earning All-America honors.
That season also brought one of the favorite basketball memories for the 6-foot-2, 190-pound forward who averaged over seven rebounds per game in his final two years in an A&M uniform.
On Jan. 30, 1952, the Aggies were matched up against Kansas, which brought a No. 4 national ranking and All-American Clyde Lovellette to Stillwater. Playing in front of a sold-out crowd of 9,600 fans, Johnson did something unprecedented.
It was a close game, back-and-forth," Johnson said. "On one of our possessions, Harold Rogers shot it, and I went and got the rebound and threw it back out. We ran the play again, Harold shot it again and missed, and I got the rebound, threw it out and we ran it again. Harold shot again and missed, and I got the rebound. This time I called timeout.
"We went over to the bench, and (Iba) was screaming wanting to know what that was all about. I told him, 'Well, Clyde Lovellette is 6-9 and the other two guys are 6-4 and 6-2, and every time Harold shoots, I go in there and battle them. And I'm sort of fatigued.'
"And (Iba) said, 'Well you're resting up now, get your a** back out there and don't ever do that again!' I said, 'Yes sir!'
"That was the only time in the history of the school that a player under Mr. Iba ever called a timeout."
That moment might have caught Iba's ire, but the Aggies were riding high when the final buzzer sounded on their 49-45 win. Johnson and Lovellette each had a game-high 18 points, but it was Johnson who walked off the court smiling.
Beating Kansas proved to be quite a remarkable feat.
"(KU) won the NCAA championship that year, and they had a bunch of players (seven) invited to play on the Olympic team that won the gold medal so I'd say we beat the best team in the world," Johnson said.
Johnson admits it wasn't always easy to play for the man they called "The Iron Duke," who won 655 games and two NCAA championships in 36 years in Stillwater, but it was a special experience he would never trade.
Harold Rogers, a teammate of Johnson's at A&M and one of his close friends, said that while the guy they nicknamed "Hollywood" for his striking good looks may have been a star, he wasn't above drawing negative attention from his coach.
"Mr. Iba had a strong coaching philosophy of 'Don't eat between meals,'" Rogers recalls. "Don had a large overcoat that had pockets on the inside – a wonderful place for sandwiches, chips, apples and bananas. But nothing could be hidden from Mr. Iba. So at our team meeting, Mr. Iba would say, 'Don, I saw you walking across the campus today with your inside overcoat pockets jammed to capacity – it could only be food. Run the stairs 30 times after practice!'"
Another story involved Johnson's penchant for dribbling the basketball, something that was also a no-no for the Aggies' coach.
"Mr. Iba was the master of the passing game – short passes, no looping from sideline to sideline and certainly no excessive dribbling," Rogers said. "But Don Johnson loved to dribble. One day Mr. Iba had it – he stopped and yelled, 'Don, if they cut your head open there would be a little man in there dribbling a basketball!"
Johnson chuckles when asking about playing for Mr. Iba.
"Was Mr. Iba hard to play for? Oh yeah!" Johnson said. "You had better play the way he wanted you to play. But he really cared about you off the court and made you feel like part of a family."
Following his Oklahoma A&M career, Johnson was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the fifth round.
These days, that might seem like a dream come true for an aspiring hoopster. But Johnson turned down Red Auerbach and the Celtics' offer of $16,000-18,000 a year.
"My mother was a school teacher and made $3,000 a year, but I said, 'What would I be doing at night and on weekends in Boston when I wasn't playing ball?' I wasn't about to go to Boston," Johnson said.
Turning down the NBA would not mark the end of Johnson's hoops journey, however.
During that time, the fledgling NBA had a rival in the National Industrial Basketball League. The league was founded by the industrial teams (teams sponsored by the large companies and made up of their employees) belonging to the National Basketball League (NBL) that did not join the NBA when the NBL merged with the Basketball Association of America.
Johnson was hired by Phillips Petroleum Company to play basketball for its Bartlesville Phillips 66ers. He competed for two years, earning All-America honors, before hanging up his sneakers.
With his basketball career over, Johnson remained employed by Phillips for a decade. He then decided to take what he learned and start his own oil company, which eventually led to him owning over 20 gas stations.
The 83-year-old Johnson now resides on his sprawling ranch in Argyle, Texas. But he hasn't forgotten his Stillwater roots and his love for his alma mater and Cowboy basketball.
Several years ago, OSU marketed its season basketball tickets by putting pictures of all of the Cowboys' former All-Americans on each of its tickets. Johnson's family inquired about which ticket he would be on and planned to come back to Stillwater for that game.
During the conversation, OSU Senior Associate Athletic Director for Development Larry Reece presented the idea of endowing a basketball scholarship in Johnson's name to honor his legacy, and the family jumped at the idea of the $500,000 pledge.
But after that initial conversation, Reece hatched another plan. How would Johnson's family like to be the lead gift on the renovations of OSU's $3.6 million basketball locker rooms project?
And that is why anyone now passing by the Cowboy basketball locker room will see Johnson pictured in his A&M basketball uniform just outside the doors – his family made the lead gift of $750,000 to make OSU's new hoops digs possible.
"That's when we really got momentum and got things going," Reece said. "I love the fact one of Mr. Iba's boys made it happen."
And Johnson couldn't be prouder of leaving a legacy that started with a chance encounter nearly 70 years ago.
"That hit me pretty hard," Johnson said of his legacy being honored inside an arena where he once starred. "I'm very proud of it.
"Mr. Iba is one of the reasons I have this nice place(ranch) here. And I think he'd be proud of me being able to come back and help my alma mater."
A chance encounter at a high school track meet led to one of the most storied careers in Oklahoma State basketball history.
Over a half century later, that player's picture is prominently displayed outside the Cowboy basketball locker room in an arena where he once starred for a legendary coach.
Don Johnson was running in a high school relay race in Stillwater when he first caught the eye of Oklahoma A&M head basketball coach Henry P. Iba.
But that was all the hall of fame coach needed to see to give the three-sport star from Chickasha High School a proposition.
"Mr. Iba saw me and wanted to know if I wanted to try out for basketball," Johnson said. "I said, 'I have no idea, I'm up here for track.'
"We didn't have a car so I knew I'd have to find a way home. So I called and told my mother I'd hitchhike home – but I didn't tell Mr. Iba that!"
Johnson's decision paid off, both for him and the Aggies' hoops program.
Iba's second impression of Johnson was apparently just as strong as the first. After seeing him on the hardwood, he offered Johnson a scholarship for room, board, books and tuition, as well as $15 a month, the maximum he could give.
Though admittedly surprised by the offer, there wasn't a moment's hesitation from Johnson.
"I told (Iba), 'I'll be there in September,'" Johnson recalls.
Johnson arrived in Stillwater in the fall of 1949 and admitted the transition to "big city life" wasn't easy for a boy who grew up in Minco, Okla., before moving to Chickasha after his sophomore year of high school.
"I grew up on a farm in a town that had a population of 900, and it was nothing compared to Stillwater," Johnson said. "It was a big adjustment for me."
The transition to big-time college basketball proved to be quite smooth, however.
Freshmen were not allowed to compete per NCAA rules during that era, but in three his seasons in an A&M uniform Johnson blossomed into a star for Iba.
In his first collegiate season, Johnson scored 146 points in 27 games, and a year later, he led the Aggies with a team-best 12.1 points per game average. That year, Johnson was named first-team All-Missouri Valley and led A&M to the 1951 Final Four, where they lost in the national semifinal.
"It was special, but of course Mr. Iba wanted to go farther," Johnson said.
Johnson capped his career by averaging 14 points per game as a senior, leading the team in scoring for a second-straight year, and earning All-America honors.
That season also brought one of the favorite basketball memories for the 6-foot-2, 190-pound forward who averaged over seven rebounds per game in his final two years in an A&M uniform.
On Jan. 30, 1952, the Aggies were matched up against Kansas, which brought a No. 4 national ranking and All-American Clyde Lovellette to Stillwater. Playing in front of a sold-out crowd of 9,600 fans, Johnson did something unprecedented.
It was a close game, back-and-forth," Johnson said. "On one of our possessions, Harold Rogers shot it, and I went and got the rebound and threw it back out. We ran the play again, Harold shot it again and missed, and I got the rebound, threw it out and we ran it again. Harold shot again and missed, and I got the rebound. This time I called timeout.
"We went over to the bench, and (Iba) was screaming wanting to know what that was all about. I told him, 'Well, Clyde Lovellette is 6-9 and the other two guys are 6-4 and 6-2, and every time Harold shoots, I go in there and battle them. And I'm sort of fatigued.'
"And (Iba) said, 'Well you're resting up now, get your a** back out there and don't ever do that again!' I said, 'Yes sir!'
"That was the only time in the history of the school that a player under Mr. Iba ever called a timeout."
That moment might have caught Iba's ire, but the Aggies were riding high when the final buzzer sounded on their 49-45 win. Johnson and Lovellette each had a game-high 18 points, but it was Johnson who walked off the court smiling.
Beating Kansas proved to be quite a remarkable feat.
"(KU) won the NCAA championship that year, and they had a bunch of players (seven) invited to play on the Olympic team that won the gold medal so I'd say we beat the best team in the world," Johnson said.
Johnson admits it wasn't always easy to play for the man they called "The Iron Duke," who won 655 games and two NCAA championships in 36 years in Stillwater, but it was a special experience he would never trade.
Harold Rogers, a teammate of Johnson's at A&M and one of his close friends, said that while the guy they nicknamed "Hollywood" for his striking good looks may have been a star, he wasn't above drawing negative attention from his coach.
"Mr. Iba had a strong coaching philosophy of 'Don't eat between meals,'" Rogers recalls. "Don had a large overcoat that had pockets on the inside – a wonderful place for sandwiches, chips, apples and bananas. But nothing could be hidden from Mr. Iba. So at our team meeting, Mr. Iba would say, 'Don, I saw you walking across the campus today with your inside overcoat pockets jammed to capacity – it could only be food. Run the stairs 30 times after practice!'"
Another story involved Johnson's penchant for dribbling the basketball, something that was also a no-no for the Aggies' coach.
"Mr. Iba was the master of the passing game – short passes, no looping from sideline to sideline and certainly no excessive dribbling," Rogers said. "But Don Johnson loved to dribble. One day Mr. Iba had it – he stopped and yelled, 'Don, if they cut your head open there would be a little man in there dribbling a basketball!"
Johnson chuckles when asking about playing for Mr. Iba.
"Was Mr. Iba hard to play for? Oh yeah!" Johnson said. "You had better play the way he wanted you to play. But he really cared about you off the court and made you feel like part of a family."
Following his Oklahoma A&M career, Johnson was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the fifth round.
These days, that might seem like a dream come true for an aspiring hoopster. But Johnson turned down Red Auerbach and the Celtics' offer of $16,000-18,000 a year.
"My mother was a school teacher and made $3,000 a year, but I said, 'What would I be doing at night and on weekends in Boston when I wasn't playing ball?' I wasn't about to go to Boston," Johnson said.
Turning down the NBA would not mark the end of Johnson's hoops journey, however.
During that time, the fledgling NBA had a rival in the National Industrial Basketball League. The league was founded by the industrial teams (teams sponsored by the large companies and made up of their employees) belonging to the National Basketball League (NBL) that did not join the NBA when the NBL merged with the Basketball Association of America.
Johnson was hired by Phillips Petroleum Company to play basketball for its Bartlesville Phillips 66ers. He competed for two years, earning All-America honors, before hanging up his sneakers.
With his basketball career over, Johnson remained employed by Phillips for a decade. He then decided to take what he learned and start his own oil company, which eventually led to him owning over 20 gas stations.
The 83-year-old Johnson now resides on his sprawling ranch in Argyle, Texas. But he hasn't forgotten his Stillwater roots and his love for his alma mater and Cowboy basketball.
Several years ago, OSU marketed its season basketball tickets by putting pictures of all of the Cowboys' former All-Americans on each of its tickets. Johnson's family inquired about which ticket he would be on and planned to come back to Stillwater for that game.
During the conversation, OSU Senior Associate Athletic Director for Development Larry Reece presented the idea of endowing a basketball scholarship in Johnson's name to honor his legacy, and the family jumped at the idea of the $500,000 pledge.
But after that initial conversation, Reece hatched another plan. How would Johnson's family like to be the lead gift on the renovations of OSU's $3.6 million basketball locker rooms project?
And that is why anyone now passing by the Cowboy basketball locker room will see Johnson pictured in his A&M basketball uniform just outside the doors – his family made the lead gift of $750,000 to make OSU's new hoops digs possible.
"That's when we really got momentum and got things going," Reece said. "I love the fact one of Mr. Iba's boys made it happen."
And Johnson couldn't be prouder of leaving a legacy that started with a chance encounter nearly 70 years ago.
"That hit me pretty hard," Johnson said of his legacy being honored inside an arena where he once starred. "I'm very proud of it.
"Mr. Iba is one of the reasons I have this nice place(ranch) here. And I think he'd be proud of me being able to come back and help my alma mater."
