Tyler Johnson on contract: 'I threw up a couple of times when I heard the number'
The Heat guard will make a reported $50 million over four years
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1 min read
Just like the rest of the basketball world, Tyler Johnson thought he was definitely going to the Brooklyn Nets when he agreed to a four-year, $50 million offer sheet with them. After Dwyane Wade left the Miami Heat, though, they decided to match. In an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel's Ira Winderman, Johnson sounded as shocked as everybody else about how his free agency played out:
"I threw up a couple of times when I heard the number go out there. I was in shock. I even lost a little bit of weight, because just the anxiety of going through that whole process and not knowing where I was going to be," the Miami Heat guard said Monday during a team-sponsored water-safety event at Bucky Dent Water Park.
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"I was like almost 100 percent sure I was going to end up in Brooklyn," Johnson said Monday. "But, yeah, it's an incredible feeling. And I'm excited to get back to work."
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"It was very late in the process," he said. "I had already kind of come to the assumption that everything was going to play out the way it didn't, really, like they were going to re-sign Dwyane and everything. I think that kind of threw a wrench in everything."
This offseason has been deeply weird, and no team illustrates this more than the Heat. It's not just that they lost Wade and gave Hassan Whiteside a maximum contract. It's that Johnson, the $50 million man, will be presumably be competing for the starting shooting guard spot with Dion Waiters, who agreed to a two-year, $6 million deal with a player option for the second season.
Unlike Waiters, a fellow restricted free agent, Johnson was able to secure a rich offer sheet early in free agency. The Nets knew that you generally have to overpay to pry young players away on an offer sheet, and it didn't even work because of circumstances that had nothing to do with them. Given that Johnson has only played 68 NBA games and started in seven of them, you can understand why getting caught in the middle of all of this surprised him.
Johnson's next step: trying to prove that he's worth the money.
