Kj!

One Christmas Day, the TV news ran a story about a family that had been robbed. Grampy jumped out of his chair, grabbed Kevin and drove to the victims' house. He handed Kevin some money and told him to give it to the family. "I hated it at the time, but I've never forgotten it," says Johnson.

Like grandfather, like grandson. Johnson can't do enough for other people. Not long ago, when he stopped in Berkeley, his former barber mentioned that his mother lives in Phoenix, so soon after, Johnson got her address and took her a dozen roses. Then there is the check a friend received for the exact amount he needed to get his teeth fixed, the elementary school in Oakland that gets so much help from him it has KJ Day every year, and the coach's wife who received an expensive print, which she had admired, as a gift.

Whatever drove Johnson in his youth didn't drive his pals. "Many of my friends from home have been sent up for drugs," he says. "But I didn't want that." No indeed. After being the leading high school scorer in California his senior year, he had his pick of colleges, and he based his decision on—are you sitting down?—education.

As a political science major at Cal, he would go from practice to a small campus library, where he and a friend from Somalia, Mohammed Muqtar, would study and whisper about theology and philosophy until the library closed at midnight. They then would use the key a janitor at Harmon Arena had given them to get into the arena, where Johnson would shoot baskets until 1 a.m. Muqtar was in charge of rebounds and stats. To hone his feel for the game, Johnson would sometimes turn off the lights and dribble in the dark. One night the janitor walked in while Johnson and Muqtar were talking and dribbling in the pitch dark. The janitor said, "It's Saturday night. Why aren't you out at the parties like everybody else?"

"Because," said KJ, "parties won't take me where I want to go."

Where he wanted to go was "the top, so I could have a panoramic view of the world." Even though Cal coach Lou Campanelli kept him chained to an Arthur Murray follow-the-footprints offense, pro scouts knew Johnson had the whole package, and Cleveland wanted it. The Cavs landed him with the seventh lottery pick in 1987.

That left Johnson with an enviable choice—professional basketball or major league baseball. He had signed, as a switch-hitting shortstop, with the Oakland organization after his junior year in college and worked out with the Athletics whenever they were at home during the summer of 1986. Says Oakland's director of scouting, Dick Bogard, "In three years he would've been in the major leagues."

Sorry. Johnson headed to Cleveland, where Price heard about him and winced. "I figured they were grooming him to put me on the bench," says Price. Instead, Price had such a great training camp in the fall of 1987 that Johnson had to take a seat. "He outplayed me so badly there was no doubt he was better," Johnson says. "And I was wondering, If this guy is less than the average NBA player...then maybe I don't belong in this league."

However, any doubts that he or anyone else had about whether Johnson belonged in the NBA disappeared after he arrived in Phoenix. With KJ dishing off to Eddie Johnson and Chambers for wide-open jumpers, the Suns were only a game behind the Pacific Division-leading Lakers. KJ has Phoenix doing so well that it appears the city council will finally move ahead with plans to build the Suns a new arena. Welcome to the KJ Dome.

The new wisdom is that the world revolves around four point guards: Magic, Stockton, Price and KJ. If this guy isn't the Most Improved Player this season, then Manute Bol wears a medium.