Nick Saban Won’t Allow Avery Johnson To Play PG On His ‘Noontime’ Team

Alabama’s basketball scene officially changed Monday, but Nick Saban’s didn’t.

Avery Johnson was hired as the Crimson Tide's new men's basketball coach earlier this week, giving him free reign over all things when his team is on the court.

But when he’s on the court with Saban?

“I told him he was going to be on my Noontime Basketball League, but I’m going to play the point and he’s going to have to play the two-guard,” Saban said Wednesday with a smile. “He’s not going to control that because I’m the commissioner of the league.”

Like Saban, Johnson, who played point guard in the NBA for 16 seasons, is small in stature, standing at a listed height of 5-foot-10. Johnson, who helped lead the San Antonio Spurs to an NBA title in 1999, was nicknamed the “Little General” during his playing career due to his size, leadership abilities and bond with Spurs teammate David “The Admiral” Robinson.

Saban famously picks the teams, calls all the fouls and even selects who specifically is allowed to guard him in the friendly pickup games played between football coaches and staff members in Coleman Coliseum.

But Johnson isn’t intimidated.

“Coach Saban, with his personality and all of his success, that doesn't scare me; it's like a magnet for me,” said Johnson, who met with Saban for the first time early Wednesday morning, before his 11 a.m. introductory press conference. “I've had my own success. I've gone a lot of places a lot of coaches haven't gone before. And I have my own personality.

“So a guy like Coach Saban, that is one of the things that attracted me to The University of Alabama. I was going to get interviewed some other Power Five conferences that didn't have the program like The University of Alabama, so I think it's a huge plus.”

Saban is a big basketball supporter, recently listing Michigan State men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo as one of his “best friends” and saying that he didn’t want Alabama to be “just a football school.”

Ahead of the football team’s season opener against West Virginia last August, Saban said some of his fondest memories growing up in that state were watching and listening to Mountaineers basketball games.

“I remember as a kid sitting in the old Mountaineer Fieldhouse,” Saban said. “I used to sit in the upper deck with my feet hanging over the deck looking between the rails watching Jerry West play. I remember that. I was probably only 7, 8, 9 years old or something, but I remember that. I remember listening to my little brown transistor radio when (California’s) Darrall Imhoff hit a jump shot to end the game in 1959, I think it was, to win 71-70 in the national championship game when Jerry West played.

“You don’t forget stuff like that.”