Johnson pushes plan for men’s basketball collective at Oregon State

Steve Johnson gets a hug from his mother, Carolyn, after No. 1-ranked Oregon State’s victory over UCLA at Pauley Pavilion in 1981 (courtesy Steve Johnson)

Steve Johnson wants to help his alma mater, and he is putting time and effort where his mouth is.

The former Oregon State All-America basketball center is devising a plan that would create a separate NIL collective for men’s basketball at OSU.

Johnson, 66, has put together a two-part, nine-page mission statement outlining an NIL program that would involve work-study internships for players through OSU’s College of Business. He has met with Beaver basketball coach Wayne Tinkle and Colleen Bee, the school head of marketing, analytics and design as well as OSU’s faculty athletics representative. He has also met with Alexis Serna, director of Oregon State’s “Beyond Football” program. Johnson also plans to meet with OSU athletic director Scott Barnes and Kyle Bjornstad, executive director of “Dam Nation,” Oregon State’s existing NIL collective.

Johnson doesn’t yet have a name for his proposed collective. He is not ready to give himself a title of the organization, either.

“Haven’t gotten that far yet,” says Johnson, a Tualatin resident and also a former Trail Blazer. “We are still in the discovery phase. My initial assumptions need to be confirmed or clarified, and if I’m wrong, sent in the right direction.

“One of the big questions is, how much support could this program garner financially? You have two different entities to deal with— the university and the collective. The university has a foundation that is dependent upon raising money from supporters. That needs to be done, too, to build an effective NIL program, but are the resources there to build? I’m of the belief that if you have a powerful enough value proposition, money is not the issue.”

Nothing against women’s basketball or Oregon State’s other sports, Johnson says, but he wants to focus on men’s basketball. He played on some of the great teams in OSU history, and he would like to see the program thrive again.

“This is like a pilot program,” he says. “Let’s keep it small to start. We are talking about 13 scholarship players in men’s basketball. The Beaver women still have street cred. (Men’s basketball has) had a lot of bad seasons, with some blips up here and there. Plus there’s the uncertainty of playing in the West Coast Conference. Donors want to give money to winning programs. We have to come up with an inspiring vision of what a winning program looks like.”

A number of former OSU players have indicated interest in participating at some level.

“Several guys from my era — Mark Radford, Ray Blume, Bill McShane, Charlie Sitton, Lester Conner — are all in,” Johnson says. “There are people from A.C. Green’s era. I’ve spoken to A.C. He is interested. I’ve spoken to Gary Payton. He is all in.”

Radford was the one who first brought up the idea of a men’s basketball collective. Johnson ran with it.

“Steve has some great ideas,” Radford says. “It is about more than just money. It is overall support of the athletes. I’m down with it. He is providing a big spark to try to help the program. It takes a lot of energy to do what he is doing.”

The players from the early ‘80s are making a concerted effort to engage an alumni group that hasn’t been engaged for a lot of years. Sitton has organized a golf tournament/tailgater for basketball alums prior to the OSU-Purdue football game on Sept. 21.

“We will get as many alumni basketball guys back for that as we can,” Sitton says. “I’m sure the NIL idea will be a major topic of conversation. We have all grown up. We all care a lot about Oregon State. Steve had his moments when he didn’t care as much. Now he is back, trying to do what he can to help with an idea that is new and different. He has put a lot of thought and effort into it. I think he is on the right track. I’m optimistic.”

Part of Johnson’s plan is to help the players with life after basketball, to give them tools that will make them become successful in their professional lives.

“That Steve wants to jump on board, to mentor our players and help them build the professional angle for life after basketball, is big-time,” Tinkle says. “Him wanting to donate time and effort to his alma mater speaks volumes. We are thrilled to be locking arms with him in that endeavor.”

Bjornstad welcomes Johnson’s plan for a sports-specific collective.

“I think it’s good,” Bjornstad says. “We have a good amount of support for basketball, but you always need more. The more the merrier.”

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Steve Johnson wants to help his alma mater return to their glory years on the hardcourt (courtesy OSU sports communications)

Johnson is one of the most-decorated OSU basketball players in history. If there were a Mount Rushmore for Beaver hoopers, he would be there along with Payton, Mel Counts and probably Green. Johnson is a member of the OSU Sports Hall of Fame and the state of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, and his No. 33 jersey is retired and hangs in the rafters of Gill Coliseum.

Johnson’s life path is unusual but a fascinating story. The third of six children — three boys, three girls — to Joseph and Carolyn Johnson, Steve was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist family in San Bernardino, Calif., 60 miles east of Los Angeles. Joseph was a disabled veteran who was never able to hold a job and was on government assistance. Carolyn drove a bus until her case of Multiple Sclerosis prohibited her from employment, too. Carolyn was an ardent follower of SDA, though Joseph wasn’t.

Steve attended an SDA school from first to 11th grade and observed church guidelines, which prohibited outside activities from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

“I didn’t play any organized sports at all,” he says. “I couldn’t be on any teams because the games were so often on Friday or Saturday.”

Johnson was a big kid — a very big kid, the tallest in his class. But he had never shot a basketball before the ninth grade, when his father took him to L.A. to watch an Iowa practice. Steve’s cousin, Houston Breedlove, played for the Hawkeyes, who were in town to face Southern Cal.

Iowa coach Ralph Miller with Houston Breedlove, Steve Johnson’s cousin, during a game against Southern Cal in Los Angeles. Breedlove introduced Johnson to Miller, who become his coach at Oregon State (Steve Johnson)

“I was surprised,” Johnson says. “My dad never did anything with any of us kids. I don’t know why he asked me. But we drove to L.A. and I watched the practice, and something about basketball clicked right away.”

It was serendipity. At the end of practice, Breedlove took Steve over to meet his coach — a man named Ralph Miller.

“How about that?” Johnson says, laughing at the thought. “The first time I ever saw basketball at high level, I met my future college coach. I have a picture of him standing there with Ralph, and another with me standing with Ralph.”

The next day, before the night game against the Trojans, Breedlove visited the Johnsons in San Bernardino. There was a community center behind the Johnson home.

Says Steve: “He took me out on the basketball court there and said, ‘Learn the hook shot. It’s a non-defendable shot.’ ”

“After that, I instinctively knew,” Johnson says. “Before anyone talked to me about goal-setting, I set a huge aspirational goal of playing in the NBA.”

Actually Johnson set six goals:

• Attend a public school

• Earn a college scholarship through basketball

• Become an All-American

• Become an NBA first-round draft pick

• Become an NBA All-Star

• Play for 10 years in the NBA

Against all odds, Johnson achieved all six goals.

“The first step was the most difficult one,” he says.

Johnson’s best friend growing up was Phil Polee, who grew to 6-5 and was a fine basketball player himself. He too attended the Seventh Day Adventist School.

“We hatched this plan before our sophomore year in high school to transfer to a public school,” Johnson says.

“Phil’s parents were on board; My mom wasn’t on board, but Dad said he was. He said he would back me when it was time to make a decision.”

When it was time to make the move during the summer before his sophomore year, “my dad said he was just tricking me,” Johnson says. “He wasn’t going to back me.”

Johnson ran away from home twice during his sophomore year. Both moves were short-lived. After his sophomore year, he asked his father for permission to transfer to a public school. Again, his father said OK. Again, when it came time to make the move, his father backed out.

“Maybe I will just run away again,” Steve told him.

“I don’t care,” Steve remembers his dad saying. “Run away and die.”

“I made a vow right then,” Johnson says. “Trust no one; depend on no one. If you are going to make it, you are on your own. If you fail, it’s on you. If you can’t trust your parents, who can you trust?”

Polee was allowed to transfer to San Gorgonio High and played as a junior. Johnson suffered through his junior year at the SDA school.

“Heading into my senior year, I knew it was my last shot (to transfer),” Johnson says.

He turned himself over to the Juvenile Hall in San Bernardino and was made a ward of the court. He lived for a short time with a friend, then with his sister, then with a cousin. None of them lived in the San Gorgonio High district, which is what Steve needed to be eligible to play basketball. He asked the basketball coach, John Powell, for advice. Powell gave him the name of a man who owned an abandoned house in the district.

“I ended up living there and claimed that as my residence,” Johnson says. “There still was no guarantee I would be eligible. Ultimately the CIF board ruled I could play because I hadn’t played before. So I achieved goal No. 1.”

For most of the school year — you can’t make this up — Johnson lived by himself in the abandoned house.

“It was scary,” he says. “It was right behind a gambling shack. It was not a good place, but it was in the district.

“I lived in the front of the house. That’s where I would sleep at night. I was afraid to go to the back. The key to the front door was a hanger. The house had electricity. I can’t remember if it had running water. I took showers at school. There was no mail service, no phone. I had a bed. The guy who owned the house warned me, ‘Don’t leave any food around; the rats will get it.’ ”

Johnson says he lived on $3 a day.

“If I had that, I could get the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord at a local restaurant,” he says. “Or I would steal what I could from the grocery store. I would stuff food in my gym bag. That’s how I fed myself.”

(Johnson vowed never again to see his parents, but soon reconciled with them. “One of my favorite pictures is me giving my mom a hug after we beat UCLA in 1981, our first win over the Bruins in L.A. since 1957,” Steve says. When he was in the NBA, he built a home for them in Dundee. They lived there until they passed away.)

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By now 6-9 and a svelte 180 pounds, Johnson had a great senior season at San Gorgonio, averaging 25 points and 11 rebounds. Still, he wasn’t highly recruited. OSU assistant coach Jimmy Anderson was recruiting Polee when he discovered the skinny center who was his teammate.

Six schools offered scholarships, several of them including Polee as a package deal.

“It came down to Oregon State and Texas,” Johnson says. “Texas offered me and Phil everything — cars, money.”

Miller offered nothing but a system built around a center.

“When he came down (to San Gorgonio), Ralph was sitting in my coach’s office,” Johnson recalls. “He was looking at my stats. He looked up and said, ‘These are good stats. We are recruiting six big men; you are one of them.’ ”

Johnson decided on Oregon State. (Polee also signed with the Beavers but had back problems and never played beyond JC ball in college). It was a heck of a good decision. Fully grown to 6-10 and 235 pounds by the time he was a senior, Johnson was a three-time All-Pac-10 selection and Pac-10 Player of the Year and a consensus All-American in 1980-81, when he shot .746 from the field, an NCAA record that stood for 36 years.

Johnson had plenty of dunks, but his signature shot was a roundhouse hook not unlike the one Lew Alcindor had made famous at UCLA a decade earlier.

Steve Johnson shoots his patented hook shot while at Oregon State (courtesy OSU sports communications)

“The hook shot was literally a layup for me,” Johnson says. “If you let me catch it on the second hash mark on the right side, you were dead. That’s where my primary secondary move was most powerful. To stop the hook, you had to overplay that shoulder. Ralph told me, ‘Let the defense tell you how to run a play, then lock them into it. Fake the drop-step, they gotta bite on it, then come back with the hook.’ It is what earned me the nickname ‘Black Hole’ with my teammates. If the ball comes in, it is not coming back out.”

Miller put excellent players around Johnson, including guards Radford, Blume and Conner and forward Sitton, all of whom made it to the NBA. The 1980-81 Beavers started the season 26-0, were ranked No. 1 nationally for more than two months and are arguably the greatest team in the Oregon State history despite losing 50-48 to Kansas State as the nation’s No. 1 seed in their first NCAA Tournament game.

“That year was a lot of fun, even with the way it ended,” Johnson says. “We had all of the pieces to win a national title. The three guys out front are what made us go defensively, and I gave us the opportunity to score consistently.”

How could the Beavers have lost to Kansas State?

“I have thought about that a lot,” he says. “The conclusion I came up with is, when you get to tournament play, it becomes a players’ game. You need the supporting cast, but there is somebody who puts them on their back and carries the team.

“The flaw in Ralph’s offense is it was rigid and structured, and you could not adapt if a defense was playing you a certain way. My teammates did not have the freedom to shoot. In his system, if our outside shooting was working, there was not a damn thing (a defense) could do. (The defense) had to guard the perimeter players, which opened the middle for me. If they collapsed on me, those guys were open.

“We struggled with outside shooting the last two years in the tournament. We didn’t have the freedom to play. Early in the Kansas State game, I took a hook shot from a little further out than normal. During the next timeout, Ralph said, ‘If you’re taking that shot, you better make it.’ Not the right thing to say. It’s the players’ time. Let us read and execute and use our skills.”

Johnson was taken by the Kansas City Kings with the seventh pick in the 1981 draft. He played 10 years with seven teams in NBA, including three seasons in Portland (1986-89). With San Antonio in 1985-86, Johnson averaged 13.8 points and 6.5 rebounds and led the league with a .632 field-goal percentage.

His best moments in the NBA were with the Blazers. In 1986-87, he averaged career highs in scoring (16.8) and rebounds (7.2) while shooting .556 from the field in 79 games. He had a career-high 40 points with 10 rebounds in a game that season against Cleveland.

“I was in a zone,” Johnson says. “I’m running down the court and I’m telling the guy who was guarding me, ‘I’m hell to guard, aren’t I?’ ”

The next year, he was named to the All-Star team for the only time but was unable to play due to injury. He wound up playing in only 43 games that season, averaging 15.4 points and 5.6 rebounds.

“With Portland, I was finally in the best place for me in my career,” Johnson says. “I was an undersized center in the NBA. I wasn’t a great rebounder or shot-blocker. I needed a strong power forward to play with.”

Slowed by foul trouble and not getting along well with coach Cotton Fitzsimmons, Johnson shot and scored well his first two seasons with the Kings but was then traded to Chicago, with whom he played during Michael Jordan’s rookie season. An assistant coach named Fred Carter -- who had been known as “Mad Dog” during a mercurial run as a high-scoring guard with the Philadelphia 76ers — “turned my career around,” Johnson says.

“We’re going to work on two things,” Carter told him. “The first is to change the perception on you. The perception around the league is you’re not coachable. The second is, your position is power forward, not center. We need to create the best version of Steve.”

After the 1984-85 season, the Bulls sent Johnson to the Spurs, who after one season sent him to Portland.

“I thought that was going to be a dream situation for me,” Johnson says. “I could play power forward alongside Sam Bowie at center, and we had plenty of outside shooting (Kiki Vandeweghe, Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter and Jim Paxson).”

During the fifth game of the 1986-87 campaign, Bowie broke his leg and missed the rest of the season. Johnson slid over to center and had a career year.

“We still had most of the pieces, and I was an important part,” he says. “It was a good situation for me. You knew you were going to play every night, and that they were going to go to you.”

Under Mike Schuler, the Blazers went 49-33 in the regular season but lost in four games in a first-round series against Houston. Johnson averaged 20.8 points and 10.0 rebounds, which would seem to have been a career highlight.

“It was a nightmare,” Johnson asserts. “They started Jim Peterson on me and then rotated in Ralph (Sampson) and Hakeem (Olajuwon). My power forwards were Caldwell Jones and Maurice Lucas at the end of their careers. (The Rockets) wore me out.”

Johnson had developed bone spurs on his feet with the Spurs, and they started coming back during the 1987-88 season. The Blazers let him go after the 1988-89 campaign. He hung around for two more seasons, playing a total of 49 games for Minnesota, Seattle and Golden State before retiring in 1991 at age 33.

After his NBA career was over, Johnson settled in Portland. For a decade, he worked in marketing with fitness products. He started and ran a nonprofit for a couple of years, then served as a commercial real estate broker until 2008, when he was introduced to the yachting world. By 2014, Johnson was a full-time broker in the industry, then transitioned into publishing with an on-line luxury travel site providing guides for each destination. For a short time he marketed luxury apartments, then pivoted to construction just before the pandemic hit in 2020.

He currently owns Minority Business Capacity Building consultants (MCBC), a construction research and consulting business that aids state-of-Oregon companies and focuses on minority workforce development. He is a member of the Oregon Workforce and Talent Development Board, representing the construction industry in an advisory capacity to Gov. Tina Kotek in helping develop a strategic plan for the state’s Workforce Development system.

Over the last few months, Johnson has immersed himself in studying NIL collectives at schools across the country, examining and learning NIL rules and trying to construct a program that will help Oregon State basketball succeed. He didn’t always feel good things about his alma mater, however.

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Johnson’s disengagement from his school, which lasted for 25 years, began before he graduated. One of his teammates, Tony Martin, was struggling financially. Johnson sought help for him and felt he was rebuffed.

“Dwayne Allen struggled after he left Oregon State, too, and couldn’t find any help,” Johnson says. “It was clear to me that the university didn’t care about its athletes. When I went into the NBA, I never wrote (Oregon State athletic department officials) a check. They didn’t have a relationship with me, and I didn’t have one with them.”

Steve regained interest when son Michael was a four-year letterman at OSU from 2003-07 but was less than enamored with Coach Jay John. When athletic director Bob De Carolis chose to bring John back for the 2007-08 season — the Beavers would go 0-18 in Pac-10 play that season — “I walked away,” Johnson says. “It was, ‘I’m done.’ ”

A few years later, academics brought Johnson back. Ilene Kleinsorge, the dean of OSU’s College of Business, reached out to him.

“We met, and she asked me to join their advisory board, on a special council to get more minorities involved in the College of Business,” Johnson says. “It took her three years to convince me.”

Johnson and wife Janice, also an OSU alum, soon decided to finance a scholarship for minority students to pursue their Masters of Business Administration (MBA).

Steve Johnson, shown here with wife Janice, is spearheading an effort to get a men’s basketball NIL collective started at Oregon State

“That was the first time we gave money to Oregon State,” he says.

When Johnson got into the construction business several years ago, “I saw a reason to stay connected to Oregon State,” he says. “There are not many large companies in the state that do not have a Beaver at the top of the heap in management.”

Johnson has strong opinions about how to best assist Oregon State’s student-athletes.

“I have long felt that if athletes take care of their business on and off the court, they should be networked for success when they leave Oregon State,” he says. “That’s something we have failed with, and it is one of the key reasons why the (men’s basketball) program has struggled so much.”

Johnson believes most OSU basketball alums have felt detached from the program.

“We have failed to engage with our former athletes after they leave,” he says. “From my era to now, there has been only one ex-player involved in the program at any level — Roberto Nelson (the Beavers’ player personnel director). Your athletes have to be your foot soldiers back to the community.”

A group text thread involving more than a dozen former OSU basketball players has communicated ideas about many subjects, including an NIL collective, Johnson says.

“As ex-players, we want to get involved and help rebuild the program,” he says.

Johnson believes it’s important for college players to take advantage of NIL opportunities.

“For most of the players, their college days are the only time they have to monetize,” he says. “They aren’t going to play in the pros. At Oregon State, we haven’t done anything to help them with the transition period. Now they have the opportunity to both monetize and build their personal brand.

“When you break down the challenges of NIL, the current model is not sustainable. You’re asking the boosters to carry the load. They’re already contributing to the athletic program in other ways, through donations and season tickets.”

Due to his ties to OSU’s College of Business — he is a member of the dean’s advisory committee — Johnson sees a unique opportunity to help the Beaver basketball players.

“To build your brand, you have to have a story to tell,” he says. “If you are going to build your brand, it’s what you do on the court, in the classroom and lifestyle. How do you combine those together?”

Johnson mentions the college’s highly regarded entrepreneurial program. And the strong presence of the founder of NVIDIA, OSU grad Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori, who gave $50 million to construction of a $200 million Artificial Intelligence Center expected to open in 2026 on the OSU campus. And the “DAMLab Makerspace,” where students can try their hand with such tools as 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC mills to gain experience in manufacturing methods.

“You can create a product and figure out how to market it,” Johnson says. “These programs can be vital in helping athletes develop their personal brands. You take those three pieces, it benefits the athlete in terms of hands-on practical ways to develop their brand.”

Johnson is working with Colleen Bee — head of marketing, analytics and design within the College of Business and is also Oregon State’s faculty athletics representative — to see what can be done to help the basketball NIL initiative.

“Given the current nature of college athletics, it’s important to have a competitive NIL program,” Bee says. “Steve’s plan would be phenomenal. What he’s trying to get started makes sense. Working out some of the details will be tricky, given demands on the time and the schedules of our student-athletes. But it’s not a bad idea.”

Johnson would like to develop a plan that would also help non-athletes to choose Oregon State as their school.

“It’s going to take money for us to create the content and get Oregon State out there to sell not just athletes on OSU but other potential students,” Johnson says. “With the athletes, they can get paid and develop their brand, which  is intertwined with OSU’s brand. It’s an opportunity for the university to attract other students — particularly minorities — to the school.”

Johnson knows that Oregon State’s tenuous position with the Pac-2, the WCC and the Mountain West Conference creates an urgency.

“We have an uncertainty about where we are going to be two years from now, a two-year horizon to figure it out,” he says. “I’m doing background research, on a lot of things — the court cases that gave the players their rights, the legislation, federal and state NIL guidelines for the school, other collectives.

“In order for us to compete, we have to be able to offer playing time-plus to the prospective players. Those players have a choice. What’s our competitive advantage? What’s the plus? That has to be the brand-building and career development and relationships we can offer. It’s beyond basketball. That adds up to additional brand value for the athlete and the university.”

Johnson isn’t sure yet where a men’s basketball collective fits in.

“Whether this becomes part of Dam Nation or not, I see this as a model program to test out this framework,” he says. “It’s manageable. You have to deal with only 13 players. You have a paid internship program as the base NIL, and then on top of that individual NIL deals. We envision all scholarship student athletes will participate in this program.”

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Johnson has been married for 44 years now. They have four children and seven grandchildren. Steve’s mind remains fertile, even if his body is not what it once was.

“Physically, I am doing relatively well for someone who has had 14 surgeries,” says Johnson, who has had both ankles replaced twice.

He will try to go from zero to 60 quickly on the NIL collective issue.

“We are trying to move as fast as we can,” Johnson says. “We have two basketball seasons to figure this out, but we have to have a program in place a year from now. This year will be about data- and information-gathering and understanding the landscape. When it comes time to make the decision what conference we are in, that adds to what you have in place. So it’s figure this out, put it in place and test it out, so you are firing on all cylinders two years from now.”

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