If there’s one thing you should know about Ray Johnston, it’s that he doesn’t back down from adversity and faces it with a great attitude. OK, that’s two things, but both are equally important. That’s because if he didn’t have the attitude he does, he might have given up long ago, and his life wouldn’t be nearly as richly lived as it has been.
Growing up, Ray knew he wanted to play basketball in the NBA. A self-proclaimed gym rat in high school, he was an all-state point guard in Montgomery, Ala. He was offered scholarships to lower Division I schools, but always had his heart set on playing in the Southeastern Conference, so he decided to walk on at the University of Alabama. While he only ended up playing in two games in his college career, he continued to pursue the basketball dream.
After trying out and not making it in the NBA’s Developmental League (as he said, “I got cut and rightly so. I wasn’t good enough at the time”), he decided, on a whim, to move to Dallas. He kept playing there, joining a gym where guys like former NFL stars Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin played in pick-up games. They called him “White Chocolate,” impressed with his game, and wondered why he wasn’t playing pro ball. Then, while playing in a Hoop It Up 3-on-3 tournament in 2004, Johnston made a behind-the-back play and dunked on a guy, drawing oohs and aahs from onlookers. Scouts from the Dallas Mavericks were there and were impressed with him, so he was one of 20 guys picked to go to an open tryout for the team.
At the tryout, players were split up into teams and his team won “75 to 80 percent of the time” and, as he said, “I was just being dependable, I was making the passes, ran the offense, being a leader, being what a back-up point guard’s supposed to be.” He did so well that they ended up inviting him to be on the team, allowing him to realize his NBA dream, but that’s when life threw him a nasty curveball.
Playing a pick-up game at the North Dallas Athletic Club that August, he collided legs with a guy. What should’ve been a normal shin bump that would hurt for five minutes instead caused him a great deal of pain. The next morning, he went to see the Mavericks team doctor, where he found out there was internal bleeding in the muscle, causing a compartment syndrome.
After he got compartment syndrome surgery called a fasciotomy, there was still bleeding in the muscle sheet where he had bumped legs, so he was taken to the emergency room where they ran a bunch of tests. The bleeding continued because he had no clotting factors, which he didn’t have because, as it turns out, his body was 84 percent leukemic cells. The next thing he knew, he was waking up and it was November. He had been in a drug-induced coma since late August, lost seven toes to amputation, had two code blue arrests (meaning he needed to be resuscitated), had kidney failure, lung disease, all kinds of seizures, “just horrible stuff.” But, as he noted, “Good thing I got kicked because I don’t know if it [the leukemia] would’ve ever been detected.”
Suddenly, basketball wasn’t part of the equation. It was about a daily struggle to beat the disease, something he’s had to do four separate times. How has he had the strength to continually battle like he has? “A mixture of family, faith and sports,” he told Tonic. Even though his parents divorced when he was 4, they both raised him with the same morals and Christian faith, while sports taught him how to dig down deep, no matter how exhausted he might be, and push through.
With his NBA career cut short, he decided to pursue another love of his — music. As he put it, “I just kinda fell into music. I didn’t want to go back to an office job, nor could I because I don’t know where I am tomorrow with this health deal, so it’s kinda like going for the NBA; I’m just going for my dream. I always want to be surrounded by good people that are great musicians and I like playing for crowds that appreciate music, and if you listen to the lyrics, I think it’s inspirational.”
His love affair with music started when he sang in a choir in 6th grade. His senior year in high school, he taught himself classical guitar (without taking a lesson), then in college, he recruited a lead guitarist from another fraternity and a lead singer from a sorority to form an acoustic Southern rock band. He then figured, worst case, the people from his fraternity, and the other band members’ fraternity and sorority, would show up to watch them play, so he knew he’d have some leverage when he went to a bar and told them he’d be able to bring a crowd. It was that combination of burgeoning talent and business savvy that would serve him well in his musical endeavors.
Following his leukemia diagnosis, Ray kept playing music and eventually met Keith Anderson, a sax player, at a jazz club a few years ago. He asked Keith if he wanted to play the next night, they did so and he’s still playing with him to this day. Keith also helped him fill out the band, as he knew a lot of musicians in the area, and that group would eventually become the Ray Johnston Band.
In 2009, Ray had a decision to make. “My doctor, about a year ago, when I had my last relapse, looked me in the eye and told me I’d have a hard time living past 33.” Instead of saying “Why me?” and sulking, Ray got in touch with his band and told them, “Hey, look, I’m gonna pay you all X amount of dollars, we’re gonna rehearse these days, we’re gonna record these days, and we’re gonna hit the Southeast.” The guys agreed and started rehearsing.
Meanwhile, Ray has also been in touch with his ex-Mavericks teammates, texting regularly with guys like Dirk Nowitzki (below) and Josh Howard. In addition, he was in touch with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, who also helps run HDNet. Last June, Ray emailed Cuban, telling him about the upcoming tour and how he thought it would be a good premise for a documentary. Cuban agreed and, starting tonight, Sunday, April 25, at 8 p.m. on HDNet, you can see the result of that initial email, the series The Ray Johnston Band: Road Diaries, a tour in support of the band’s first album, Sweet Tooth.
There’s also a fundraising aspect to the tour, as some of the performances raised money for the Ryan Gibson Foundation, a Dallas-based nonprofit that supports leukemia research, a cause that’s obviously close to Ray’s heart. And as Ray says about the series, “It’ll make you cry, it’ll make you laugh, but mainly, it’s just authentic. It shows you the hard road it takes to get your name out there as a band, no matter how talented you are or who you know, you still gotta go on stage and deliver.”
Ray Johnston is proof that with hard work and the passion to go after your dream, you really can accomplish anything, even against seemingly insurmountable odds. And a great attitude certainly doesn’t hurt, either.
Photos courtesy of HDNet.