Jalen Johnson details his HISTORIC game vs. the Jazz, his impact on the Hawks & more | NBA Today

Jalen Johnson details his HISTORIC game vs. the Jazz, his impact on the Hawks & more | NBA Today

Denon Johnson, he put up a stat line that we’ve never seen in league history. Nobody has ever put up 30, 15, 10, and seven in any game ever. So, when you make history like that, you know how you have to celebrate. You have to jump on NBA today. Jaylen, we really appreciate the time. Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate you guys having me. Four different categories that you record a careerhigh in. That’s absolutely wild, especially in year five of your career. Do do you think that this is the best basketball you’ve ever played? Um, I think it’s just a start. Um, it’s definitely not where I want to, you know, I it was a great game yesterday, but I definitely want to just keep moving forward in the right direction. I’m always curious. Is it something where you get off the bus and you’re feeling a certain way? Is it something when you’re going through your pregame workouts? When do you know that you’re going to have a night like that? I mean, I just knew uh it it was going to be a tough one coming on a backtoback um on the back end of it. Um, and I was just trying to help my team win. Um, we knew we needed a dub and we want to uh have a good road trip. It’s not necessarily a surprise to see the leap you’re making because last season you’re one of four players to average 1810 and five. You also have a chance to take all of those numbers to go up right if you keep playing like this. How how are you able to impact the game, do you think, in so many ways? I think the main thing is I just I do whatever it takes to win. Uh, whatever the game calls for me to do that game, I take pride in. uh whether that’s passing, um scoring, defending, whatever it may look like, uh it may look different each night, but uh the main thing is I just want to help my team uh win. And you guys are doing that because winners of four straight despite being down your offensive engine here in Trey Young, and you’ve actually made a big leap here, right? You went from the bottom 10 in scoring to the top 10 in scoring since Halloween. So, what do you think’s been the key to this turnaround? I mean, we’re just we’re just all buying in. we’re we’re taking film sessions very seriously and uh more importantly we’re translating those film sessions uh into our next game and we’re executing our game plans um as best we can. So I think that’s that’s a big thing for us and we just got to continue to build off each win and focus on one game at a time. I remember in the NBA finals I was talking to Tyrese Hallebertton and he made a comment in passing and I don’t think he meant it as a huge disc but he essentially said you know we want to prove that we’re here for a reason. He said, “We don’t want to be the Atlanta Hawks from 2021 who was there for a second and then went away.” How do you collectively want to work as a team to be lasting in a wideopen Eastern Conference as opposed to being someone who maybe shows up here when the East is a little bit of a weaker year? Yeah, I I think the main thing is just just focus on one game at a time. It’s a long season. uh we want we don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves and um focus on things down down the road, but uh what we can control is one game at a time and uh our next focus is uh Sunday at Phoenix. Sunday at Phoenix and Phoenix has been playing incredibly good basketball lately, so it’s going to be fun to watch that. Uh Jaylen, it’s not just your stats that we should have known, okay, he’s going to be leveling up, but your name, too. It seems like all Jaylen’s are ballers in the league right now. We know Jaylen Rose. He says his mom was the one who sort of made this up, but you got Jaylen Brunson, Jaylen Brown, Jaylen Williams, Duran Green. Hands down the best name in the game right now, right? Sure. Hands down. Without a doubt. So, you’re part of the Jaylen fraternity, but you’re also part of the Duke fraternity, the brotherhood there as well. So, if you look at this list of current NBA players, what hypothetical team do you think you would give the edge to? Would it be team Jaylen that has yourself, Brunson, William, Duran, Green, Suggs, Brown, Wells, or would it be team Duke? Ah, that’s a tough one. I probably have to I probably have to go with team Jaylen. I go team. We’re going with team Jaylen. I mean, the Blue Devils might give you a little bit of a tough time, but uh we’re going with team Jaylen for this one. I can tell you this, that is a game that I would tune in for. Jaylen Johnson, you’ve been playing incredible ball this year. We really appreciate you taking the time and we look forward to seeing you against the Phoenix Suns. I appreciate you having me. [Music]

Atlanta Hawks forward Jalen Johnson joins me on NBA Today to react to his historic game vs. the Utah Jazz where he put career-high stats in points, rebounds, assists and steals.