Baron Davis' Heart 2.0: Reni Johnson - Hold Tight, Never Let Her Go!
Imagine it’s 4th of July with fireworks, night has overtaken day for this 8th grade Windward straight A student Serenity Johnson.
Is Serenity enjoying down time? Maxing and relaxing at a bbq chillin with friends on the Holiday 4th? Nah, she’s in the lab, in that gym putting up mad shots, dreaming that big hoop dream to hopefully play for a dope XXL Pac-12 program after high school.
She wants to be a future child doctor, maybe a surgeon; girl has like 6 aunts and a grandma that are nurses. Not much of a stretch that this beyond-driven youngin’ will follow her own on-board GPS to become a MD.
E-Wood’s advice? Treat her right and you stand a chance to be a ride-or-die friend for life. Serenity’s friends call her “Reni.”
What might Reni think about as the ball rotates perfectly off her elegant 5-8 fingers?: Dang, I need to open up that home for abused kids when I grow up, create a safe place for kids to dream their own lil dream for themselves.
Does Reni walk the walk, or just talk, talk, E-Woods? I’m completely convinced this middle schooler is the TRUTH, capital T. I’m believing in her like I believe in the legendary Baron Davis who is synonymous for being the ultimate agent of change in the south LA community I used to teach at.
Reni? She wants to make the time soon to visit the Ronald McDonald House in Pasadena, read to the kids. This follows her ethos of helping, just like she went to 15 homeless shelters on Halloween day to help so many deserving people.
Reni has put on toothbrush drives in the past for underprivileged kids. Many times since she was like 10 years old she’s been doing various outreach projects to help vulnerable people living in Skid Row in LA.
Her aunt Monica is a social worker. Why is this girl beyond dope, a pure joy to those around her? Maybe it’s how she flashes that Magic Johnson level smile to you, like an invitation to share her crazy talented future.
How dope is Reni as an 8th grade baller, for reals, for reals E-Woods? When I wrote NBA’s DeMar DeRozan’s story when he was an 8th grader in 2004 I said, “The ball looks up at its owner and says. man, eighth graders are not supposed to be able to do this kind of stuff with me.”
Reni loves the game like D. 100.
One of Reni’s friends asked me to rate her potential. Because she is just so driven and already skilled at basketball, Reni has so much potential. I had a dope AAU team in 05’ and some of the players made it to the NBA. My former player Derrick Jasper, he appreciated the Kentucky men’s basketball program as an 8th grader in 2002, that same grade Reni is in now.
I remember calling up Kentucky men’s b-ball about him and they offered D-Jasper a scholarship in a year, off to Kentucky he was. And I believe Reni will have her pick of colleges after prep.
You want some proof, want to hear a crazy story? I enjoy watching The Mamba 8th grade AAU girls team, which Kobe Bryant coaches. Reni was playing against them in mid November, 2019. That game Reni went up to KB 8/24, borrowed Kobe’s death stare for a game. You know, that grit your teeth, killer intensity that made KB such a legendary player in the NBA.
Reni, Addison Deal, and Brooklyn Shamblin play for Cal Storm and those girls showed they got game. The fire smoldered in their hands, as they sparked a run for the ages for their beloved Cal Storm Team Black.
That game? Those 3 players looked like a bunch of piranhas as they shut down Kobe’s Team Mamba with a freaking 17-0 run to start the game. Whaaaat? It’s drop the mic time fosho, I think her squad beat Kobe’s team by a 30 ball!
Are you ready to drop the mic? Can you handle the truuuuuth?
More recently at The Mamba Academy in December I saw Reni being talked to by a guy after a game. Her moms Veronica was like whooose that guy!? I told her that’s T-Mac (the great Tracy McGrady). I asked Reni what T told her, “He told me, ‘You are on my best player’s screen saver, you’re so talented.’” Reni said it was like no big deal. She’s so humble and wise, just a well grounded youngster. 100.
Every game Reni steps to, she has this mad unbridled passion to play-play. She reminds me of my guy, Devin "Baby Dev" Askew from Mater Dei, or my guy Johnny Juzang who I met when he was in the 8th grade just starting to play at Harvard Westlake.
Really E? Reni rolls like them?
Want to hear a little secret that the leather basketball speaks to me? It whispers its secrets to your humble writer E-Woods and it never, ever lies. A year after I wrote Johnny and Dev’s stories in their 9th grade year, they were offered by the Kentucky Wildcat program.
Reni? She got it like those guys do, in the female version fosho.
Reni in game? She can attack the middle, cross you over, use her ultra, ultra strong yet versatile frame, pull up from 3 on a dime, and drop breathtaking dimes.
I was sitting at the Mamba Academy with Gilbert Arenas in November. He seemed mesmerized by Reni and her 8th grade teammate Shamblin, how they got down and were playing. As we were watching them, Gilbert was saying if only Reni could break through the defense in a certain way, if she could just tweak this and that a little bit.
Just crazy gears were spinning in Gil’s head you could tell. Before leaving the building, Agent Zero, who takes on very few kids to train, he signed on to help train Brooklyn and Reni in the future and to be a part of their journey. So really, how freaking dope is that?
Reni and her girl Brooklyn have appreciated the near daily training they have been grinding in the lab with dope regular and real one guy Rob Valentine. They are mad Frankenstein-ing some electricity and animating some dope game to life as they grind to be top top ballers fosho. That impresses me big time.
Me, E-Woods, I never even had an Instagram account until I met Reni. After meeting her I decided to open one up, Yes, she’s that fascinating to follow:
Serenity “Reni” Johnson (@reni35bball) • Instagram photos and videos
I’m not alone because she also has about 117,000 other IG followers. But fame doesn’t drive Reni Johnson, achievement drives her, love also drives her to make a difference in this crazy world of ours. She wants to start a project to give families living in abused shelters some health and nutrition kits, to make their lives just a little bit easier.
Do you really want to get to know the real Reni? If you had talked and texted with her for many, many hours like I have, maybe you’d see how she exhibits traits that make her seem like an angel. Maybe she was sent from heaven to make everyone else around her feel better, utilizing that crazy dope smile of hers.
I’ll let her share her life goals, “I want to work hard to be a great player, uplift my team however I can, put in the time, keep up my 4.0 gpa, shoot for a perfect SAT score and go to a great college. Then go on to be a medical surgeon, open a home for abused kids.
“Our mom Veronica, she’s the best mom you can ever hope for. She shows me so much love, advice, and good guidance growing up. If I ever get good money, I want to buy her a Range Rover, just try to do for her what she’s done for me and my older brother Isaiah, he’s in 9th grade. She’s done so, so much for us all these years.”
It’s easy to see that Reni has crazy high goals. The pressure she feels to live up to it all can be seen in rap artist NBA Young Boy in his song Lonely Child. Feels his lyrics, Reni picked them out because she connects to them deeply:
“The way I came in the game
The image that I had put out
They wouldn't expect me to have feelings
Know it probably don't seem like it
That's why they talk about me like I ain't human,
But we all is
But I'm still being me.”
All Reni can be is just herself, I’ve never met a more real person to the game of life than this 8th grader. The credit of why Reni is so great goes to her awesome mom Veronica Quezada Johnson.
I’ve spent what seems like dozens of hours talking to Reni and Veronica, each moment a treasure, getting advice about life, how to do Reni’s story proper, insight on many things.
Veronica, she’s one of the dopest people I’ve ever talked to. She can make a person laugh, cry, giggle, and feel 10 shades of emotions in one convo. How rare, how real is that to find in this cold-hearted world we are in?
Veronica is on the real, stylish, unselfish, empathetic, cool AF, lots of things. It’s important to remind the reader how much she cares for others. Her job is being an emergency room nurse and she has been honored for her great service to patients.
Veronica doesn’t just help save lives medically, she goes the distance to be an advocate in the system, and even helped this young under-age prostitute get off the street and away from her pimp.
#change maker
Reni is brave enough to share her raw story about the rough times she had as a kid to you the reader, to offer the readers some perspective and wisdom. Her dad made mistakes when he got into drugs after she was 5 years old and didn’t treat her mom right. I was asked to leave out the details, but succumbing to drugs will make you a different person.
Reni’s father Larry was a fashion model, a good man, a good earner, full of life, who fell in love with Reni’s mom in the beginning of the their marriage. But unfortunately he had a change for the worse I’m told about 8 years ago when he started holding tight to a bag of drugs and he couldn’t let go of it.
Sadly, he chose a bag of dope over his fam, and as we all know that’s not the good version of dope, drugs, and he landed in jail from his physical transgressions toward his wife that were unlawful and uncool.
Veronica realized she had to be there for her kids. She had experienced a freaking miracle just having her first child, Reni’s awesome brother Isaiah Johnson. He’s a freshman quarterback on the football team and also plays basketball for Maranatha High.
While Veronica was in pregnancy with him 15 years ago, she was told that Isaiah was stillborn, dead already in her belly. How depressed Veronica must have felt. Burdened with the sadness of that news, she traveled back from Atlanta to LA to have the procedure to remove what she thought was a deceased fetus inside her.
When it was discovered that it was a false diagnosis, imagine the joy she must’ve felt! If you ever get to meet Isaiah, you’re meeting a kid with killer good looks, poppin’ athleticism, and a stellar attitude to achieve. He’s a lot like his lil sister, they are close siblings. As they hug, it just melts your heart.
Their mom Veronica it must be noted was a baller back in her day at Cantwell High averaging 20 ppg. Life finally settled down for Reni and Isaiah in 6th grade. But last year they had this whirlwind trauma of life and death to overcome.
Veronica came down with a life threatening form of an immune condition and had to have chemo-therapy. So when Reni and Isaiah hold their mother now, they hold her just a little bit tighter because they came so close to losing her.
Veronica’s twin sister is Monica Quezada, who’s a social worker and angel in her own right. She has this to say about Reni and Isaiah, “My niece and nephew, they are full of love, talent, and hope. They are resilient. They were directed to grow up fast and face life’s biggest challenges too early.
“I think sports must be easy for them to handle, compared to the real life challenges they’ve been handed. They make us so proud, always doing the right thing, carrying themselves with pride. We all love them so, they are the epitome of a survivor, working hard to thrive in life.”
Their awesome uncle, Jesus Quezada, he’s a financial advisor and helps as an athletic trainer at Cal St LA. He’s that father figure for Reni and Isaiah and Jesus doesn’t just love them he told me, he keeps it real for them.
Jesus said this about Reni and Isaiah, “They make us all proud for who they are and what they strive to be, so dear to our hearts.”
Reni is beyond brave because she will share the most honest hardships she’s endured, what her family has overcome, things that would break the average person. I was shown Reni’s letters she wrote to her dad - 4 pages of handwritten emotion, spilled out onto white paper, black pen describing the uncool way her dad treated her mom.
Me, E-Woods, I wept after reading these letters. I was so touched, a girl trying to reconcile her past, and trying not to let it eat her up. Here are some excepts, bits and pieces of her raw and honest letter that she sent to her dad Larry in prison, not too long ago:
“I never use you as an excuse, and you’ll never know how hard it was to be the only one not to have a dad at the 3rd grade ‘daddy’s dance.’ I used to make a wish on my birthday to just have you. So you will never know how much you burnt me because you chose to put a bag of drugs over Isaiah and I.
“The one man who was supposed to be there for me wasn’t and that’s going to affect me for the rest of my life. One day you’ll regret all the days you missed not being here, maybe you already do, but it’s too late for you to say sorry.
“When you make a child you’re making a decision to take responsibility for another human life. I have nightmares to this day of the time I thought you were going to kill my mom. I hate that day because I realized that day you weren’t a good person.
“My mom and I had this conversation about when a girl has a bad relationship with her father, she will always try to find love in a boy, love that her dad never gave her, and trust, expectations, and reassurances her father never gave her.
“You were supposed to show me how a man is supposed to treat me when I’m older. When people ask me about my dad I say I don’t have one, because you were supposed to take care and provide for me and you didn’t. It’s never too late to get your life together and I just hope and pray one day you do. But it’s too late to ever get your little girl back.”
That’s moving, that’s real. As this story’s title implies, you just want to hold Reni, make the pain of what she lost go away. You feel Reni’s emotion in her letters to her dad and it is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. I’m made more wise from feeling her emotion.
Now do you see why Reni inspires me? The world can learn from her life, her ambition to help others is more dope than her game of basketball, which is off the charts. Meeting Reni changes you. She believes that if she can do anything good with any notoriety one has, that’s her mission in life.
Reni worked out at an early age with LA legend Edmond “Coach Tiny” Flournoy, who has had a personal relationship with dozens of LA’s best all-time players. He’s known elite ballers like Baron Davis to Russell Westbrook to James Harden, just countless kids for over his past 50 years of mentoring. He started helping others even before he graduated high school in 1971, the year I was born.
#crazy dedicated
This easily makes Coach Tiny THE MAN, that Mt Rushmore of LA’s all-time trainers. Hear the amazing words he says about Reni, “Reni, she may end up being a Dr. but the WNBA and pros will come calling for her undoubtedly. She has such big time D1 talent, drive.
“She soaked up all our training like a sponge when she was working out with me, all my OG methodology I could throw at her. I put her in there with pro guys in training as an extreme youngster, she didn’t flinch. Her hoop IQ and academic IQ are so incredibly high.
“She’s special in many ways. Many doors open always for people who are ultra detailed like Reni, people who take apart what needs to be learned. Her future hoop game potential? I’d easily compare her to WNBA legend Cynthia Cooper in the making, before our eyes.
But as a human, which is really the most important measure of someone, she’s just really, really good people, first and foremost in life.”
Reni is excited to be headed soon for an Ivy League visit, as she really appreciated talking to head coach Megan Griffith at Columbia. Taking a visit to the UCLA women’s basketball program is in the works and other Pac-12 are interested in Reni as well.
I asked Reni how many hours a day she spends on social media or texting. Reni cares about the people who sign up to follow her on IG and takes the time to make as many people feel connected to her as possible.
She might know young famous ball players, people you could say are world famous, but what makes her beyond dope, is she treats every person like gold whether they are famous or not.
If they treat her like gold, that’s all she asks. What more can you ask of a person than to be humble and righteous, right?
Daryl Roper, a long time Crossroads High boys b-ball coach, once showed me a letter that NBA legend and all-around good guy Baron Davis wrote him. Daryl was teacher and coach to Baron in his 8th grade year.
In the letter Baron explained his mentality of how he was going to change the world as a 13 year old.
Baron wrote, “That my heart is pure, that I’m dedicated to what I do in life – that I enjoy helping people.”
That’s what Reni says all the time too.
I’ve hung out with Baron and Dino Smiley, who ran the Drew League for years. They would put bread in a homeless kid’s pocket to help them get off the streets, help a youngin’ find temporary housing. Baron knew some difficult situations growing up, he’s paying it forward.
Reni? She has BD's heart of gold, no higher compliment can I offer to her than that.
http://www.hoopsvibe.com/features/40413-baron-davis-hornets-1-is-one-in-a-million
Ms. Don is Reni’s English teacher at Windward. I saw her text showering Reni with compliments about her leadership, grit, spirit. It’s all there in both Baron and Reni as great human beings.
Serenity Johnson is just coming into this world of prep hoops, realizing all the work that’s needed to make her mark, all the 4th of July’s she’ll miss grindin’ in the lab, hungry to make her name.
The real ones know what Reni is all about, that hoop life, a future life helping abused kids. She a killa on court, a savior off of it. She’s very close with my guys, our guys, Skyy and ZZ Clark, dopest people you can know. Reni gets much respect from their awesome dad Kenny Clark. Kenny told me she can ball, he gets my utmost respect.
You get to know Reni, you’ll always treasure her laugh, mannerisms, the way she looks at life, cup half full, even when the glass has been shattered and broken to pieces in front of her. She won’t let anything get in the way of a life well lived, her beating heart, going all out for others, pumping breath to her lungs, to let her speak her dreams into reality.
Reni has a cool friend, good baller from Florida and well known girl named Jaden Newman who told Reni once, “I think I just love you girl.” I think Reni must hear that like 1,000 times a day but it’s completely authentic each time it’s said, no doubt!
In October I was at the Mamba Academy watching as I saw a little girl named Mindy that looked 5 or 6 years old watching Reni, as Reni ran up and down the court playing. Mindy is saying, “Mama, that girl with the long eyelashes, she’s so pretty, and plays so hard. I want to be just like her, I want to play like her, mama. She’s fun, fun, fun!”
I looked down over to the little girl Mindy and told her, “That’s Serenity Johnson. I’ll introduce you, she might let you call her Reni.
"Did you know that after she leaves the game today, she will fly up to the stars? Look up at the night sky Mindy because Reni is an angel and that’s where angels hang out, up in the night sky, lighting up the darkness and illuminating everything up for us.”
That is, when Reni is not out here playing basketball.
