After childhood tragedy, Heat’s Keshad Johnson and brother living ‘a dream come true’

Keshad Johnson enters the NBA with plenty of motivation. He went undrafted last month before signing a two-way contract with the Heat and is out to prove he deserved to be drafted.

But to know Keshad’s primary source of motivation is to know what happened to his family 13 years ago.

The day was Nov. 6, 2011. Keshad’s older brother, Kenny, was shot 10 times. Keshad said about 35 shell cases were found around Kenny.

“I remember my dad just holding my brother’s hand,” Keshad said. “ For me being 10 years old at the time, I was just yelling and crying. I didn’t know what was really going on.”

Kenny, who was 14 years old when he was shot, was walking home in the Lower Bottoms neighborhood of West Oakland, California, after a sleepover at a friend’s house. That’s when two men pulled up in a car and the bullets started flying, with one grazing Kenny’s lower spine.

It was a case of mistaken identity — a conflict between gangs that Kenny wasn’t a part of.

When the family learned that Kenny had been shot, they crammed in a car and rushed around the corner to the scene.

“The whole neighborhood was there,” Keshad said. “They had the tape up to block people all from getting on the scene. But no ambulance. Just police officers everywhere. It seemed like it took forever for the ambulance to get there.”

Kenny survived, but he spent the next year in the hospital undergoing surgery after surgery.

“At the time, after the surgeries first happened,” Keshad recalls, “the doctor came out and said one of the bullets grazed his spine and he most likely wouldn’t be able to walk again.”

But Kenny was relentless with his physical therapy sessions — sometimes going through two physical therapy sessions per day — with the goal of proving doctors wrong.

“Hearing the news was devastating,” Kenny said. “Hearing the doctors say that there was a good chance that I really would never stand up and be walking again, being active the way I was, it definitely sent me into a depression for a while.”

Kenny’s attitude in therapy was simple: “Just get up and do it and not be complacent, knowing that I was going to walk again.”

After spending all of his high school years in a wheelchair, Kenny stood up and walked around without anybody’s assistance in 2016 for the first time since the incident. That was about five years after he was shot.

Kenny is now able to walk with forearm crutches and can drive a car with the help of hand controls.

“I just try to see the positive in everything,” Kenny, 27, said. “I continued to just stay grounded and do my therapy and not be complacent with seeing myself in a wheelchair.”

Keshad didn’t realize it at the time. But looking back now as a 23-year-old, he understands how much that tragedy changed him.

“I grew up so fast when that happened,” Keshad said. “I knew how real life was at the time. I experienced every emotion of the event. I experienced the sadness, I experienced the frustration and then I experienced just the need for faith. I was so in tune with my emotions at that age, so of course I really feel like I grew up faster. It made me realize that life is real at the age of 10 years old.”

That life-changing event also made Keshad understand the value of perseverance. That’s a trait that helped him endure a five-year college basketball career that sometimes didn’t include much playing time during his four seasons at San Diego State before transferring to Arizona for his final college season.

That’s also a trait that now helps Keshad push forward toward his NBA dreams despite going undrafted.

“It’s for sure something that helped me push,” Keshad said. “Not only for Kenny because of that event, but also just my parents and my other siblings and just the whole city of Oakland. Just knowing that I’m not doing it just for myself, but I’m doing it for my brother and my family and people who look up to me. Because there’s not too many people that just come out of where I came from. Everybody needs a role model.

“My time, my journey was a little bit different. It was a little bit longer than other people, me doing five years in college. But everybody doesn’t have the same road, it’s all about the destination.”

That road has led Keshad to the Heat as an undrafted prospect who has opened eyes during summer league. Miami committed one of its three two-way contracts to Keshad shortly after he went undrafted, with Heat vice president of basketball operations and assistant general manager Adam Simon revealing that Keshad “was the highest non-drafted player on our board.”

Among the Heat’s summer league revelations, Keshad has averaged 11.7 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game in his first six summer league appearances for the Heat.

“I don’t worry about stats at all. I don’t go out there and tell myself I’m going to do this, do that,” Keshad said of his on-court approach. “I just do whatever it takes to win that given day. ... I’m as gritty as it gets.”

Projected as a physical and athletic three-and-D forward at the NBA level who will fit into the Heat’s hard-working culture, Keshad has shot 7 of 18 (38.9 percent) on threes and has racked up nine steals and six blocks during his first six summer league games.

“It’s been a dream come true,” said Kenny, who was among the big group of family and friends who made the drive from Oakland to San Francisco to attend Keshad’s first summer league games in the California Classic earlier this month. “It truly has been. All the hard work my little brother has put in and all the things he’s been through in his life and just our family’s life, it’s definitely a blessing to just see him out there on that NBA court.”

That basketball dream was also Kenny’s dream before he was shot. Kenny was a talented basketball player, with Keshad saying Kenny “was going to be that guy that came out of Oakland before me.”

Kenny is one of the reasons Keshad even began investing time in the sport.

“My brother, I wanted to be like him,” Keshad said. “I wanted to be everything like him growing up. He goes to the park to play basketball, I wanted to go right to the park to play basketball with him. He goes to a party, I wanted to go to a party. He danced, I wanted to dance just like him. He took me under his wing growing up.”

Keshad and Kenny continue to inspire each other.

Keshad’s blossoming basketball career motivated Kenny to join a wheelchair basketball team. Kenny’s team, the Golden State Road Warriors, won the National Wheelchair Basketball Association championship in 2023 on the same weekend Keshad played in the NCAA Final Four with San Diego State.

“Just knowing all the hard work and all the practices and all the hours and all the shots that he’s put up to get where he’s at,” Kenny said, “that motivates me to be the best that I can also be and be the best in motivating me to go back to school and potentially transfer to Arizona and play collegiate basketball so I can try to be a Paralympian.”

Keshad, the first member of his family to graduate from college, has worn two numbers throughout his basketball career. He has worn 0, as in “O,” for his hometown of Oakland and 16 for the number that his older brother wore growing up. In summer league, Keshad is wearing No. 20.

On track to stick with the Heat for this upcoming season, Keshad plans to go back to No. 16 in the NBA. It’s a number so special to Keshad that he has it tattooed on his left arm.

“He told me that I’m his motivation to keep pushing,” Keshad said, referring to Kenny. “He knows he’s living his journey through me, he’s leaving a dream through me. I’m also living a dream for him. So we’re going through the whole process together. I’m going to get back to No. 16 and Johnson on the back.”

Going through it together and drawing strength from each other.

“Keshad is going to work until he gets to where he wants to go,” said Kenny, who has spent time serving as a youth mentor in various Oakland schools. “He’s going to compete, put his head down and work and prove people wrong. He should have gotten drafted.”

Just like Kenny proved people wrong when he got up and took his first steps five years after being shot.

“Keshad has definitely told me how much I mean to him and I’ve told him how much he means to me,” Kenny said. “We just feed off of that.”