Memphis falls victim to Tulsa comeback — again

Phinehas Johnson would find something good to say.

He would point out that Malcolm Dandridge played a spirited game off the bench.

He would note that the new offense looked marginally better, at least in the first half.  

He would say — wait, I know exactly what he’d say, because he posted it on the Memphis Tiger Basketball Fans Facebook page the last time Memphis lost to Tulsa.

“We’re forgetting that this team had no real preseason training or scrimmages. A lot of quality teams are struggling right now. Coach will get it turned around, so keep the same energy when we turn it around. #GTG.”

Yes, that is what Phinehas Johnson would say about Memphis losing another game to Tulsa, this one by a 58-57 score.

“He’d say something nice,” his mother, Diane Johnson, said. “He was just a really nice guy.”

While Memphis was losing to Tulsa on Sunday, she was cleaning out her son’s Cordova apartment, where he was found dead of a presumed heart attack last week. 

“Oh my gosh, he had so many Memphis Tiger things,” she said. “Jerseys, shirts, caps, key rings. He was a true fan.”

What is a true fan to do with the Tigers this year? What should a true fan make of the latest disappointing loss?

New year, same Tigers: Memphis’ struggles persist

After 19 days without a game — 19 days of nothing but practice — the Tigers looked every bit as ragged as they did before.

They turned the ball over 21 times. They shot just 4 of 15 from deep and just 9 of 15 from the free-throw line. And when the game hung in the balance in the final minutes, they forced up quick shots or pitched the ball away while the Tulsa players calmly executed their offense and got the win. 

So if you’re of a mind to be critical, I understand completely. But in honor of Phinehas Johnson, I’m going to take this one day off. 

“I guess he thought it was better to be supportive,” his mother said. “That’s just how he always was.”

To be clear, I never actually met Phinehas Johnson. Neither did most of the Memphis Tigers fans who are missing him today.

We all knew him from his constant stream of upbeat and encouraging posts on the Facebook page. It has more than 22,000 members. But nobody posted more than Johnson did.

“He posted all the time,” said Jason Rhea, the administrator of the page. “It wasn’t just about men’s basketball. He’d post about women’s basketball and about baseball and softball, too. He really loved the Tigers.”

While other posters would rip into Penny Hardaway or the players, that was not Johnson’s style. He was unfailingly optimistic. Redemption was always just a game away.

So it struck Rhea as strange when Johnson went quiet last week, just as the Tigers were finally going to start playing again.

“I noticed he hadn’t posted in a while,” he said. “That wasn’t like him at all.”

Johnson’s family, worried, sent someone to check on him. That’s how his body was found.

“He was seen on camera, coming into his apartment Wednesday night,” his mother said. “So they think he died Thursday.”

The news blew up on the Facebook page, where nearly everyone’s reaction was the same.

“I never met him but I’m sure going to miss him. I always loved his positive posts.”

To fill in some the blanks, I contacted Diane Johnson. She said she picked the name Phinehas out of the Bible. She said her son graduated from Collierville High School and attended the University of Memphis for a time. She said he worked as a truck driver for FedEx and loved his job. She said he was 38.

“He was just an enthusiastic person,” she said. “He always was.”

Indeed, maybe that’s why I was drawn to his story. Because Johnson seems so out of step with the tenor of the day. Social media isn’t known to favor the hopelessly optimistic, but that’s exactly why Johnson was so beloved on the Memphis Tiger Basketball Fans page. Can you imagine anyone being missed because of their relentlessly negative posts?

Which is not to suggest there aren’t plenty of negative things to say about the men’s basketball team these days. The team looks woeful. Hardaway appears to have no answers at all. A year that was supposed to end with an NCAA tournament bid seems more likely to end in calamity.

But while all that is true, it is also true that it really matters only because there are so many people out there like Phinehas Johnson, who just flat-out love the team. I think just about the Memphis fans we’ve lost in the past 12 months, people who maybe didn’t have anything in common with Johnson except their love of the team. People like Rudi Scheidt, who loved the Tigers. And Jack Jones, who loved the Tigers. And just check the obits, any day of the week, and you will invariably see more people who loved the Tigers so much, they wanted it to be one of the ways in which they were remembered. 

This team matters. It’s why this year is so dispiriting. It’s not just that the record is bad. It’s that the level of play is so bad, in such consistent ways, that it raises unavoidable questions about Hardaway’s ability to get the job done.

So here’s hoping Hardaway figures out how to coach an offense. And here’s hoping the players stop pitching the ball away. But in the spirit of Phinehas Johnson, I’m going to tell you there’s nothing to be done except to support the coach and the players until that happens.

As Johnson posted on Dec. 29, after the last Memphis game he would ever watch: “We’ll turn it around soon.”