15 Minutes With Shannon Johnson

March 26, 2004  •  Prague, Czech Republic

Shannon Johnson, aka Pee Wee, hails from Hartsville, South Carolina, and has been around the world and back again. An alternate for the 1998 World Championship and 2000 Olympic teams before making the cut for the 2002 USA World Championship squad. Not leaving any doubt in anyone's mind as to whether she should be on the 2004 team, Pee Wee was named to the five-member All- World Championship squad after averaging 16.0 points a game in the USA's trio of medal round games.

But she's not all basketball all the time. Shannon reads a lot, plays cards, chats up her teammates, and shops just like the rest of us. She also misses her family, who are still in South Carolina. Playing for the WNBA in the summer, Pee Wee is a little closer to them, but it's a little harder to drop in when you're experiencing the snowy Russian winters.

While she's kept her southern roots, which includes typical favorite southern dishes of hog maws and collard greens, Pee Wee has certainly taken advantage of her basketball skills, which have taken her to Australia, China, Russia, Spain and many other interesting ports of call. She also displays the ‘when in Rome' attitude, which, she found out after eating tongue, is not always a good thing!

USA Basketball.com dropped in on Pee Wee Thursday night to find out what's going on in Europe.

Recap the trip through the four games, as far as how everyone's playing and how the team looks:
Right now, the five core players still here are playing really well together. We're understanding exactly what the team needs. I think the most important thing, especially when we were in Jacksonville and Cuba, is that we learned how to play together. We are all so important to our individual teams and it's very important that we come together, play together and play well together. A lot of us started clicking really well together in Cuba, during the physical games there we were able to keep our composure and win. On this trip, without Lisa (Leslie) who we think is our dominant post, without her, it's given other posts the opportunity to step up and for us to try different girls in there. The good thing about it is that everybody has shown up for each game. It doesn't matter who we've started in the post, everybody got out there and did their jobs. I'm very happy because we didn't let ourselves down by not having one of our best players on our team, and also because we had some very good younger players who could be future Olympians.

The core players who are still playing have played hard, played a lot of minutes and represented the U.S. well in our games. We haven't let the other countries feel in any way that they were going to play well against us, we've tried to dominate the entire time. And that's the good thing about it - we're doing that. Even though we only have one player who's an Olympian, we're trying to keep up the high standard of what we want to do. The only (past) Olympian we have out there right now is Katie (Smith). She's out there playing as well as she can and she has four other players around her who are definitely going to the Olympics. It's like we're the younger USA team without the other four ladies. This group we have in now, the younger group, they might not all get a spot now, but I think they feel the same way I do when I put on the USA jerseys. They're going out there, putting themselves on the line playing for our country.

With all these ‘hopefuls' coming in and playing so well, how difficult is it going to be for the USA Basketball Women's Senior National Team Committee to narrow down all these great players for the final three slots?
It's going to be very hard for them. They're going to get a chance to see the film and see exactly what's happened out here. They've seen these young ladies play together on their own (WNBA) teams, but they haven't seen them play together in a USA environment. And to watch them play so well during the season, then turn around and playing so well together here, I think that's a big advantage for all of us. The talent is not going down in USA Basketball, it's actually coming together. The good thing about it is that we have the vets like Lisa, Sheryl and Dawn, who stay around and still give us guidance, making us better players. But now, I feel much better about the group that's coming up behind us. We definitely have the talent there, and every time the Committee sees this group of ladies play, their decision gets harder. Because everybody fits in now, everyone brings something to this team. Before this we all wanted to see the pieces that fit together, but everybody's fitting together and I think that's great. We put a lot of things aside from when we play against each other in the WNBA season, and once we get on the court here we have the same goal.

What does it mean for you, despite both teams missing a couple of their top players, that you defeated the Czechs so handedly in the second game?
It says a lot for us. We jumped right into the game and knew what we wanted to do. We went from the game before and ran some of the same plays, knowing that we could score. We were trying to show our dominance, show what we can do to win. Because every time we play, it's up to us to lose. And last night our group came out and played incredible. We scored 10 points before they even scored their first point. That shows not only that we're more athletic and offensive-minded, but our defense showed last night that we're going to play defense and we're going to stop some people. Having the Czech team in our group, it gave us a good chance to see how they play. Yeah, they're missing two key players, but we're also missing players, we're missing three starters. So we're very proud of ourselves for going out and playing the way we did. We know that coach has a lot of confidence in us and we had a lot of confidence in ourselves. We wanted to go out there and set the tone and I think we did that.

What have you all been doing here in Europe to pass the time?
We've been having a lot of fun playing cards, watching movies and hanging out and talking. I think that's good because when we play cards, maybe not everyone is playing but a lot of the players are hanging around and watching, carrying on conversations, talking about the Final Four right now because the tournament is going on, and it's interesting to hang out and find out what everybody thinks about different things. Especially for a person like myself, who hasn't been in the States and hasn't seen a lot of college basketball, it's a good chance to talk with everyone and see who they think will be in the Final Four. Everybody's having good conversations, and also reading a lot of books. Everybody's been passing their books around, like a swap meet.

It's been fun. We don't normally get a chance to hang out together that much because we're all on different (WNBA) teams, so we've been spending a lot of time together trying to bond. That's one good thing that really helps us bond on the court, we're bonding off the court first.

You mentioned the Final Four, who do you think will be in New Orleans next weekend?
I think my picks were UConn and Duke, Tennessee and Texas. And then in the final game I picked UConn and Tennessee and I like Tennessee. I think it's my SEC roots, that and knowing that UConn has won the last couple of years. It's been a lot of fun because we've all been talking about that, talking about who's this pick, who's that pick, who the best players in college are right now, what (WNBA) teams they might be playing on this summer. So it's been a lot of fun to also talk about the good players who are coming out this year.

We've been here a little over a week and you were in Russia before that, what are you looking forward to most about getting back to the United States?
Some home cooking! My mom is excited about me coming home a little earlier than expected and spending some time with the family. She's going to fix my favorite meal, hog maws, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, biscuits or corn bread, something like that. It'll be so fun to go back and see my family because I really miss my brothers and sisters (ages 6-13). I miss watching them grow up, it's so hard for me. I've been overseas trying to make a living for myself and my family. But when I get a chance to go home and see them, I realize how much it's worth (for them) that I'm over there playing.

Are you looking forward to getting together in April with the bulk of the team?
That's the good thing about it, once we get back together in April we'll have Lisa, Sheryl and Dawn back. It's going to be a lot of fun, they're our top three players and have that Olympic experience. Having those players back ... they're the best players in the world. I really feel that playing with Lisa, Dawn, Sheryl, as well as players like Katie and Tina, really puts us in another class.

The young group like Sue, Swin and Catch, players like that who have been dominant in our league ... it's fun to have all of us together. There's no jealousy or anything like that going on with this team. It's so great to have that with these ladies. All of us want to be around each other, play and have fun, go shopping, play cards, talking about a book, talking about a movie, it's a lot of fun to be around each other.

When we go to the Final Four, there will be more time for us to bond. We rely on each other, we don't have to go out and seek other entertainment, we can go to each other and go shopping or to lunch or something. Once we go home, we'll go out there and play in that college game against the young ladies. It'll be very exciting for them and for us because they are very talented. We know they're going to play hard against us, so it'll be a lot of fun and I think the players are looking forward to it.

In all your travels, what's the most interesting thing you've seen?
Playing in Russia has been very interesting for me because there's a lot of history in Russia. I was so eager to go there because I wanted to learn about it, I wanted to see a lot of it. I didn't get a chance to see as much as I wanted, but I was so happy to go to a country that has as much history as Russia. To come from a communist to a democratic country is such a great thing. It was so much fun to go into the city and see all the lights and how much it reminded me of a smaller New York. Even though Moscow is so big, I think there are about 12 million people there so it was very crowded everywhere you went, but it was a lot of fun to be in Moscow. I never thought I'd be playing in Russia. You can still see the old Russia in some of the areas, the people are still looking a little sad, they look like they're all about business, they don't smile a lot and it seems very cold. That's what I saw a lot of the time when I was there, it seems like everybody is cold there. But it's not because they're not nice. I heard a little joke about Russians, they're cold on the outside but warm on the inside. That's pretty much how that country is - cold on the outside and warm on the inside. It was very interesting for me to be in that country, because I never thought I would be there. It was very interesting to wake up every morning and see snow, because I'm from South Carolina and I'm not used to that at all. It was very different, the whole experience was very different. But given the chance I'd do it all over again.

What's the oddest thing you've eaten or had put in front of you?
I was in Russia and it was cow tongue, some type of tongue, they didn't exactly tell me what it was. When I'm in a country I try to do as they do and try to eat what they eat, try not to disrespect them. So I was at the table with my teammates and they were not eating it, so I was not going to eat it. They said, in Russian so I couldn't understand, "ask Pee Wee to try it." And then they said, "well, she's not going to try it unless someone at the table has tried it." They told me this story after I tried it because of course I can't understand what they're saying. So the coach ate a piece of it and said, "mmm, this is pretty good." And they told me to try it. And everybody from the other tables are watching me. I asked what it was, but they told me not to worry about it, they can't translate it into English, but it was supposed to be really good. So I tried some type of tongue. I started to chew it, it wasn't tasty, but I couldn't spit it out because the cooks were also watching me. Everybody from the back (of the restaurant) was watching me. So I swallowed it and said, "I really don't like that." It didn't really have a taste, but what it did have wasn't good. I looked around for someone to tell me what it was and they said cow tongue, or some animal tongue. I almost took it right back out of my mouth. But that was the weirdest thing I've eaten - some kind of tongue.