Brice Johnson On the 2017 National Championship Game: "I Didn't Watch It"

"I love all of them like my brothers. But I still wouldn’t watch it. I knew they’d win it. What’s the point in me watching it?”

As any fan of North Carolina basketball knows, the pain of the 2016 National Championship Game loss (despite being four years, six months, and 17 days ago) is still annoyingly real and frustratingly raw.

Some fans have chosen to re-watch the game, hoping that maybe, just maybe this time Kris Jenkins’s championship-winning buzzer-beater won’t go in. Others have chosen to ignore the game entirely, pretending it never happened. Yet others have embraced the 2016 loss as the catalyst for the 2017 championship.

Regardless of any fans’ interaction with the loss, none of them feel it as deeply or as painfully as those who were standing on the court as the buzzer sounded and streamers of the wrong color flowed around them. And perhaps no one had to experience the hurt as profoundly as the young man standing under the basket who caught the now-historic ball as it fell through the net – Brice Johnson.

So you’ll forgive Johnson if he wasn’t quick to turn on his television on April 3, 2017, to watch his former teammates win the national championship that he never got to experience.

In a recent interview with Jones Angell and Adam Lucas on the Carolina Insider Podcast, the trio discussed both the 2016 and 2017 National Championship Games. As part of the discussion, it came out that Johnson chose not to watch the 2017 game. The choice was not out of bitterness or resentment, but rather that he knew his Tar Heel brothers would pull out the victory.

What follows is a transcription of the portion of the interview where Angell, Lucas, and Johnson look back to the championship that almost was for the 2016 Tar Heels and the 2017 game that Johnson never watched.

Jones Angell: Was it hard to see them win it in ’17 with how close you guys were in ’16?

Brice Johnson: Absolutely. You want me to be honest?

Angell: Yes.

Johnson: I didn’t even watch the game.

Angell: Really?

Johnson: I didn’t watch it. I knew they would win it. It’s just, I didn’t watch it. We all knew they would win that championship. Everybody’s all like, “You guys should have got a ring, too.” I’m like, “No, I mean, we lost.” At the end of the day, I didn’t watch it. Everybody’s like, “Oh did you watch the game?” “No, I didn’t. I just didn’t watch it.” “Why didn’t you watch it?” Because I knew they would win. I don’t want to see that. I wanted to win one. We didn’t get the opportunity to. We were one shot away from going to overtime. In overtime, we probably would have beat them. But we didn’t win it. So, I don’t want to see that.

Angell: If you could do it again would you watch it or do you still think you wouldn’t?

Johnson: Still wouldn’t watch it. That’s the competitor in me. I love all of them to death. I love all of them like my brothers. But I still wouldn’t watch it. I knew they’d win it. What’s the point in me watching it?

Angell: And I want to make sure people understand, you’re not saying something negative about Kennedy Meeks or Joel Berry.

Johnson: I’m not saying anything negative about anybody. I just didn’t watch the game. I didn’t want to watch it. That would have broken my heart even more because we didn’t win one. I didn’t want to see that.

Adam Lucas: I think too the way people think about it now is different because the way they think about ’16 is different, from the outside, because they know what happened in ’17. But you didn’t get to do ’17, you had to do ’16.

Johnson: I still get people that ask me, “Oh man, how was the championship? I’m like, “What are you talking about, I wasn’t there.” And they’re like, “Oh you left, right.” I’m like, “Yeah, I left, I graduated.” “Oh, I thought you were on the team.” “No, we lost the year before. We didn’t win it this year.”

Angell: Can you take us back to that moment, the locker room after the game? I mean it is, I think, in sports terms, one of the most difficult things you can deal with.

Johnson: I just know Michael walked in. Michael Jordan walked in and I don’t even know what he said. I was in my hands crying, I couldn’t tell you what he said. That’s all I can remember. I know Adam [Lucas] can probably tell you when media showed up, I just kind of sat there. I didn’t know how to register it yet. I just sat there. I didn’t know what to say.

Angell: Has that been hard to get over, even now? Four years later?

Johnson: Uh, no. I’ve gotten over it. Every time I see a highlight of it, I turn the channel. It still sucks, but I’m over it. I ended up being a first-round draft pick from all that.

Lucas: When Kris Jenkins let it go, did you know?

Johnson: Somewhat. I was expecting them to try and lay it up. That was the whole reason I was standing so far back. We were expecting him to drive it directly at us and not throw it back. We thought he was going to try and take it for himself. When he shot it I was like, "There’s no way", but then I caught it and I was like, "Dang, he really made this." It’s just one of those things where you’re like, "Wow, this really just happened".

Angell: Did it sour the experience for you at all?

Johnson: It soured it a little bit because that’s the one thing we set out to do when we first got to Carolina. It was like, "Hey we’re going to go and we’re going to win one. First, we got the ACC Championship. Cool, that’s one of the things, but we want to get to the Final Four, we want to win it. We didn’t come this far to just come this far. We want to actually win it." It soured it a little bit, but it was still a great experience. I wish we were on the other end of it, but at the end of the day, it was still a pretty good experience.

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