Johni Broome Is Up To Something Special
The Auburn big man dominated the Maui Invitational, and early in the season, looks like an all-time great college basketball hooper.
As a newsletter that leans heavily into historical context, your humble author should be especially resistant to being a prisoner of the moment. To that end, I hesitate to definitively label the 2024 edition of the Maui Invitational as the greatest in the 40-year-old tournament’s history.
Likewise, I’m not prepared to deem Auburn forward Johni Broome’s performance, while leading the Tigers to the coveted surfboard trophy, the best in Maui Invitational history. Nor am I ready to say that Broome’s stretch was the most impressive three-day showing from any player at any event during my time following college basketball.
But I’m also not not saying these things.
For a certain portion of the sports-loving population, the daytime cable talking heads — and the cottage industries spawned from them — cause us to reflexively recoil when any “-est” suffix is applied to present-day achievements. For one thing, it is often used as a cudgel to downplay what modern stars are doing in the moment.
But at the same time, I feel it’s important to take a moment when an athlete is doing something truly special and soak it in. And Johni Broome’s play to open the 2024-25 season is really damn special.
Broome capped Auburn’s championship run with 21 points, 16 rebounds, six assists, and four blocked shots — all game highs — in a 90-76 win over Memphis.
Over the course of the tournament, Broome scored 65 points, snared 45 rebounds, blocked nine shots, and passed for 13 assists. As impressive as Broome’s stats are on their own, it’s the context in which he produced them.
Put simply, just how easy Broome makes it all look is astounding. Following Broome’s dominance of North Carolina in Tuesday’s semifinal, in which the big man flirted with a 20/20 game, Tar Heels coach Hubert Davis’ assessment bordered on exasperation.
College basketball has had plenty of transcendent superstars in the 21st century, no matter what any cranks might insist about the game’s quality. Hubert Davis was not yet an assistant coach when Tyler Hansbrough donned Carolina Blue, but Davis’ reaction to Broome was not unlike how Hansbrough left opposing coaches.
Never with Hansbrough did the game look so effortless, though. Don’t conflate that with an implication that Broome isn’t playing with effort; he shows as much relentless pursuit of a win as Hansbrough, but does so with a smoothness to his game that can’t be replicated through sheer will.
He attacks the rim with a tenacity reminiscent of Blake Griffin in his time at Oklahoma, and does so with an equal mix of face-up and back-to-the-basket play more comparable to Michael Beasley in his year at Kansas State — or, for those who recall the ‘90s, Glenn Robinson at Purdue.
The court vision, the soft 3-point touch, and the not just willingness but eagerness to shoot a mid-range shot bring to mind another star in his college days: Kevin Durant.
Maybe that’s the most talk-show-host-seeking-attention parallel I’ve drawn, but it’s worth noting that Durant played more of a hybrid power forward role in his time at Texas than the pure perimeter style that’s made him an all-time NBA great.
That’s hardly to suggest Broome is destined for a similar pro career, or any NBA career of note. But that’s not the point of this exercise.
Johni Broome’s present, on its own, is unfolding as one of those special college basketball seasons — the type of season that a newsletter dedicating extensive space to celebrating sports’ history might champion as among the “-est” we’ve ever seen.