Leadership, Perseverance, and the Miracle of J-Mac with Coach Jim Johnson

How a coach who started his career with 17 straight losses ended up at the center of one of the most-watched leadership moments in sports history.

Who in your organization is the equivalent of J-Mac?

If you don’t know the reference, you will by the end of this article. But sit with the question first. Because I’ve learned that the most significant leadership moment of your career may come from believing in someone the system has already passed over, and giving them a chance.

I recently sat down with Coach Jim Johnson on The Learning to Lead Show, and within the first few minutes I knew this conversation was going to stay with me.

There's a difference between hearing a story secondhand and hearing it from the person who lived it, and Jim didn't just tell me what happened that night in February 2006. He walked me through everything that made it possible: the failures, the doubts, the quiet decisions made over three and a half decades that nobody was watching. What follows are six of the lessons that came out of our conversation.

Coach Jim Johnson spent 35 years coaching high school basketball in the Greece, New York school district. 428 career wins. 23 straight seasons without a losing record. Eight sectional finals appearances in his final 11 years. But the number that follows him isn’t 428.

It’s 20 — the points an autistic young man named Jason McElwain scored in just over four minutes on senior night, a moment that won an ESPY Award and was celebrated across six continents.

That story is woven through everything Jim teaches about leadership now. Not because it was miraculous, though it was, but because every principle that made it possible had been built, lesson by lesson, across three and a half decades of showing up and refusing to stop learning.

Most leaders, when their team is struggling, respond with more strategy. More film study. More drills. More direction. Jim tried something different in a Christmas tournament one season, and it changed the year.

His team was fracturing, divided by jealousy, parental interference, and quiet resentment. They were about to play a school that had just beaten one of their close opponents by 40 points.

At the morning shoot-around, instead of running plays, Jim sat his players in the bleachers and said something that stopped them cold: I don’t want to go to the game tonight. Unless we decide to unite, this team will beat us by 50. I don’t have the answers; you do.

For the next hour, no basketball touched the floor. Every player shared. Every voice was heard. For the first time in a fractured season, the team felt like a team.

That night they lost in overtime to a team that should have run them off the floor. But they found something more valuable than a win. They won eight of their next nine games.

Vulnerability, real vulnerability, feels like weakness. It feels like the opposite of the authority the role is supposed to project. But Jim discovered what the best leaders in every field eventually learn: vulnerability doesn’t cost you authority. It earns you trust.

“The best thing I did was become vulnerable. I said, guys, I don’t have the answers — but you do. And for the next hour, every player shared their ideas, and they felt like they were being heard for probably the first time that season.”

Reflect: Where is your team stuck right now? What would happen if you put down the agenda, sat them down, and asked the real questions — and listened?

One of the most lasting changes Jim made came from that difficult season: he redesigned how he ran his captain’s meetings.

In the early years, those Monday meetings were built around his agenda. He shared what he thought they needed to work on. His voice filled most of the room. He gradually realized this model was missing something irreplaceable: the information that only his players had.

After that season, he walked into every captain’s meeting with a different posture.

He came in with questions.

How’s the team chemistry?

How can I be a better coach for you this week?

Is anyone dealing with something difficult at home or at school?

How can I best support you right now?

Jim now teaches leaders to think of themselves as the CQA — the Chief Question Asker. Questions do what declarations can’t: they surface information, they create psychological safety, they communicate respect.

A leader who asks great questions and listens well to the answers will almost always outperform the leader who arrives with all the answers pre-loaded.

“You can’t ignore the elephant in the room. But it’s really important that your team members feel like they’re being heard. You’ve got to ask questions. You only have one mouth and two ears.”

Reflect: What is the ratio of questions to statements in your last three one-on-ones? What would your team see if you flipped it?

Jim will tell you that one of the most significant things missing from his early coaching career was not basketball knowledge. It was clarity about himself, about who he was, why he was there, and what he stood for.

When he encountered Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the concept of a personal mission statement stopped him in his tracks. He had never thought about articulating his purpose in life in a clear, specific, written statement. But once he understood the idea, he couldn’t let it go.

His personal mission statement today: to be an outstanding role model who makes a positive difference in the world by helping others make their dreams come true. Every word is intentional. Every word provides direction when the path gets unclear.

Without that foundation, Jim says, young leaders bounce from wall to wall, reacting to circumstances instead of moving from a center of clarity. A leader who knows their why makes better decisions under pressure, recovers faster from failure, and brings a consistency of character to their team that no set of rules can replicate.

The mission statement isn’t a decoration. It’s a compass. And a compass only helps if you use it.

“The first person you’ve got to lead is yourself. I really encourage people to get a personal mission statement — to find their purpose, their why, what they were put on this earth to do.”

Reflect: Do you have a personal mission statement that actually shapes your decisions? If you wrote it down today, what would the first sentence be?

The season that produced JMac’s miracle night also gave Jim a lesson about himself that he didn’t see until later.

For years, he had been a steady model for his players in regular-season games. But in the postseason, when the stakes climbed toward a sectional championship he had never won, something shifted.

He put enormous pressure on himself. And without realizing it, he transmitted that pressure directly to his players. Tight, anxious coaches produce tight, anxious players.

After the JMac game, Jim made a commitment to himself before the postseason run: no matter what happens, I am going to be the rock. He would stay positive when they went down ten in the first quarter. He would model the belief that the game wasn’t over until it was over.

They won the sectional championship that year — the first of Jim’s career — in front of 10,000 people in a downtown arena. They had trailed by ten in the first quarter of the championship game. Jim stayed on the rock. His team followed him there.

Your emotional state as a leader is not a private matter. It is communicated to every person on your team, in real time, through your voice, your body language, your eyes, and your energy.

The leader who panics under pressure gives their team permission to panic. The leader who stays steady gives them permission to believe.

“I said, no matter what happens, I’m going to be the rock. We imploded in the third quarter of the semis. But this time I was different. I kept positive. We rallied and won the game.”

Reflect: When the pressure is highest, do your people see a rock or a reactor? What would they honestly say about how you show up in the hardest moments?

Jim’s leadership philosophy can be summed up in four words: leave a profit everywhere. Not a financial profit, a better-than-you-found-it profit. Everything you touch, you make better. Not worse.

He taught it to his players in a specific, concrete way. When the team traveled to an opponent’s locker room before a game, if Jim saw a piece of trash on the floor, he picked it up.

He didn’t put it there. But the point wasn’t about the trash; it was about the habit of mind his players were watching him practice.

This philosophy extends in every direction. Leave a team better than you found it. Leave a relationship better than you found it. Leave a meeting, a conversation, a hallway interaction better than you found it. Every encounter is either an investment or a withdrawal.

The reason Jim uses this framing rather than a more traditional version of servant leadership is its precision. It’s actionable in real time. You don’t have to wait for a major opportunity to model it; it shows up in whether you pick up the trash, whether you say the kind word, whether you take the extra moment to acknowledge someone’s effort.

“Everything where we go, we make it better. We turn everything we touch to gold, not garbage.”

Reflect: Where is the next opportunity in your day to leave a profit? The conversation in the hallway? The meeting you’re half-prepared for? The trash on the locker room floor?

Building a great culture, Jim will tell you, is not a one-time initiative. It’s a daily practice. And one of its most important elements is the one most leaders find most uncomfortable: the willingness to address what is wrong before it becomes what is normal.

Jim tells the story of a player in the final years of his career who went on to play two years in the NBA, one of the most talented players he ever coached. As a sophomore, that player arrived late to morning free throws before a sectional semifinal game.

The rule was clear: if you come late to free throws and you’re a starter, you don’t start. Jim held the line. The player didn’t start. The seniors were upset. And the team won anyway.

The message that went through the locker room that day was more valuable than the win: the rules apply to everybody. The best player on the team is not above the standard. And a culture where that is true, where the non-negotiables are genuinely non-negotiable, is a culture where people can trust that the words mean something.

“What you tolerate is the bottom line. If you ignore the elephant in the room, your culture is going to start to leak in the wrong direction. You want to stay positive — but you also have to be very clear on what’s non-negotiable.”

Reflect: What are you tolerating right now that you shouldn’t be? What elephant is in the room that nobody is naming?

On February 15, 2006, with just over four minutes to play in a senior night game, a young man named Jason McElwain, J-Mac, walked onto a basketball court for the first time in a varsity uniform. J-Mac had been Jim’s team manager for years. He had tried out for the team three years in a row and been cut every time. He kept showing up anyway.

The crowd gave him a standing ovation. J-Mac went six-for-ten from three-point range. He scored twenty points in four minutes. He beat out Kobe Bryant for an ESPY Award.

Jim closed our conversation not with a leadership framework but with a call to kindness.

“Let’s focus each day on trying to spread a little kindness. It could be a big kindness, but even simple things like saying hello to somebody, making eye contact, opening a door, buying a meal for someone. There are so many little acts of kindness that can help unite us.”

That’s the thread that runs through 35 years of coaching, 428 wins, and four minutes of basketball that made the world stop and cry. Not strategy. Not systems. Kindness. Belief.

The decision to see what someone could become rather than what they currently were.

Pick one principle and put it into practice. Not all six. Just the one your gut already knew you needed when you read it

• Maybe it’s sitting your team down and asking the questions instead of bringing the agenda.

• Maybe it’s drafting the first sentence of a personal mission statement.

• Maybe it’s seeing your own J-Mac, the person who keeps showing up, and giving them a chance.

Whatever it is, take the step. Then come back next week and take another one.

You can do this.

Coach Johnson mentioned several authors and thinkers who influenced his leadership journey:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen Covey: A foundational book on leadership, personal responsibility, and purpose.

• Start With Why — Simon Sinek: Understanding purpose and how great leaders inspire action.

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni: A powerful framework for building trust and team health.

• Developing the Leader Within You — John C. Maxwell: A practical guide to leadership growth.

• Mindset — Carol Dweck: A deep look at the power of a growth mindset.

• Book: A Coach and a Miracle

• Email: coachjimjohnson@gmail.com

• LinkedIn

• Website

• J-Mac Video