Eric Musselman weighs in on lofty NBA comparison for Kamani Johnson

During Arkansas’ foreign tour in August, Kamani Johnson averaged 9.5 rebounds per game to help the Razorbacks to a perfect 4-0 record. It was quite a showing after he averaged 2.7 boards last season, and his teammates liked what they saw.

In fact, Trevon Brazile went so far as to compare Johnson to Dennis Rodman — and Eric Musselman shared his thoughts on that idea.

“Wow,” he said. “Dennis Rodman was pretty good and pretty consistent. … It’s a great compliment.”

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Johnson averaged 6.7 rebounds per contest in his final season at Arkansas-Little Rock in 2020-21 before transferring to Arkansas last year. He could be gearing up for a big jump this season based on what he did overseas.

However, Musselman said there’s still room for Johnson to improve his game. He’s a strong offensive rebounder, but he can still improve as a defensive rebounder.

“I think that when you look at Kamani’s numbers overseas and you look at his rebounding — in practice, he’s an incredible offensive rebounder,” Musselman said. “And I think the next progression for Kamani is to defensive rebound at the same rate he rebounds offensively because he’s got an incredible innate ability to go chase down offensive boards.

“His offensive rebound rate is at an [incredibly] high rate. Defensive rebounding is an area, like I said, that he can strive to become better as a defensive rebounder, become a well-rounded rebounder at both ends. But his free throws attempt per touch and his offensive rebound rate is at a really, really high level.”

Eric Musselman jokes about fines from Greg Sankey, foreign referees

When Arkansas men’s basketball played a few exhibition games overseas during the summer, head coach Eric Musselman had put an emphasis on attacking the rim. At a preseason press conference this week, Musselman was asked if that will be more of a feature for the Arkansas offense this year.

The answer: Not really. The adjustment in the overseas games was to overseas refs. And Musselman couldn’t help but get a little quip in about how he can talk freely about these very-much-non-conference officials.

“I mean I don’t think commissioner [Greg] Sankey can fine me for talking about the officials overseas. But we’re going to have — the game is officiated overall different,” Musselman said. “From coaching Venezuela or Dominican national team, the whistle is just different. They don’t protect dribble drive attacks like they do in college basketball.”