Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News:
""You have guys who are great practice players but when the game comes, you don’t see the same thing," Prince said. "Then you have others in practice who don’t know what’s going on but they’re gamers."We had a guy like that, Amir Johnson, you try to get him to run plays in practice, he couldn’t. But we put him in the game, you had to leave him out there because he did stuff, blocked shots, tip dunks, got the crowd into the game.""
That could explain why Amir Johnson never received a role commensurate with what fans, who saw only games and not practices, wanted.