Persistence and Desire Go Hard to the Hoop for N.B.A. Hopeful

DAVIS, Calif. — Weekdays are methodical for David Johnson. He works out at a park every afternoon from 3:30 to 6. Ninety minutes are devoted to shooting, passing and dribbling. The other hour is reserved for conditioning and lifting weights. On weekends, he trains harder.

His mission: to make an N.B.A. roster.

A year ago, pro basketball was nothing more than a pipe dream for Johnson, 25, a counselor at Frances Harper Junior High School in Davis, a city 11 miles west of Sacramento.

Today, he is an N.B.A. prospect. No, he will not be a lottery pick in the draft in June. It is unlikely that he will even be selected at all. He is a free-agent pickup at best. But at least he is a prospect.

“Everybody within the N.B.A. family knows who he is,” said Donnie Nelson, the president for basketball operations for the Dallas Mavericks.

Johnson has Jessica Raumer to thank for that. Besides being his girlfriend and the mother of their two children (David Jr., 6, and Dajah, 4), she is also his agent.

Over the past year, she has relentlessly sent e-mail messages and called N.B.A. general managers, asking them to give Johnson a look. She also created commercial-like videos on the Internet of the 5-foot-10 Johnson dunking, and has sent the links to people to, among others, David Stern, the commissioner of the N.B.A., and Pat Riley, the president of the Miami Heat.

With zero experience in professional sports, Raumer, a photographer, secured an invitation for him to participate in the Sacramento Kings’ minicamp last summer. Since then, Johnson has received interest from at least a half-dozen other N.B.A. teams.

All this for a guy who played only 2 years in high school and 10 games at a community college. “It’s crazy; I don’t even know how it came to this,” Johnson said with a laugh over the telephone.

Becoming an N.B.A. candidate was as coincidental as it was odd. Johnson, who coaches basketball at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High School, was given Kings tickets as a gift from one of his player’s parents. When Raumer noticed them on the kitchen counter, she asked if he was going.

“He was like, ‘Why would I go watch people do what I already can do?’ ” Raumer said. “I told him, ‘O.K., well then, I’m going to call the Kings and I’m going to see if they’re going to let you have a tryout.’ He didn’t really believe that I was serious, which, of course, I was very.”

That night, Raumer received a crash course in the business of the N.B.A. on the Internet. She said that she was in over her head; she even Googled, “What is a free agent?” Then she quizzed Johnson, who she said was still skeptical.

“I asked him to basically brag about himself and give me facts and all the awards and who tried to recruit you,” Raumer, 23, said.

He told her about his 42-inch vertical leap and that he dunked for the first time as a 5-3 fourth grader. He told her about being the most valuable player of a holiday tournament for Davis High School in the late ’90s and about recruitment letters from several colleges, adding that he did not have the grades to go.

As promised, in January 2008, Raumer drafted a résumé and sent an e-mail message to Geoff Petrie, the Kings’ general manager. Johnson expected that message to go straight to trash, but Petrie called back 48 hours later.

In July 2008, Johnson was among 18 invited to the Kings’ minicamp; the top 14 players would play in the N.B.A. Summer League in Las Vegas the next week.

For two straight days, he scrimmaged and ran drills with a team that featured lottery picks, including Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes. Just wearing official Kings practice gear made him feel like a kid again, and he marveled at the plush practice facility.

But he quickly learned how serious professional basketball is.

“Pretty much all you do is run,” said Johnson, who briefly played at Napa Valley College in 2004-5. “Before, I would say these guys get paid too much money. But after going through it, they deserve every penny. The stretching even hurt.”

The Kings cut him before they took off to Vegas, but the dream was far from over for the couple.

“I truly believe if you keep persevering and don’t give up, something good will happen,” Raumer said. “I feel like we could have easily said, ‘O.K., I guess it wasn’t meant to be.’ But if he can play, why can’t we let teams know he exists?”

Raumer knows a thing or two about being a go-getter. Despite not having any professional experience or an educational background in camera work, she started Jessica Christine Photography, which specializes in portraits of children and newborns. The business has flourished, and some of her photographs appear in the book “Little Redheads Across America.”

She brought that same drive to market Johnson. After he was waived by Sacramento, Raumer reached out to the other 29 teams in the league. She used television video from the Kings’ camp and integrated it into a takeoff of recent N.B.A. commercials, like the “Where Amazing Happens” campaign, and posted it on YouTube, getting the attention of Stern and other figures in the game.

“They e-mailed a video of David, so I called them back,” said Larry Bird, the general manager of the Indiana Pacers. “I told them we’d take a look at the video and make a decision on inviting him.”

Nelson said: “There was some footage enclosed, but it’s hard to evaluate on tape alone, especially if you’re not competing five-on-five. But the package was professionally delivered and it was very well done.”

Randy Pfund, the former Heat general manager, called Raumer while she was shopping with her children. She said the Heat was “very interested” and was trying to bring in Johnson for a workout before training camp. But because of Hurricane Ike and Pfund’s resignation weeks later, the tryout never happened.

This season, Raumer has continued to contact team officials, and Johnson has applied for the 2009 N.B.A. draft. Her goal now, she said, is for him to be invited to the predraft combine in Chicago and to individual workouts with different teams.

“I am impressed with her persistence,” Nelson said. “It’s not common to be contacted by someone within the direct family. But you certainly appreciate her passion.”

Last year, she did not know Riley from a can of paint. Now, she can drop the names of every general manager and coach in the league. Between touching up photographs and sending e-mail messages to clients for her business, Raumer said she was continually checking the Internet for roster moves, seeing if a team might be in the market for a 5-10 guard from California.

“I don’t even think I could take it if it didn’t work out this year because I’ve put so much into it,” she said. “And I can’t even explain how hard he is training. If he can be in the N.B.A. this year, even if he’s on the bench, he would be so happy.”

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed by the man for whom she is doing all of this.

“I can’t put into words how grateful I am to have someone like that,” Johnson said. “It’s not even about her e-mailing and calling people. It’s deeper than that. She’s an angel, and I owe her everything.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 4, 2009, on page B11 of the New York Times..